Category: Horror

All Stories, Horror, Short Fiction

By The Colour of Our Coat Shall You Know Us By J.S. Watts

literallystories2014

Where to begin? ‘Where’ being the significant word.

Some places seem to have been created to be a home for the disconcerting and unknowable. Dartmoor was the natural petri dish for The Hound of the Baskervilles. It is so… elemental. The dirty, dark and narrow alleys of Victorian London’s East End spawned Brother Jack, whoever he was, or might still be. But other places are so mundane you can’t imagine anything beyond the norm happening there.

Continue reading “By The Colour of Our Coat Shall You Know Us By J.S. Watts” →
All Stories, Horror

Solaritude by Robert Reece

literallystories2014

Purification through fire. This was the last thought in a long, meditative contemplation of methods to ease the pain.  Ideas burned consuming. Golden aureole ablaze, she would be light cutting through prosaic night stupor.  Simple, pure. A luminous non-entity. She remembered the photo her father took of her on her 7th birthday, the candlelight reflecting in her mossy eyes. He said they looked like copper pennies. He left 3 weeks later. Why didn’t he follow that melancholy flame back home like a meager lighthouse? Maybe she was supposed to trudge after him into the vacant nightness instead.

Continue reading “Solaritude by Robert Reece” →
All Stories, Historical, Horror

Ends by Matthew Roy Davey

literallystories2014

The cart creaks, pitches and yaws. A whip cracks up ahead. Four women sit on the floorboards, grey uniforms muddied. Sitting is not an act of mercy, they cannot stand without falling, their hands bound behind their backs. Ruth glances at the other women, but they are all within themselves, eyes unfocused. They have spent many hours together: on duty, in the mess, in the barracks, have shared laughter, secrets, tears. Now they are bloodied, bruised.

Continue reading “Ends by Matthew Roy Davey” →
All Stories, Horror

Hades Lounge by Jacob Otira    

literallystories2014

                                                

Part I:

HELLS KITCHEN

An arachnid-type beast roasts portions of sin-marinated corpses from inside a furnace in hell. Its tentacles slither along the hallways that connect Hell’s kitchen to the abyss, while holding onto non-silver platters filled with well-done souls for beings of the underworld to feast on.

As a passerby behemoth helps itself to a portion of sin-glazed appetizers, an ascetic’s essence is delivered as an array of gourmet selections to the holiest orders in Hades’ lounge. The martyr’s soul bears too much essence for Beelzebub and his priests, and so most of it is served to visiting heathens from heaven.

It’s here in Hades’ lounge where all energies made manifest by man’s thought, word, and emotion are fed to the holiest of deities after death—to again manifest life through rebirth.

Continue reading “Hades Lounge by Jacob Otira    “ →
All Stories, Horror

Aeris by Zachary Schwartz

literallystories2014

They broke through the jungle canopy at midmorning, damp with sweat and soft declarations of wonder. The jungle made everything softer. The air, the light. Even thoughts, if left untethered long enough. The air was thick with that sweet, vegetal stillness that only comes miles from roads, wires, and clocks. Every breath tasted green.

Continue reading “Aeris by Zachary Schwartz” →
All Stories, Horror

Beetles by Brandon McWeeney

literallystories2014

The beetles live in the stump out back, festering beneath the rotting remnants of an old dule tree. I call them, and they rise—the black coil of death—thousands of them climbing up, up, up and over each other, hissing and clicking, putting her together like sentient fog. Black fog. Only sometimes, especially when they’re hungry, they don’t quite get her shape right; I appreciate their efforts and reward them dearly, but when they get her wrong, I want to scream.

Continue reading “Beetles by Brandon McWeeney” →
All Stories, Horror

The Breather by Rebecca Petty

literallystories2014

Evelyn stared out the kitchen window willing herself to ignore the breathing coming from the living room.  It was a wet labored breathing. She wiped the last dish and set it in the rack. Another breath was pulled from the lungs in the other room.

Continue reading “The Breather by Rebecca Petty” →
All Stories, General Fiction, Horror

Where the Dead Live by Jennifer Maloney

literallystories2014

My mother lives in the next town over, but she’s dead. My dead father lives with her.

Their house is small, and silent because it’s empty. The dead are quiet for the most part, although sometimes there is a sound like weeping in the bedroom and once the bathroom door slammed so hard it cracked and then there was a hole in it big enough to put your foot through, but it’s the just the wind, murmurs my mother, the same wind that skirls along her teeth, hissing through the dark cavern of her yawning jaw, a wind that bobbles my father’s empty skull and makes it nod along in agreement.

Continue reading “Where the Dead Live by Jennifer Maloney” →
All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller, Horror

After Lloyd by Christopher J. Ananias

literallystories2014

Disturbing content – see tags at the bottom of the page.

Gil doesn’t talk, just sits there drawing demons. Mr. Ny clapped his erasers together and called Gil to the blackboard for one of his impossible Geometry theorems. Gil snatched up the chalk, like a pissed-off Picasso, and made quick hard chalk-chalk marks, and it was solved. The last bell rang and the mad dash.

Continue reading “After Lloyd by Christopher J. Ananias” →
All Stories, christmas hellweek, Horror

Welcome to Christmas Hellworld: Hellweek Day One

literallystories2014

Still feeling a bit too gooey? Still have the urge to hug people? Don’t worry – we’re here for you. Literally Stories – Christmas Hellweek. Stories to counteract all that goodwill: Enjoy

An Introduction from David

ULTRA-BELFAST

If you’re the black sheep then any family event, gathering or occasion can feel like Ultra-Belfast.  There’s a purgatorial feel to your day when you’re plucked from your home comforts and trappings and shipped back to a time and place when your independence and autonomy was restricted.  I vaguely remember committing the first few sentences to the white page.  I’d like to say it was during the Christmas before it was published here, that would be remarkably apt but it would also be horse piss.  It almost certainly came after one of those events though. One where I looked around a table and saw variations of the same face looking back at me.  A little older, a little worn down.  The light behind their eyes, a little dimmer than it had been the previous year, or the one before that.

For anyone who doesn’t buy into it, the Northern Irish summer and in particular the 12th of July, is the ultimate purgatorial state.  Twenty-first century living grinds to a halt so a minority of over intoxicated and under informed can lay claim to everything within their eyeline in the name of tradition.  Loyal servants of the crown celebrating the victory of a Dutch King over the English Monarch.  Celebrating the victory of a protestant king over a catholic king.  Celebrating the victory of a protestant king, who led a largely catholic army, financed by the vatican.  Trying to explain it could turn you mad.

The truth of the matter is, to be Northern Irish is to live in a permanent state of purgatory.  Irish by geography, British by rule, your individual identity, independence and autonomy permanently in flux and controlled by calendar and tradition.  I’m ten years older than the writer of this story.  If I had to try, I don’t know if I could write it now, but I still relate to it because I’m still sitting at that card table waiting to go all-in.

Welcome to Ultra-Belfast…

Ultra-Belfast by Dave Louden – Adult Content

Image: Scary Christmas Baubles from www.freepik.com n.b. This is an AI generated image.