Posts Tagged ‘Horror’

by Domenico Pisanti

He walked into the restaurant, a man in his early fifties; someone who turned heads and for a brief moment reminded all who glanced in his direction of a happier time in their lives. Then it was business as usual. A waiter was already making his way towards the man, who was looking around as though trying to find someone..

From Issue 15 (Nov 2011)
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by Lynne Jamneck

I am beginning to grasp an understanding of the mystery that has always surrounded my father. Mother never talked about his work. As children we had asked but never received satisfying answers. Like myself, he had been a student of archeology and anthropology; unlike his daughter, the rules and regulations of the university could not keep him bound.

From Issue 15 (Nov 2011)
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by Michael Hodges

I eat words. I don’t know why. I hang in the corners of this old and meticulous house by unseen hooks or latches. The words come to me from the mouths of the family and their visitors. The words of the adults come out grey, brown and black; the words of the young rise to me in reds, greens and blues. I swallow them all, and each time I do, something inside me grows. I know not what it is, only that I receive energy from this action.

From Issue 14 (Oct 2011)
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by Damien Filer

“What is this pain down in my seed?” Herman was prone to wonder, of a day. He would fidget and shift, so restless there at the dinner table, grease beading up on his big ole forehead under the shine of the fluorescent light.
“Hush up,” Mama would tell him, then give him a shot with those laser eyes.
Still he’d fidget something awful, turning redder than red, he would. But Herman wouldn’t say another word about that terrible pain down there in his seed, least not ‘til next night’s dinner.

From Issue 13 (Sept 2011)
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by Scott Brendel

I was in such a rush to bury her, I forgot about the ring.
By the time I remembered, she’d been in the ground over two weeks, out behind the barn beside the old oak tree, in a hole I’d dug with a few swipes of the backhoe’s bucket. Nothing fancy, nothing ornate--just a deep hole with her at the bottom. The practical kind of thing an old farm widow would appreciate.
But I had forgotten the ring, an oversight that would come back to haunt me.

From Issue 13 (Sept 2011)
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by Paul Marlowe

London! Paragon of cities. How many wonders there are, in its villas, its marketplaces, in its streets and tunnels. London – this uncommon weal of fateful miracles, and of horrors that I know only too well. Cheek by jowl a multitude lie, a thousand-thousand strange tales between them, unknown but for the chance mis-step into an unfamiliar alleyway – the passing glimpse along a half-lit, fog-swathed street. So has it always been in the great cities that draw in every kind of creature. Those who toil; those who live upon them. The builders, the wreckers. Town- and country-men. The eager, the wicked, the mad; and not from this isle alone, but from all the ends of the world. Indeed, not only from this… but now, let me see. How to begin.

From Issue 13 (Sept 2011)
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by Jason Kahn

“…‘Tis a perilous time we live in, good people, as we are beset on all sides by the agents of darkness,” boomed the orator in deep, sonorous tones. Despite the stifling air, an icy chill prickled up Mary’s spine. This voice was familiar too, though its owner’s identity eluded her. She moved closer, attempting to see.
“Just a fortnight ago in Chester County, a homestead of God-fearin’ Christians all under one roof slept sound in their beds, when a tribe of godless red savages swooped down in the black of night. The men folk were slaughtered where they lay, and the women and children were taken, no doubt to sate the savages’ evil appetites.”
Many of the congregants shouted and yelled in anger. Mary could see the minister’s form now: his black robe, a mane of silvery hair. She moved closer.

From Issue 13 (Sept 2011)
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by M. Scott Carter

Old man Withers was the first to die.
A mean, ornery bastard with a craggy, rough face and the temper of blind sewer rat, the old man hadn’t lived in Bayside very long - two, maybe three years.
The boys at the VFW hall had warned him about Bayside. They’d told him the stories, and the legends, but old man Withers didn’t care. He was the type of crank who’d sue a ten-year-old kid for laughing. He spent his days spying on his neighbors, complaining and making life miserable for the rest of the residents of Bayside.

Cover Art by Vincent Sammy 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.

Cover Art by Vincent Sammy 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.

Cover Art by Vincent Sammy From Issue 12 (August 2011)
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