nadine aurora tabing
Obsolesce
Strange Horizons (2022)
The city was so large now there was no longer night and day, only glowing blue hours as endless as the low hum emanating from the chalky skyline.
A nurse provides caregiving services to robots going obsolete. Her newest client is a war veteran, originally modeled after a singer-actress diva.
My first short story publication, and nominated by the editors of Strange Horizons for a Pushcart Prize 🌟
~7000 words. Read
A short story about a woman taught to survive by eating others’ sorrows, and how she raises her daughter to eat sorrows too. 🍽️️ 🍽
Published in Cursed Morsels's No Trouble At All, as part of an anthology of horrors that exist under the guise of politeness.
This story was a finalist for the2023 Bram Stoker Award® for Superior Achievement in Short Fiction 🌟
2500 words. Paperback / eBook
You can also listen to this story narrated by Tales to Terrifyđź–¤
An Inherited Taste
No Trouble At All (2023)
So, with care, Bea started early. She salted Felisia's milk and formula with murmured complaints. She pureed bananas and seasoned them with sparkling shreds of spite. She stewed potatoes and peas with stubborn little grudges, acidic...
The Bright in the Gyre
Reckoning (2023)
The satellites spot them first at night: lights where there should be none, sparse enough to be mistaken for dead pixels in the ocean’s inky gut. Before long, the lights splatter into a constellation orbiting 32°N and 145°W, and those who know the significance of that migratory path are summoned to interviews that flood every social media feed. WHAT IS IN THE NORTH PACIFIC GYRE?
A story about microplastics, trash-eating mycelia, and a woman's decision of how to spend the last days of her life. In Reckoning's “Oceans” issue 🌊🍄🔍
Appears on theNerds of a Feather 2024 Hugo Award Recommendation List 🪶
4000 words. Read
In USF’s “Weird Progeny” issue—a story about a world plagued by poisonous sunlight, and clone descendants doing their best to live up to the wishes of their originating ancestor.
Also republished in USF's 5th Anniversary Anthology, which collects their best stories published from 2019–2023.
~5000 words. Read online / Buy print
The Conditions
for Blooming
Utopia Science Fiction(2023)
Luni remembered the moment she was born: the seal cracking like an egg, the hiss of air, the gelatinous tide of amniotic fluid, her limbs unspooling and cooling underneath headlamps round and bright as moons. She kept this story tucked inside and told it only once: to another self of hers, the first she’d ever met, who reacted not with a swell of rapport, but horror.
Balikbayan
Solarpunk Magazine (2023)
Every childhood summer he returned to a country that felt loose, unfitting: the smothering heat, the sour stews with bone-in meat eaten under a rusted roof, his aunties that gasped, in English, when a butterfly landed on him at the cemetery: Look, your mother is visiting.
The winner of Solarpunk Magazine’s May 2022 microfiction contest, a solarpunk flash crossed with Filipino ghost stories. 🦋🌱
250 words. Read
A flash about mummies and what things are committed for survival.
~980 words.
Read online
The Anatomy of
Witchdaughter
Flash Fiction Online (2023)
I’m sorry, Russa thinks. But I need something for my thesis. Something worthy of all-nighters, her parents’ part-time jobs, and endless scholarship applications serving her family’s trauma to eat. Something worthy of the theft her class committed to get this mummy here.
DIY 5-Step Homemade
Polycephalic Hound Chow—EASY!
99 Fleeting Fantasies (2024)
Due to their origin as a stygian beast bred to guard the gates of the underworld, Polycephalic Hounds raised on the surface have a reputation as picky eaters. FEAR NOT!
A fantasy flash about making food for your beloved companion.
500 words. Read
A cyberpunk flash about the things passed down in a family, like eyes that can (??) see ghosts đź‘€
~800 words. Buy ebook
Inheritance in Six Parts
Worlds of Possibility (2024)
To be honest, I’ve always wanted eyes with violet irises, or at least an object recognition algorithm. I’m always losing things.