May, 2026 Dark Fiction Short Story Markets

Bourbon Penn (magazine)
https://www.bourbonpenn.com/submissions
Payment: 5 cents a word
Story Length: 2,000–7,500 words
Deadline: Intermittent. Currently open until May 20, 2026
Reprints?: No
Response: up to 3 months
Description: Highly imaginative stories with a healthy dose of the odd. Odd characters, odd experiences, odd realities. We’re looking for genre / speculative stories and are quite partial to slipstream, cross-genre, magic realism, absurdist, and the surreal.

Orion’s Belt (online magazine)
https://www.orions-belt.net/submissions
Payment: 8 cents a word
Story Length: up to 1, 00 words
Opens: until May 15, 2026
Reprints?: No
Response: generally within one week
Description: Flash fiction, micro fiction, and poetry that is: experimental literary science fiction and fantasy stories that blur the line between “genre” fiction and literary fiction.

Don’t Go for the Vault: A Bank Robbery Horror Anthology
https://www.cateyepress.com/submissions
Payment: 5 cents a word (1 cent/ word for reprints)
Story Length: 1,500–4,500 words
Deadline: May 20, 2026
Reprints?: Yes
Response: unknown
Description: horror stories involving bank robberies. While the title for the anthology is “Don’t Go for the Vault,” we want characters who do exactly that. We want to see what you have hidden behind that giant metal door. Give us a reason to heed this legendary piece of bank robbery advice. Stories can take place in any time period and do not need to occur exclusively within the confines of a bank…

Anomaly
https://forms.gle/gyYiefg2A2rffr779
Payment: 8 cents a word
Story Length: flash fiction up to 300 words
Deadline: Open between June 1 and June 7, 2025
Reprints?: No
Response: unknown
Description: Dark and disruptive SF stories that have strong emotional resonance. We like stories that stick with us after reading, that get us thinking about the twisted use of technologies, the way the world may be, or how characters might react to an evolving technological future.

Missed-Fits (anthology) (Calendar of Fools)
https://calendaroffools.com/submissions/
Payment: 8 cents a word
Story Length: 1,200–2,100 words
Deadline: May 16, 2026
Reprints?: No
Response: within 4 months
Description: Speculative short stories (science fiction, fantasy, horror, etc.) with an element of someone or something that doesn’t fit, that is missing, that is out of place.

Extremely Weird Splatter (anthology, via Horrific Scribblings)
https://horrificscribblings.com/ews-submissions/
Payment: 8 cents a word
Story Length: 1,500–5,000 words
Deadline: May 15, 2026
Reprints?: No
Response: unknown
Description: Stories that highlight the awesome potential released when extreme aesthetics and splatter savvy fuse with weird that leaves “grounded” behind.

###

***Non-PRO-Paying Market, but Eric J. Guignard’s “Pick of the Month”

The Gren-Wode (Myths &Legends)
https://legends.hearthstories.org/calls/gren-wode.html
Payment: $50 flat rate ($20 for reprints)
Story Length: 2,000–15,000 words
Deadline: September 30, 2026
Reprints?: Yes
Response: Seemingly within a couple of months.
Description: Stories based in the world and legends of Robin Hood. The stories do not have to feature Robin Hood, but should be firmly set within the world and time period of the legend, using any existing characters you like, or adding your own. Also open to poetry and illustrations. Open to tales of adventure, action, cozy village/peasant stories, slice of life, romance, fantasy, historical fiction, horror, literary fiction or combinations of all of them.

Folded Space (from Tales to Terrify Podcast)
https://talestoterrify.moksha.io/publication/folded-space/guidelines
Payment: 2 cents a word (1 cent/word for reprints)
Story Length: 3,000–7,000 words
Deadline: Currently Open (unknown if/when market closes)
Reprints?: Yes
Response: Up to three months
Description: PODCAST STORIES: Open to all forms of Speculative and Science Fiction (Technology, world building, new civilizations, etc.).