Horror Stories of 1,000 Words or Less
For the month of July, 2025, these are the stories that entertain us most.
* The Ouija Board by Derek McMillian
* The Woodshop by Kelleigh Cram
* The Silken Shawl by Sarah Das Gupta
* Marie Rose Blossoms by Maximilliano Guzman
* Juan Pedro by LaVern McCarthy
* All the Dead Beasts by JS Apsley
* A Total Romantic by Michael Horton
* It's Only an Animatronic by Carson Fredriksen
* You Carry it With You by Millie Sullivan
* A Fresh Start by Barb DeMoney
* Soup by Vishaal Pathak
* Splitting Image by Adam Little
* Insides, Outsides by Taylor Ward
* When Did We Get a Cat? by Tom Ramey
* The Yellow Room by Jason L Benskin
* Beware When Dreams Come True by Marc Audet
* Tangled by Jennifer Weigel
The Ouija Board by Derek McMillian
You could buy Ouija Boards in toy shops. Nobody took them seriously, of course, until they did.
Chris bought it. How he managed that, given that he never had the money for his rent, was the first mystery, but it was not the last.
We all sat down, Chris, Pete, Nick, and I. Chris had some funny cigarettes, which we all shared. The main effect was that everybody found everything hilariously amusing. Even my jokes were funny.
That was how it started anyway. It didn't stay that way.
We started with rather silly questions.
"Is there anybody there?"
"No."
"Oh, come on, is there anybody there?"
"What do yo think?"
"Don't they teach spelling in the spirit world?"
"Only the black magik kind."
And then it spelled out, "I am Tiberius."
We all took our hands off the planchette.
This was a useless gesture because one by one, we all put them back.
"Who are you?" Just got us the reply, "I am Tiberius."
Then the Ouija Board started telling us about ourselves.
"Chris is still stealing from shops. The police will get him one day but he just doesnt care." Tiberius did not use punctuation.
"Pete walked out on his pregnant girlfriend."
He also said something so embarrassing about Nick that I can't repeat it, and never you mind what he said about me.
"One of you will die."
By this time, we had had enough and went to bed. Not to sleep, well, not immediately anyhow. I was disturbed by a dream.
Chris, Pete, and I all went to work by tube, and we were all on the Balham station platform that morning. Nick usually went to work later. That day, I was very nervous.
I met Pete for coffee.
"I had a dream last night. I was on the platform at Balham, and I pushed Chris under the train. I made it look like an accident. I still can't understand why I did it."
"I can," Pete responded.
I looked at him.
"You see, I had the same kind of dream. I know exactly what went through my mind. One of us would die, and I was making sure it was not me."
"You were a friend of Chris."
"We both were, but obviously not as much as we thought. Your subconscious speaks to you in dreams."
The three of us met up at the end of the day. The train to Balham was cancelled. We had to take the overground.
We purchased several cans of beer for the journey. When we got home, the police were there.
"I am afraid I have some bad news."
That got our attention.
"Did you know Nicholas Fairbairns well?"
We nodded.
"I am sorry to tell you he had a fatal accident. He fell under the train at Balham."
"So that's why the trains were cancelled," said Pete.
We burnt the Ouija Board on a bonfire. Tiberius can talk to somebody else.
Derek McMillan is a writer in Durrington in the UK. His editor is his wife, Angela. He has written for print and online publications in the UK, USA, Australia and Canada. His latest book is the audio-book "Murder from Beyond the Grave" which is available on eBay.
The Woodshop by Kelleigh Cram
If I built the horses as gifts for my children, how can they surround me like this? Hundreds of them, made over the years, lining the shelves of my shop.
I carved them by hand, each one unique from the others. Manes made of yarn, flat backs to sit on, wooden wheels designed to move slowly enough to allow for adult intervention.
Today, I will put the final touches on my latest creation, a female, discernible by the lashes painted above her eyes. Hannah would have loved her when she was little.
