After the universe had expanded for eons and after the birth and death of uncountable galaxies, the last star burned dim. A creature stirred in this black void of space at the end of time, curling tightly around the star–taking the last vestiges of energy as its own.
Continue reading “A Hunger in the Depth by Patrick O’Connor”
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I am a Pen Name, which means (unlike it is for “real” writers) there are little cracks in my mind that lead to places where strangely imagined circumstances are reality. Within one such crack turns a world exactly like our own except for one significant difference: On “Other Earth” the post WWII nuclear testing conducted by the US military out in the American southwest desert did result in the creation of the gigantic ants, mammoth scorpions, huge tarantulas, scores of Godzilla-sized lizards and a smattering of profoundly effed-up human beings that we see only in 1950’s science fiction films. Among the traits these creatures have in common (besides experiencing the enlarging effects of extreme radiation) are an immunity to conventional weapons and insatiable appetites for murder and destruction.
Continue reading “Pie Eyed Peety the PDQ Pilsner Pigeon by Leila Allison”
The night they announce the divorce, my older sister Nan takes me for ice cream. I’m fourteen, she’s seventeen.
Nan insists I get two scoops. Mint-chocolate chip.
Nan has cookies-and-cream.
“Everything should be a little sweeter,” she says.
“I guess,” I say, hunched over the bowl. “You wonder what would happen if things were too sweet, right?”
Nan smiles, a smile as crumpled as a dollar bill. She has circles under her hazel eyes and I want to tell her something positive. I don’t know what.
Continue reading “More Ice Cream by Yash Seyedbagheri”
Leila rang the discovery bell outside the dungeon door and we were delighted to find this piece on the step. Maybe having a rerun will encourage Nik to submit another piece, it’s been too long a wait:
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – The Adamant Carbonisation of Henry Spiller by Nik Eveleigh”
My Uncle Andy always said that even as a boy his cock touched the floor. That was a possibility. He is in a few medical books as having had the worse case of rickets ever documented.
Continue reading “Uncle Andy by Hugh Cron – Warning Adult Content”
Sure, it was funny to everyone and their brother-in-law, but I had to absorb the humiliation of waking up on the courthouse steps without pants on, surrounded by townspeople. Bill came. I asked if he wanted to lock me up for this, but he ruled it unintentional. He shouted that the looky-loos should go on about their business. Bill is a pretty good guy for a cop.
Continue reading “The Assistant Town Drunk: Zero to Hero in Seconds by Todd Mercer”
The morning sun assaulted every nerve ending in my shattered brain and that same vicious sun illuminated the headline that hovered before my bleary eyes: Bigfoot’s Miraculous Aqua-Baby Discovered. I tried to focus, then I tried to blink it all away. Miserable failure was the result on both counts. I did not conjure clarity, nor did the strange bedroom disappear. I was forced to ask myself that most critical question. Where the fuck was I?
Continue reading “When the Tabloids Ate My Best Friend by Marco Etheridge”
The body was still in the house when we got there. Graciela saw it first and let out a sharp, “Dios mio!” She was the most senior local employee at the Consulate and had seen Americans in trouble before, but none as distressed as George McMahon. He was lying on a thin mattress on the concrete floor of his living room. A machete was planted in his abdomen, just below the breastbone. It had been put there by his girlfriend, according to the police, but they also said he was at the morgue.
Continue reading “Death Misspelled by David Robinson”
It was the moment of pure silence before we would set the forest on its ear with the roar of our chain saws. The deep woods that morning glistened with long tracts of snowy and scary silence, now and then broken by the creaking of a frozen limb swearing it would fall to earth. At best that fall would be a minor distortion, a minor distraction. Yet again, that creak sounded like a baby in the night, or a wailing or a keening, or, at an odder moment, like a voice given to what has no voice. At attention we stood, my friend Eddie LeBlanc and I, some twenty yards apart, some huge oaks apart, their ugly and monstrous arms clawing at early daylight.
Continue reading “It’s All in the Maul by Tom Sheehan”
Leila was seen on the battlements at midnight. We tried to tempt her down for food but no – Instead she handed over this piece by a quirky and interesting author who turns out fascinating little slice of life stories. This is what she said:
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – What Would Breslin Have Thought by Adam Kluger”
