REPRISE: “Take Me to Your Litter Box” • by Pete Wood

The phone meowed twice. It had never made that noise before.Why would anyone call at three a.m.? Eric picked it up, but there was nobody there. Mr. Ruffles stopped licking his fur and stood on his two hind legs. “Well, that’s the signal.” He looked at Eric. “I guess we cats have collected enough data.” Eric stared at his fat tabby. He had just left the office after spending...

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REPRISE: “This Cat Must Die!” • by Jason Lairamore

 The heavy ceramic angel sitting high on the shelf above the sliding glass door was perfect for what Sham, the ethereal, had in mind. That fat, orange cat had to die. Its death was the only way he could become a real ghost. Late morning sun shining through the glass door warmed the tiled floor. That cursed cat, Cadmus, loved nothing more than to lay there to sleep. Sham...

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REPRISE: “Without Fulvia” • by Anatoly Belilovsky

Fulvia’s cat hissed at Fulvia’s father and backed away, farther under the sofa.“Leave her be,” said Fulvia’s mother. “I gotta take her to the vet,” said Fulvia’s father. “Been awful cranky lately, and peeing a lot.” “So?” It’s Fulvia’s, he thought, but said instead: “Gonna cost a fortune in kitty litter.” He got on his knees, and reached for the cat. The cat hissed again....

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REPRISE: “The Disappearing Cat Trick” • by Carol Scheina

 Tanya’s parents refused to let her get a cat. No matter how many times Tanya argued that the planet’s environment was fully approved for cats, or that cats had already made their home among the rocks and dust and blue bamboo plants of Odin III, they wouldn’t budge. Tanya suspected they didn’t want the responsibility of a pet, so she did the next best thing and showered...

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REPRISE: “There Is Only One Black Cat” • by Pauline Barmby

Many humans think they own a black cat. They are wrong. I belong to none of them. I have vastly more than nine lives and I live them all at once…» READ IT NOW Pauline Barmby is an astrophysicist who reads, writes, runs, knits, and believes that you can’t have too many favorite galaxies. She lives in London, Canada and hopes to someday visit her namesake main belt...

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REPRISE: “This Is (Not) My Beautiful Cat” • by Ephiny Gale

When the girl is six years old, she uncovers a grey and white kitten in a sagging cardboard box in her local park. She’s walking there with her mother and their two large dogs, but despite this the kitten follows them out to the street, trotting three metres behind on the footpath like they’re trailing a fuzzy ball of yarn. Once the kitten reaches their front porch, the...

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REPRISE: “A Can of Piskies” • by Andrew Jensen

 We’ve published a lot of stories by Andrew Jensen in the past few years.He has a wonderfully wry, understated, very Canadian sense of humor—excuse me, “humour.” It was a challenge to pick a favorite story of his for this “Best of” series. My first choice would be “Running Away with the Cirque,” which you’ll find in Stupefying Stories 24. (And which you can read for free,...

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REPRISE: “At Wit’s End” • by Roxana Arama

And finally, to wrap up Roxana Arama Week, a little something from a very early Pete Wood Challenge: “At Wit’s End.”And a cat, of course. » READ IT NOW! Roxana Arama is an award-winning Romanian American author. She studied computer science in Bucharest, Romania, and moved to the United States to work in software development. She is the author of three novels: The Regolith...

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NEW STORY: “Warp and Warpath” • by Roxana Arama

Captain Selena Mareth was reviewing a dire report on her starship’s dwindling resources when her door chimed.“Enter.”First Officer Astra Varenson walked in. “I have something to show you, Captain,” she said. Mareth leaned over her desk to look at the red dot on Varenson’s tablet. “Spectrometer readings suggest the presence of lithionix deposits on the fifth planet of this...

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REPRISE: “The e-Menace” • by Roxana Arama

It’s Roxana Arama Week!Following the successful first season of The Odin Chronicles, we launched another group-written shared-world serial: Tales from The Brahma, a saga of life aboard, yes, a generation ship the size of a small planet. Brahma never found an audience, though, which led to our decision to cancel it after ten episodes.The single most-read story of all the Brahma...

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REPRISE: “Scared of Short Stories” • by Roxana Arama

It’s Roxana Arama Week!There’s a question every aspiring writer asks, sooner or later: How do I cross the threshhold? How do I make the transition from wanting to become a writer to being a published author?In “Scared of Short Stories,” Roxana Arama was kind enough to share with us the story of her journey from frustrated aspiring novelist with an MFA, to successful and...

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REPRISE: “For Sale: Used Time Machine. No Refunds!” • by Roxana Arama

It’s Roxana Arama Week!In 2021, Pete Wood wrote:“When I created this contest [The Pete Wood Challenge], I expected nothing but tongue-in-cheek takes on time travel tropes. While several writers didn’t disappoint with humorous entries, the variety of the stories surprised me. It never occurred to me that my writing prompt could inspire a serious story, a literary story.“Roxana ...

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SCIENCE FACT: “A Generation Ship The Size of a Small Planet” • by Bruce Bethke

[Nota bene: This was first published in 2008. I rediscovered it recently while looking for fiction to bubble back to the top for The Best of Stupefying Stories SHOWCASE, and after re-reading it now, well… It’s a long read, but I think the length is necessary to support the disturbing conclusion I reached. Enjoy?  ~brb] Part 1: The Multi-Generational Con In the course...

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