“Hows, hows,” she would call to me, Rs still elusive to her growing vocabulary. She’d ride for hours, circling the garage floor with all the authority of a ranch hand surveying his cattle.
Using a fine-tipped brush, I add the finishing touches to the horse’s face, making the lines on its snout a little thicker to imitate lipstick. Sexist, Hannah would say, but it gives them an animated quality.
Or not. When I look at the finished product, she stares back with a stern expression. Her mouth is too rigid, missing the smile that has become the trademark of my work. I look at the others to compare, but they are also frowning.
No, that can’t be right. That’s not how I made them.
“That’s not how I made you,” I say.
Some look angry, some sad, but they are all staring, googly eyes that pierce into my soul.
God, no wonder Hannah told me to quit making them for her own children. They’re terrifying.
I hear a pop, like an over-pressurized soda bottle losing its cap. One of the eyes lies on the floor at my feet. The glue must not have dried properly. I go to reattach it to her face when I hear the sound again—pop. I scan the room, trying to find the source. It happens again and again.
Pop. Pop, pop, pop.
Eyes rain down from the shelves above my head. Plastic flies through the air, filling the room like an infestation of insects. When it stops, everything goes quiet, just me and the now blind horses.
“Hello?” I call out, hoping someone is in here with me, playing some kind of joke. There is movement behind me, and I jump, turning to face the intruder.
One of the horses has come down from the shelf. I reach forward to put him back in his rightful place, but the wheels start to turn, sliding him away from me. I walk faster, needing to catch him, needing to prove to myself that toys don’t move on their own, and I am the one in control.
“I made you,” I say as the horse gets farther away. He backs right up against the wall, and I grab the handle sticking out of his cheek. Something taps my ankle.
His sister, ramming her head into my calf. They are all on the floor now, making their way towards me, not hindered by lack of sight. It dawns on me that they never needed the eyes; those were just decorations for our benefit. Shedding them was their way of mocking my short-sighted personification.
They are so close now, a mob, building in numbers to force me against the wall. I step back, tripping over the one behind me as he drives under my foot.
A crack reverberates around my skull as the back of my head hits concrete. I feel them, crawling, wheels pressing into my body. As they pile on, I grow weak, struggling to breathe under the weight on my chest.
Black spots dance on the ceiling over my head. I want to accept this, let go, but then I think of Hannah. She will find my corpse, crushed by the things that brought her so much joy as a child. Something like that would traumatize a person. No, I cannot let that happen. I must fight back.
Reaching my arm over my head, I yank the rope of one of their manes and swing. There is a crack, and the others scatter in surprise. It gives me just enough space to stand and kick at them before they start rushing me with as much speed as those old, creaky wheels can muster.
My bat. Yes, my abandoned Rawling propped against the corner wall. I tip the worktable on its side, crouching down to push it forward, shoving the horses out of my way. The rubber feels soothing against my palm, a comforting nostalgia that feels out of place as I swing at the demon toys, my ungrateful bastard creations.
The wood cracks like bone, splinters flying around my face like blood splatter. I smash them one by one, flailing my arms like a madman until all that remains is a pile of discarded lumber.
The dryness in the air makes me cough, and I have to use the bat as a cane to get to the door. Just as I am about to be freed, I hear a rustling behind me.
When I turn, nothing has changed. No movement that I can see. They must be waiting, wanting me to leave so they can rebuild themselves and come back to finish the job. Hannah could be next, and her babies. I know what I must do.
I stand in the center of the room, dangling a lit match in my hand. Just as I am about to let go, the door flies open.
“Grandpa?” a voice calls out.
The fear on her face pricks at the corners of my eyes, prying the tears out. My body collapses, wooden shards slicing into my skin. The match lands mere inches from my face. Its flame zigzags across the floor, dancing closer in playful little winks.
Kelleigh Cram lives in Georgia. Her work has been featured in Ponder Review, Bright Flash Literary Review, and 365tomorrows.
