Fiction
by M. Scott Carter
Old man Withers was the first to die. |
 From Issue 12 (August 2011) |
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by Brian Kirk
From a distance came the woeful howling of a neighbor’s neglected dog, disrupting the unusually soundless night. The evenings were normally so alive with the incessant buzzing and chirping of restless insects. He stopped, and simply listened, to nothing. Not a rustle of wind. Not a scuttle of bug. Just the dog in the distance, desperately pleading for attention. |
From Issue 12 (August 2011) |
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by Glen Damien Campbell
Thomas Delaney was a hack writer. He knew it and was admirably unashamed of it. The movies he penned and directed were B-grade schlock horror, the type of movies that had desensitised him as a child, the type of movies he loved; cliché ridden, lascivious and cheap. Tom’s own credits in the field included the titles Die Die Dracula, I Was a Teenage Mummy and The Blood of the Virgin, creature features abounding with lusty vampiric femme fatales, their heaving bosoms bound up in gauze nightgowns, with London’s Beckenham Place Park moonlighting as the Carpathian forests. |
From Issue 12 (August 2011) |
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Posted in Fiction | 
Tags: Fiction, Glen Damien Campbell, Horror, Issue 12, Pierre Smit | 
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by Ivor W. Hartmann
John James Rote was a forgettable, quiet man. Later, when people had occasion to talk about him, at the very least they could all agree on that. He was the kind of man that was never, affectionately or otherwise, nicknamed. As a schoolchild, he was the one they always put in the outfield, or on the far boundary. There he would idle away the game by staring at passing clouds, or watching the progress of a nearby ants’ nest. His grades were never bad but never great either.. |
From Issue 12 (August 2011) |
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by Paul Marlowe
“May cause disorientation and transient emotional anomalies… do not use in combination with other nanopharmaceuticals… consult a physician before use…. Harmless, was that what she called this stuff?” McHaffey sighed and tilted back his head. He hated putting things into his eyes, but there didn’t seem to be any choice. |
 From Issue 11 (July
2011) |
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by Michael John Grist
The Sky Painter lived on the mountain and painted the sky. He painted it blue for blue skies, and white and grey for clouds. At night he painted it black, with white for all the stars. When the sun rose he dashed its arcing yellow lines across the heavens, and as it sank he brushed it orange and gold over the horizon. |
From Issue 11 (July
2011) |
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Posted in Fiction | Tags: Dark Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Issue 11, Michael John Grist | 2 Comments »
by Michael Bailey
She had saved his eyes for last. A glimpse of their emptiness before inverting the skin, filling his insides, and stitching together the open gap between his legs. As if confused about why Sally insisted on poking a needle through his hollow head, the incomplete stuffed bear twisted in her hands. Aren’t you finished with me yet? Sunlight from the morning sky beamed through the blinds in parallel rays; dancing life reflected on its button eyes. |
From Issue 11 (July
2011) |
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by Abi Godsell
The doctor is small and grey-haired. He talks rapidly and jumps between subjects. It's hard to believe that this abrupt little man headed up the team that implanted the world's most advanced artificial intelligence into the body of a brain-dead teenager. My editor is going to have a field day. "It worked out well though. Her parents had given up, they were looking for a reason to pull the plug. Donating the body to science must have seemed easier.". |
From Issue 11 (July 2011) |
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Posted in Fiction, Podcasts | Tags: Abi Godsell, Fiction, Issue 11, Joe Vaz, Mark Sykes, SF, Vincent Sammy | 2 Comments »
By Ace Cornelius
He looked away at the cliff. The radiation from the cliffs was starting to warm the back of my neck, so I turned to them, and looked for the way I came down, an instinctive look to find the path down, to escape if necessary. There was no danger here, but I felt a significant threat, maybe some creature might lurch out of the sea. I took a step back. “These cliffs are almost high enough to be impressive,” Raiken spoke without smiling, and this was ominous. “I do like that point. I feel that something could gather speed on the flat table top.” This statement seemed to cancel out his earlier concern, and he smiled again, that broad smile. Then he grew serious again. “The goats could gallop there.” He turned again and smiled. It was the smile that had endeared him to his fellow boys and teachers all those years ago. The shock of black hair was gone. Mostly grey, not much of it left. But the smile was still there and it still seemed to work. “Look now,” he said his smile widening to wonderment. |
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Posted in Fiction | Tags: Ace Cornelius, Fiction, Hendrik Gericke, Horror, SW Issue 10 | 2 Comments »
by William Meikle and Graeme Hurry
Lucy had decided to tell me how Dad died. The train was full, so full that although we were travelling first class, we were sharing the compartment with a horde of others - students, squaddies and oilmen, all of them drunk, half drunk or intending to get that way. “Nobody knows how it happened,” she said. She leaned over the table towards me. “There was a board meeting - dad was submitting proposals for a wholesale modernisation of the farm.” I was surprised to see tears in my sister’s eyes. |
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Posted in Fiction | Tags: Fiction, Graeme Hurry, Horror, Joe Doe, SW Issue 10, William Meikle | Comments Closed