Tag: Horror

All Stories, Fantasy, Horror, Short Fiction

The Landovers by Frederick K Foote

literallystories2014

I’m Lloyd Landover (aka Low), and this is the first day of high school for my twin sister Linda (aka Falling Down Girl) and me.

Our Mom is Lidia Landover, and she works with numbers for the federal government. She’s not a mathematician, statistician, physicist, astronomer, actuary, or accountant.

Mom doesn’t solve math problems. She doesn’t create theories based on math. She plays very intently with every level of math, and somewhere in the results are stuff the government really wants. She calls her work “math doodling.” 

Continue reading “The Landovers by Frederick K Foote” →
All Stories, Fantasy

Penny Catch by Marco Etheridge

literallystories2014

A moment before the horror begins.

Imagine two ruthless creatures, each a child’s worst—and often last—nightmare. The first fiend
is a shape-shifting monster. He terrorizes and devours children in the guise of Pennywise, an evil clown. Pennywise gained public attention in a book by a famous American author. The book is purported to be fiction, but this was a ruse to hide the author’s desperate fear of the main character, Pennywise. Alas, the child-eating clown is all too real.

Our second nightmare is the officially sanctioned kidnapper and imprisoner of children, the notorious Child Catcher. This greasy villain from the land of Vulgaria came to notoriety in the documentary film Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang.

An ocean separates these two terrors, and we must be grateful for this small blessing. For if these monsters should ever meet… No! It is too horrible to contemplate! 

Continue reading “Penny Catch by Marco Etheridge” →
All Stories, Fantasy

The Recurring Donor: It Started with a Kidney by Jack Powers

literallystories2014

I mean, crazy, right? My kidney in America’s greatest president? The only one to care about the little guy? And the one who still might, if she comes out of her coma, lead us out of the Killer Vaccine Apocalypse.

Continue reading “The Recurring Donor: It Started with a Kidney by Jack Powers” →
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, General Fiction

Once Bitten by Renee Coloman

literallystories2014

I don’t know why she says what she says but I know she’s crazy and that’s why she keeps a locked chain across the refrigerator door. I pick the lock, same trick every morning. Grab butter. Eggs. Spinach. Tomatoes. Whip up the ingredients. Fry the oozing mess in a pan. Slap the omelet on a plastic plate. The kind of dish that won’t shatter when Mother slams it against the kitchen floor, when her blurred eyes widen at the biting rats that make her panic and scream and clamp down tighter to save the pieces of her scattered life.

Continue reading “Once Bitten by Renee Coloman” →
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, Fantasy

The Bone Reader of Tucson by Dana Wall

literallystories2014

The bones spoke to Angelina the way other women heard gossip over garden fences. Snake vertebrae whispered of rain coming from the east. Coyote teeth predicted claim jumpers and cattle thieves. But it was the human bones that spoke loudest, and those she kept hidden beneath her floorboards, wrapped in red silk stolen from a dead Chinese merchant’s shop. Each bundle reminded her of her own lost child, the daughter whose bones she’d never found to read.

Continue reading “The Bone Reader of Tucson by Dana Wall” →
All Stories, General Fiction

A Day Like Any Other by Danielle Rhodes

literallystories2014

Today will be like any other day. You’ll softly snooze the alarm clock as it sounds, just over an hour before your train pulls into the station. You will feel the groggy effects of sleeping fitfully, as has become the norm. Pressing snooze, you tell yourself you’ll get up on the first alarm tomorrow, already knowing you won’t.

Continue reading “A Day Like Any Other by Danielle Rhodes” →