The Silken Shawl by Sarah Das Gupta
The view from the brig Fedora was bleak, with a chill wind blowing across the Channel. As far as the eye could see, the waves were flecked with white horses. The sea was a sullen grey, reflecting the clouds scudding eastwards. On the deck, a small group huddled together for shelter and comfort by the focsle. Even the most casual of observers would have noticed that their number was slowly, but apparently, inevitably, diminishing in number. A glance at the port side would have provided the shocking reason for this grim observation. A long spar of wood, roped securely to the ship’s timbers, jutted out over the sea like an angry finger, pointing north. A sailor, blindfolded, his arms and legs bound with rope, his face bleeding and bludgeoned, struggled desperately with a tall, burly figure in a dark coat and three-cornered hat. This man half pulled, half carried him up the plank, before pushing the hapless figure into the sea. A forlorn splash broke the silence on deck, followed by a woman’s scream from among the prisoners.
The woman was the final victim. It seemed the pirate crew hung back. The woman’s screams and sobbing might well bring bad luck, a curse on the Fedora.
The frightened woman was the wife of the captain of the captured schooner, the ill-fated Hunter. As she was dragged and carried across the deck, a tall, bearded man stepped forward to retrieve her beautiful silk shawl. Even in the misty air, the iridescent colours shone bright and alluring. Her face, white with terror, turned back to her killers. She struggled desperately with the two members of the pirate crew who hauled her across the
wet deck by her long, dark hair. Screaming and sobbing, she sank beneath the cold, grey waves.
The pirate captain, on his return, had presented the delicate silk shawl to his own wife, without revealing how it had fallen into his hands. In fact, if the truth were known, this pretty, dark-haired woman knew little about her husband’s seafaring ventures. Many rumours were swirling about in the Cornish village of Hawlyn. “Where do all those gold guineas come from?” or “His wife’s the best dressed woman in the village, so she is!” and “How the hell did that French brandy get into the ‘The King’s Head ’?” But then rumours and gossip were common in that small community.
That Sunday, Marietta threw the silk shawl over her shoulders. As she admired it in the bedroom mirror, the shawl gleamed and shone in the candlelight.
On the way to church, she received so many compliments on the shawl’s beauty. In the winter sun, it fluttered and shimmered, now bright blue, now gold as the sun itself, then silver inside as she sat in the ancient, wooden pew. Heads turned, and even the vicar stumbled in his sermon!
On her return, Marietta combed her long, dark hair and glanced in the hall mirror near the front door of the pretty, thatched cottage. A terrible, heart-rending scream echoed and re-echoed as if trapped by the low, white-washed ceiling. In the mirror, another face looked back at Marietta, a woman with bedraggled, wet hair, with a blindfold over her eyes. The cheeks were bloated, discoloured, a ghastly mixture of now blue, now green, now a sickly yellow. Her eyes were bulging, staring out of the hideous face. The woman’s finger pointed at the silken shawl, which seemed to shine with a malicious gleam.
Marietta’s face was suddenly drained of colour; she collapsed, falling unconscious to the floor.
Over the winter, she slowly declined. By Christmas, she was a mere shadow of the pretty woman who had been the centre of village gossip and admiration. On New Year’s Eve, as the church bell tolled midnight, now no more than a ghost of her former self, Marietta died. She was buried in a snow-covered churchyard. The gravedigger struggled to dig her grave in the frozen soil. Only her husband and the vicar stood in the freezing east wind as the earth rattled over the coffin. Suddenly, a ragged figure appeared at the graveside. The blizzard blew and lifted the shawl, pulling it over its head. A hideous skull was revealed, green strips of moldering flesh clung to the cheekbones, empty eye sockets “looked” down into the grave. Long strands of black hair clung to the bony scalp.
With a jagged flash of lightning and a crash of thunder, a great wave crashed over the graveyard wall. Pebbles and sand covered the coffin. Seawater and foam flooded the half- filled grave. The retreating wave had dragged away the ghastly, skeletal woman and the Fedora’s Captain.
