Category: Horror

All Stories, Horror, Science Fiction

Pandemic By Roger Ley

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I realised something unusual had happened as soon as I entered the lab: dead cotton rats littered the floors of many of the cages. I hadn’t expected fatalities so early. The team had only given them the flu virus the day before and we thought it would be a few days before they developed symptoms. The powers that be had told us the virus came from South East Asia but that could mean a lot of things. It might be a natural mutation, or it might be of Chinese Government manufacture. It made little difference to us, our job was to assess it not trace it, and epidemiologists use cotton rats because they’re a good model for studying human influenza.

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All Stories, Horror

Bone Girl and The Snake — An Infected Love Story by David Henson

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I come in and find Evie, wearing only a thong, standing on the kitchen table, bowing. I lean my guitar against the wall and admire my girl. I never get tired of her skeleton. The tat stretches from her forehead to the tips of her toes. Front, back and sides. She’s a masterpiece although sometimes I wish the skull didn’t hide her beautiful face.

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All Stories, Fantasy, Horror, Short Fiction

Apartmeet by Kilmeny MacMichael

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The bride brought only a small bundle from home. Wrapped in a deep blue silk, she carried medicines and a small bone whistle. The bride was from a family of witches fallen from grace in a time of altered belief. Her home was an island dripping warm green forest into a wide magic river.

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All Stories, Horror

The Salvatore Grant by Ran Walker

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The walk to Salvatore’s was a little over six miles across town, and Eddie Brown had decided to wear his only suit and a pair of pleather cap-toed Oxfords to the interview. His mother had told him that people didn’t get a second chance to make a first impression, and he badly needed what Salvatore’s had to offer.

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All Stories, Horror

The World in My Eyes by L’Erin Ogle

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The worms are hook shaped, tiny translucent segments with black antennas and bulbous brown eyes, specks floating.

I can see them in the corner of my eyes, wiggling and multiplying.

They have to come out.

The doctor thinks I’m crazy.  I tell him about the worms squirming away in my eye, swimming in my tear ducts.  I see them, whether my eyes are open or closed.  I feel them, the same way I could feel a bug in my ear, a spider in my mouth.  The relentless whisper of antenna against my eyelid makes it twitch nonstop.

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All Stories, Horror

Mandragora by Andrew Johnston

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“Someone really lives here? Geez. Always thought the place was abandoned.”

Detective Kolar undid her seat belt and opened the door to the cruiser. “Even in this state, it’s still a multi-million-dollar home. I’m sure he can’t sell it, plus you know how stubborn these old guys can get.”

“I guess,” said Detective Slaski. “Still, you’d think he’d put some of that website money into renovations. It’s…I don’t know, a little creepy keeping it like this.”

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All Stories, Horror, Short Fiction

Waiting by Hayley Sleigh

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‘We were fair game 
but we have kept out of the cesspool.
We are strong.
We are the good ones.
Do not discover us
for we lie together all in green
like pond weeds.
Hold me, my young dear, hold me.’

Anne Sexton, Rapunzel

The sound at the end of the phone was a metallic female voice, not her mother’s. “I’m sorry.” Pause. Her mum’s voice: “ANGELA.” Pause, then the robot woman again.

“… cannot come to the phone right now. Please leave a message after the tone.”

“Mum, I don’t want you to worry, but please call me back if you can. I just wanted to tell you… I forgive you.”

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All Stories, General Fiction, Horror

Under the Same Sun by Astrid Ann Larsen

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Geneviève Gueron was as French as one could be. And while her peers were riding up and down the waves of hormonal instability, lamenting one second, rejoicing the next, she was simply and unequivocally in love with her life on the French Riviera. It had taken her some time to get used to the fierceness of the sunrays of the South, as the lack of obscuring buildings or tufts of sky made them bounce right off her white skin which would respond instantly with sizzling red spots. And with each day that passed, the deep yearning for her favourite dusty bookstores in Paris gave way to the undisputable dogmatic truth proclaimed by her parents, who had convinced themselves their new hometown would be kinder to them.

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