March Stories Update

10 stories I read in 2025

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1. The Widow Parkhurst by Hugh J O’Donnell in Factor Four

The widow Parkhurst lives alone on her farm, despite the gossip of the town. She’s got a gun and a cat and the workers come and go. Except one, who asks to use her shed on the nights of the full moon.

So long as he doesn’t leave a mess she doesn’t mind. But one night her cat starts calling her and she learns about the beastly goings on.

Read This: Swift vignette of fantastic problems and how to solve them
Don’t Read This: You know what the problem is when you hear full moon

2. Astronaut Training by Sarah Chin in Had

There’s a base on the moon, but not the one you know about, the upper base with flags and press conferences. You’ve been selected for it. You’re being trained for it.

Seven astronauts have gone to the lower base and five have come back. It’s not the mission you expect. It’s unearthly.

Read This: Spooky short on how even the moon can be made stranger
Don’t Read This: You probably shouldn’t go to even the normal moon base

3. New Niches by Jackie Roberti in Reckoning

Our narrator has a job aboard a wind turbine in the Labrador Sea. With the melting of the ice caps this has become feasible, and now powers much of Labrador and Newfoundland. What with the hurry and other distractions – them splitting up with Darcy, in part due to despair over the world – they haven’t fully read the briefing documents.

They’re pessimistic, even now, knowing that the wind turbines disrupt sea life. When they find gulls nesting on the top they’re surprised, worried even that they might have to move them. But no, this is expected, planned for, encouraged even. The tops are contoured to be like sea ice or sea cliffs, the endangered Ivory Gulls finding a new niche.

Maybe there is room for optimism. Maybe there’s a chance. Even when the storm comes.

Read This: For an exploration of finding hope in unexpected places
Don’t Read This: Narrator spends a lot of time arguing with the Darcy in their head

Photo by Paul Arky on Unsplash

4. Player by Claudia Monpere in Gooseberry Pie

By the side of the road is a wrecked piano. The boy plays it anyway. The music reaches out to others.

Gooseberry Pie publishes stories that are just six sentences long. The way writers react to this constraint is often interesting, sometimes fun, occasionally frustrating. And now and then, like here, they make something extraordinary from such unprepossessing ingredients.

Read This: Tiny fragment of finding beauty in the margins
Don’t Read This: It’s just a piano, it’s just six sentences

5. The Art Of Truly Fixing Things by Carol Scheina in Factor Four

Samson has a way with metal, runs the auto repair shop. Doesn’t talk much to people, often doesn’t need tools. His father was a serious man. There was no need, no time for beauty or art.

Business is good and Adwin is looking for a job. His talent is with glass, and an auto shop can always find use for that. But glass changes the light, and Adwin makes sculptures. Sculptures that can be broken.

Read This: To see how Samson might just grow beyond his limits
Don’t Read This: Guy told not to value art learns to value art

6. To The Manufacturer Of The Tinder-Arsehole Detector (TAD) ™ by Sumitra Singham in Hooghly Review

This software attached itself to the writer’s Tinder profile* and promptly took it over. It changed her profile picture, it swiped right on unlikely men with high-waisted trousers who discussed calculus and weather forecasting on dates.

She wishes to complain, that this has changed her dating habits, her Friday night indecision, her evenings of having her professional speciality explained to her by men. And her future too.

This tiny comedy offers entertaining twists on a number of dating cliches, with more verve, pace and decent jokes than some Hollywood Romcoms.

Read This: Fun, short and even sweet look at a dating in 2025
Don’t Read This: I don’t believe in this as a complaint letter, even in the absurd upside down world of online dating

* Tinder is an online dating app, matching people for romance or other reasons

7. Now That The Circus Has Shut Down The Human Cannonball Looks For Work by Meghan Phillips in Wigleaf

Hard to review a story so perfectly summed up by the title. “He's happy to be a reference, but he's not sure how much weight the words of a clown will carry.”

Except of course it’s not summed up by the title. How absurd the mundane world looks when trying to fit in, that of course. But what exactly the Human Cannonball felt when she was the Human Cannonball, that’s the heart of this.

Read This: The emphasis is on Human
Don’t Read This: Mostly just regular job searching

8. The Millay Illusion by Sarah Pinkser in Uncanny

Lottie is Johnny Chess The Boy Wander in her uncle Albertini’s Astonishing Traveling Show. It’s safer, and the only way she can go on stage and do tricks. Then Sarah Miller joins the show. As a woman her act is a comedy one, pretending incompetence – pretending so well that even the other members of the show think she does it more by luck than anything else.

Sarah starts to add new tricks, show her talent. But than Fredrick Bowers, Master Of Mystery, the headliner, insists she stop one of them, claims she’s copied his. And in the moment Lottie doesn’t back her up, so Sarah leaves.

She appears again in the trade press as The Magnificent Millay. Always she’s talked down, as everyone knows women can’t do magic. People claim her best tricks are copies of other, male magicians. Then one day in New York Albertini’s find their venue is booked out and they have a night spare. And at the hotel there are tickets for The Illusion To End All Illusions from Millay The Magnificent. Everyone is invited, even Frederick Bowers, now deceased. Everyone but Lottie.

Lottie will attend anyway, and this may be the greatest trick of all.

Read This: Story of stage magic and struggling against society – and of real magic
Don’t Read This: Takes a long time and hides the real trick

9. For When The Nights Are behind You And The Depths Are Ahead by Corey Farrenkopf in Three Lobed Burning Eye

Ricky goes with his brother Dave to the launch of the game Castles Underground III. Ricky’s too young to play, or even watch his brother play. At the launch they’re separated. Dave dies.

There’s a vigil at the game store. There will always be rebirth in castles they say. Ricky doesn’t know what that means. But he has to get the game.

A haunting story of obsession with a game – a game that is something more.

Read This: The game is real, a curse, a blessing, a sacrifice, where there will always be rebirth
Don’t Read This: Occultly addictive video game

10. Little Thief And The Martyr’s Head by J A Prentice in Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Little Thief sees three heads of executed men by the gate. A thief, a killer and a rebel. She speaks to all three giving them her blessing.

It’s the rebel who replies, the rebel who cannot rest. The rebel who wants her help. But not one has helped Little Thief, and she’s little and just a thief.

Read This: Little Thief has a lot to learn about how, just maybe, things might change
Don’t Read This: We know the limits of vengeance, the cycle of martyrs