Only a wet, silken shawl lay across the coffin.
SARAH DAS GUPTA is a writer from Cambridge, UK who has also lived and worked in India and Tanzania. Her work has been published in over twenty countries from Australia to Kazakhstan.She has recently been nominated for the Best of the Net and a Dwarf Star. She began writing in 2022, aged eighty, after an accident which has severely limited her mobility.
Marie Rose Blossoms by Maximilliano Guzman
Renan changed his work schedule to care for Lucy. He shaved his head and began taking Reiki classes.
Renan didn’t know how to react to the loss. Since childhood, he had always been a soft, defeated, and fragile boy. Adrift without Marie, his world was collapsing and filling with everyday leaks. Renan thought as the lid of his wife’s coffin closed that perhaps… perhaps it was time for a radical change in his family.
Meanwhile, Lucy dyed her hair orange, got a nose piercing, and furtively joined a sect that honored ferrets. On the horizon… a future they could neither see nor escape from. Marie Rose had gone, leaving a void in their souls, crushing them with depression, arguments, and nightly tears.
Renan dreamed of Marie Rose.
And in one of his dreams, he saw Marie Rose planting a seed in his body.
“What are you doing?” Renan asked her. Marie Rose smiled.
Lucy heard her mother's voice in her ears every night.
“Water your father,” Marie Rose told her.
The next morning, Lucy, holding a watering can, said to her father: “I have a message from Mom. I know it’s a bit weird… and silly, but…” And she poured water over her father’s body as he read the Times.
“What are you doing?” Renan asked angrily.
“Mom asked me to,” she replied.
Renan fell silent. He sighed, remembering his recurring dreams of Marie Rose. “Are you serious?” Renan asked.
Lucy gestured. We could say it was madness to see Lucy watering her father every day. “Now you need to go out into the sun.”
Renan followed Lucy’s instructions. Instructions that came from Marie Rose during sleepless nights. For him, these significant changes in his body were a painful, stinging novelty filled with pus.
Struggling with sleep, Renan isolated himself by watching television, thinking that Marie Rose would reincarnate as a gift emanating from his skin. It might have seemed crazy, indeed, but Renan had always been a hopeless dreamer, a poor soul waiting for miracles. Marie Rose was the masculine half of the couple. Even so, his dreams involving Marie Rose were a reflection of his childlike, fragmented mind, unable to come to terms with the loss that had represented a true manifestation of his wife within him.
“I feel itchy,” Renan said one winter morning.
“It’s happening,” Lucy said happily.
Renan looked at his daughter with joyful eyes.
“It will emerge in you… Dad,” Lucy said, hugging her father.
But fate would play its cards.
Yes, Renan never left the house again. He hadn’t left since the beginning of spring. He quit his job. Lucy took care of him. She provided water, a small artificial sun she bought on eBay, cooked for him, and…
Marie Rose.
Marie Rose never emerged from Renan's chest in the summer.
How do I know?
I’m Lucy’s boyfriend, a punk guy with nothing to lose. Lucy asked me to keep the secret. But I won’t, folks. Not today. In a few moments, I will extract from Renan's monstrous chest a small, agonizing body. A duplicate of horror that Renan and Lucy believe to be Marie Rose.. I know it is not. And Renan and Lucy know their dreams have deceived them, their hopes, and their shared illusions of seeing Marie Rose again. Renan is afraid. Oh yes, he’s scared out of his mind.
“Hurry up,” Lucy says to me. “Dad mustn’t suffer,” she adds while I sharpen the butcher’s knife.
Renan, with tears in his eyes, naked in the bathtub, watching as a monstrous head emerges from his chest, an inhuman torso. “Oh, Marie Rose,” he thinks.
“Now!” Lucy says to me, eagerly.
And I begin to cut.
