What if you could truly understand your pet? What if that connection lasted a lifetime?

At twenty-six, Thomas walks into a clinic with an eight-week-old grey kitten.

The procedure is called Concordance. Its purpose is simple: to create a bond between human and animal that allows them to share feelings, thoughts, and something deeper than words.

Thomas names the kitten Otto.

What begins as an experiment in companionship becomes something extraordinary.

Through marriage, children, heartbreak, and the quiet passage of time, Otto is there. Watching. Understanding. Remembering.

But the most extraordinary gifts sometimes carry consequences no one could have predicted.

Familiar is a moving and thought-provoking work of speculative fiction about unconditional love, companionship, mortality, and the difficult questions that arise when two lives become inseparable.

How much would you sacrifice to never be alone?

And can love truly be unconditional when only one of you gets to make the choice?

🎧 Listen to Familiar on Impossible Choices, a podcast featuring original short fiction by Raj Shankar.

📖 Want to read the story? Visit our website: www.threecatspress.com

If you enjoyed this episode, please follow the podcast, leave a review, and share it with a fellow reader or animal lover.

© 2026 Raj Shankar. All rights reserved. Familiar is an original copyrighted work by Raj Shankar. Unauthorized reproduction, distribution, or adaptation is prohibited.

At 10:47 p.m., Professor Sonny Steele boards a nearly empty New York City subway train. He's fifty-three, exhausted, bitter, and convinced that the best years of his life are behind him.

Then a young woman sits across from him.

She's holding a copy of a book he wrote years ago. She knows his work better than most of his students. And she has questions about time travel that even he struggles to answer.

What begins as an argument about physics becomes something neither of them is prepared for.

Before she leaves, the stranger asks him to make one promise.

Twenty years from today. Exactly.

But what if the future has already happened? And what if the one thing you desperately want to change is the very thing that was always meant to be?

Twenty Years From Today is an original science-fiction short story by Raj Shankar, exploring time travel, regret, family, and the extraordinary power of a single conversation.

Every story ends with an impossible choice. What would you choose?

🎧 Listen now on Impossible Choices, a podcast featuring original short fiction by Raj Shankar.

📖 Want to read the story? Visit our website for the written version: www.threecatspress.com

If you enjoyed this episode, follow Impossible Choices, leave a review, and share it with someone who loves thought-provoking fiction.

© 2026 Raj Shankar. All rights reserved. This story is an original copyrighted work by Raj Shankar. Unauthorized reproduction, distribution, or adaptation is prohibited.

Sentence | What If Justice Made You Feel Every Hurt? | Impossible Choices Ep. 7

What if justice could make someone feel exactly what they made another person feel?

In a world where punishment means experiencing the suffering you inflicted, the procedure is called the Return. Rosie has administered it more than a thousand times. The process is precise. The Department trusts the numbers. No one believes the machine can be wrong.

Then a routine domestic assault case delivers a result no one is prepared for.

Sentence is an original work of speculative fiction and psychological suspense about trauma, institutional certainty, and the difference between punishment and justice.

THE IMPOSSIBLE CHOICE: If you could make someone experience every moment of the suffering they caused, but the punishment might destroy their ability to understand it, would you still do it?

Read more original fiction: https://www.threecatspress.com

Follow Impossible Choices: Short Stories by Raj Shankar for original science fiction, psychological suspense, and stories about ordinary people facing impossible choices.

Content note: Domestic violence, coercive control, and psychological trauma. Violence is discussed but not depicted graphically.

© 2026 Raj Shankar. All rights reserved. “Sentence” is an original copyrighted work. Unauthorized reproduction, distribution, adaptation, or recording requires written permission from the copyright holder.