Tag: sacrifice

All Stories, Fantasy

Kiri by Sarah Hozumi

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Oslac toiled his way through the woods beyond his home, stopping to allow his daughter to catch up to him but not daring to look at her. His ears faithfully absorbed the beautiful sounds of his daughter humming to herself while picking her way among the roots of the trees, and his heart began to splinter. They had been walking for half a day now, their pace waylaid by Kiri’s wandering attention. He heard her attempt to whistle at a bird in a low branch nearby and thought about just turning home.

Still, the thing had to be done.

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All Stories, Fantasy

Sin Eater by Tarri Driver

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I once was a young woman who, for some years, didn’t eat animals in any shape or form. I felt irresponsible and cruel eating them. That’s not the whole story, but that’s the relevant truth. I was troubled knowing that there were animals living in suffering on gridded farms overflowing with flies and shit as far as the eye could see. I didn’t want to ingest all of that pain, brutality and filth. That was too much for me to eat.

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All Stories, Horror

To Martin’s Farm by Travis Flatt

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Hell is a frozen lake.

Crashing from the far end of the house. It’s my wife, Anna, dragging the boy inside from the garage. She’s plucked him up from school on her rush home from work. They’re shouting at each other, arguing, both near tears it sounds like. I reach over and slap the bedroom door shut. On the bedside table, my phone screeches the alert siren again. Any minute now, my wife will appear at the door and tell me to get up.  The siren alert wouldn’t let me sleep, so while she was gone, I hopped up and packed–or, hit, that is, the things I need to keep here, be sure she doesn’t take: a kitchen knife and an extension cord. Anna flings open the bedroom door;  the knob spikes sharply against the wall. “Lee, get up. We have to get ready.”

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All Stories, General Fiction

Pompeii by Paul Kimm

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Landing in Naples the heat from the tarmac met her face as they left the small plane. He was already a few steps ahead, keen to get through passport control and get a taxi to the hotel in Sorrento. They’d argued for days about whether to spend the night in Sorrento or Naples before visiting the ruins the next day. A sumptuous hotel, teeming with charm, only a thirty-minute taxi drive from the airport, and just ninety minutes to Pompeii had been her choice. His persistence had won for Sorrento, meaning a taxi was too expensive and a two-hour bus journey lay ahead. Sure, the hotel in Sorrento wasn’t as fancy, was further away from the airport, but definitely cheaper and being only half an hour from Pompeii meant they could do the full seven-hour itinerary. Since first opening that hefty, brown book of his dad’s, Histories and Mysteries, that he used to lift with both hands. he’d wanted to see Pompeii in person.

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All Stories, General Fiction

It’s Not About Her by Jaydan Salzke

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Enter. Order. Eat. Pay. Leave.

The whole operation is streamlined; a seamless experience for staff and customer. The rules are clear and seldom broken: there’s to be no trespassing. People are here to nibble at sandwiches and sip coffee, not to have a stranger in an apron pry into their personal lives. So you serve them and leave it at that. That’s just the way it’s done.

…until it isn’t.

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All Stories, Fantasy

The Devil You Don’t Know by David Henson

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The chimes sound. “I’ll get it,” Michael Robeson says to his wife, Denise. “Hospice must’ve forgotten something.” He opens the door and finds a man about shoulder-height to himself. The fellow is wearing a black suit, white shirt, and red bowtie.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Silent Retrieval by Tom Sheehan

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The day had a head start on young Liam Craddock, he could feel it, and all that it promised. Across the years, on the slimmest sheet of air, piggybacking a whole man’s aura on that fleet thinness, he caught the sense of tobacco chaw or toby, mule leather’s hot field abrasion, gunpowder’s trenchant residue, men at confusion. If it wasn’t a battlefield in essence, or scarred battle ranks, he did not know what else it could be. And it carried the burning embers of memory.

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All Stories, Horror, Short Fiction

Ugly by L’Erin Ogle

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The muses are beautiful, but dangerous.

They are kept in silk lined stalls.

They have a very short life expectancy.  Two days from the time the first stitch is placed, because without food and water the skin dries up and shrivels, hanging too loose on the body to properly ink.

They are all silent, in honor of the very first mute muse, the first muse to become a book.  The thing is, no one even remembers the poems or title.  They only know the legend of the mute muse.

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