Black Speculative Fiction by Black Women Writers | midnight & indigo

A Manifesto of the Tethered

Amarachi Okeke — Sun, 19 Oct 2025 13:02:58 +0000

The hut reeked of stale breath. The sour air pressed against Anaka’s nostrils like a second skin. Smoke curled from a rusted iron bowl in the corner, thick with the smell of burnt leaves, dried piss, and something sweet going to rot. Anaka’s knees were pressed into the gravel, and he felt the sharp bite of stones through the skin of his knees. The torches hissed softly on the walls. No wind moved. He was sweating. The villagers stood around him in a ring, quiet and watchful. Their faces were streaked with charcoal and ochre, unmoving in the flickering firelight.

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“The Intersection”

Onicia Muller — Sat, 21 Sep 2024 04:00:08 +0000

“Curse this damned place. I don’t want anything to do with here.” Holson, my best childhood friend, slammed the door and headed off on foot to the nearest mechanic. He just wants to be nobody in a big city. He wants time to move at its regular pace and make it from point A to point B without interruption or detour. I’m okay with here. I’m okay with things interrupting the present. The smell of sweet, deep-fried goodness wafts over from the nearby snack truck. Most of the roosters have stopped crowing, but now and then you’ll hear one. I

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“The Hanging Tree”

Jade T. Woodridge — Thu, 27 May 2021 04:00:34 +0000

No roads led here, this place like a scar of an old wound. No signs marked its location, no post hung with its name. There was no map of its existence or a print of paper for it to claim. Long ago, however, this wasn’t so. Surrounded by a sea of grass, the dirt road long since grown in, the white-columned house sat beneath the gaze of the oak on the hill. Daniel stood beneath the tree, shaded by its leaves, its branches spread high like reaching arms, thick, strong, and proud. Its trunk was old and sturdy, a monument

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“Vessel”

Malissa White — Fri, 13 Nov 2020 04:41:45 +0000

Mama always said the Devil is a lie. I remember thinking that before it happened. But Mama was wrong. The Devil isn’t some jealous white boy with a torture fetish. The Devil, the real Devil, is the truth. And hell? Hell is her sword. I was fourteen hours into that leg of my journey to the Adirondack Mountains. Outside, the woods blurred black and green. My Bronco’s rumbling just beneath Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” lent a roar to the song. Her voice, heavy and lonely, sounded like she did on Mama’s old vinyl. Every time I heard it, I felt

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“Grids”

Ebony Hagans-Greene — Wed, 28 Oct 2020 05:27:32 +0000

“3 A.M./Stare at the ceilin’, murder the feelin’/Spider crawl in the corner—Brown Recluse./So appropriate” I rap, far too passionately. Honestly, there is no excuse for my obsession with Childish Gambino. It ruins everything. No, seriously. Because he’s basically made every reference under the sun, there’s a lyric for nearly everything—something that can become quite distracting in conversations. It’s always awkward when your friends are talking about their futures and families and kids they want, and you’re just sitting there like “HASHTAG MY DAY-WEAR. YOUR GIRL DRANK MY DAY CARE—I WAS BORN RICH, LIFE AIN’T FAIR (SILVER-SPOON-COON HOE!),” which you want

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“domicile”

Shakirah Peterson — Mon, 26 Oct 2020 05:26:14 +0000

I text Alicia that I’m outside and when she responds, I’m already ringing the doorbell. the text was just a courtesy. whether she’s ready for this interview or not is of no concern to me. I need to see this for myself. I’ll break through the windows if I have to. “ain’t it open? come in.” her voice is exactly what I thought it would be. in a choir, she’d be sandwich in between the men, erupting a melody between tenor and bass. I can feel the depth in her voice better than I can hear it. the door isn’t

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“Those That Sow and Those That Reap”

Ozzie M. Gartrell — Wed, 21 Oct 2020 05:53:50 +0000

On a nimbus of decay, it emerged from the dark recesses of her closet and crept spiderlike toward her threadbare rug. Humid cold wafted from its shadowy body. The reek of wet mulch and grave soil slithered into her nostrils and she shivered. Their eyes locked. Hers: wide, panicked, and brown; it: reptilian, golden, and ancient. Her mouth opened to scream but only wheezing gasps emerged. She attempted to wiggle away or shield herself with trembling hands, but it was too late. As soon as she’d woken to limbs heavy with sleep paralysis, she knew she could not be saved.

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“The Devil in Tia Adelina’s Botanica”

Lynn Brown — Mon, 19 Oct 2020 04:00:49 +0000

It was a bitterly cold November evening, fifteen minutes or so before closing when the young man first walked into Tia Adelina’s botanica. He was clearly homeless. Swathed in what looked like a tattered old bedsheet, he shuffled in from the cold. His long dark hair was wildly tangled and matted in places. His face had the sharp angularity and sunken eyes of starvation. It was rare that the homeless wandered into Adelina’s store, though it was her policy to treat them with kindness when they did. Particularly when they paused to greet Eshu when they came in, as the

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“Dragonflies”

Melissa Watkins — Fri, 16 Oct 2020 05:34:25 +0000

They were floating, flying in tandem, punctuated by the last of the year’s sunlight, perfectly together. Nothing could separate them. The voices of children, the rush of the wind, the first pinpricks of winter’s chill all passed by, but for them, there was nothing but the beating of wings and the buzz of life and the closeness. There was stability and freedom, peace and chaos, everything but— Her seal broke with a whooshing gasp of stale air and she was suddenly painfully conscious. In old movies, they always showed the process of coming out of stasis as a long, slow,

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“Unseen”

Alifah Omar — Thu, 15 Oct 2020 04:00:57 +0000

Cast aside the bloody hands of the self-righteous for they brittle and collapse amongst the bones of saints. The tree leaves blew just as they did nineteen years earlier, and Adrina remembered it all. She remembered dropping clothes in a huge black kettle full of boiling water when her mother and Aunt Josephine pulled up in the wagon. She remembered her mother’s frowning face, the over-washed dress with the fading, blue-flowered print, and the brown hat on her head. She remembered her aunt was the first to jump out the wagon when the horse came to a stop. Dust

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