Maximiliano Guzmán (1991), an Argentinian writer and editor, was born in a town called Recreo, in Catamarca. He is the Editor of the magazine La Tuerca Andante. He has published the novella Hamacas by Zona Borde Editorial. His stories have been published in Argentina, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Ecuador, Mexico, Cuba, and the United States. His latest publications were Flash Digest by Hiraeth Publishing, In The Veins, Necksnap, and the anthologies THIS HOUSE NOT IS OURS by The Voice From The Mausoleum and TEEN SCREAMS Vol. 1 by Dark Moon Rising, and others coming soon.
Juan Pedro by LaVern McCarthy
A friend who knew Horatio had warned Juan Pedro about him. Juan Pedro was employed as a landscaper on Horatio's estate.
"I would be very careful working around that man," Maria told him. "I have heard stories that he is involved with gangsters."
"Gangsters?" Juan Pedro looked skeptical.
"I wouldn't want to be on his bad side, so I'll be careful," he assured her. She probably was repeating gossip, he thought.
A few days later, Juan Pedro was pruning hedges in Horatio's backyard. The hedges were planted almost completely around the swimming pool. There was a high fence and a gate that could be opened with a key, through which the pool area could be entered. It was very difficult to see the pool. However, Juan Pedro was able to see a small portion of it through a gap in the fence.
A party seemed to be going on. As he watched, he saw men wearing dark sunglasses milling around with drinks in their hands. They looked rough, as though they had come straight from the mean streets. If it were a pool party, they were not dressed in swimwear for the occasion. The ones he could see were dressed casually in slacks and polo shirts.
Suddenly, two men were tossed into the pool. There was a lot of shrieking, splashing, and laughing. They must be pulling a prank, Juan Pedro thought. Then someone moved into his line of vision, and he could no longer see the pool or those in the water.
Summer continued, and Juan Pedro swam in every pool he could, which was not too many since most of them were guarded by suspicious owners. He longed to swim in Horatio's pool most of all. It looked huge, at least what he could see of it. One night in late August, he decided to try his luck at getting into the pool.
The lights were out in Horatio's home when Juan Pedro climbed over the fence and entered the pool area. He looked around cautiously. The pool was even larger than he had thought. Moonlight glittered across the water. He smiled to himself. He would swim until dawn and leave just as the sun came up.
He dipped one toe in the water. Perfect. It would soothe his sweating body. He silently slipped into the pool.
Come daylight, not much was left of Juan Pedro except a sickening trail of blood and the gnawed bones of his skeleton. The piranhas saw to that.
LaVern Spencer McCarthy has published twelve books of short stories and poetry and two journals. She has won over five hundred state awards for her poetry and thirty-four national awards. She is a life member of Poetry Society of Texas She resides in Blair, Oklahoma.
All the Dead Beasts by JS Apsley
“What a space this’ll make for a VIP room,” my boss slurred at me. He’d been given access to a basement of an old meat-packing factory, closed for decades, through the wall of his club.
“We’ll need to brand it; appease the insta crowd. It’s got-to-be the place-to-be, know what I mean? Get yourself down there … and think edgy, Lenny – but not animal-sacrifice-edgy.”
With that, he’d lobbed the keys at me.
So that’s why I'm down here now: to tour this grotty basement and see beyond the filth. To create his exclusive brand, his high-end concept.
I guess they butchered the animals down here and prepped the meat for service. Jesus. The thought of it made my teeth creak inside my mouth, and my tongue dried up like a piece of biltong. I spot something horrid on the white-tiled wall.
What the hell is that? A spurt of long-congealed blood? Am I seeing things?
I rub at my eyes; closer inspections suggest the spatter was just crud. I remind myself this place was closed back in the sixties, and inspiration starts to boil like a pot of ribs. I get a sense of what the space could be … those white tiles could work, man, they really could.
Sure, it was gnarly, but the boss’d get the deep cleaners in, chrome the place right up. I understood why he’d been so buzzed. It was a speakeasy-in-waiting.
My thoughts are interrupted by a strange sound.
What the Christ is that scratching noise? Rabid claws, tearing into metal. Wait! Now it’s a beak, pecking at the stainless-steel counter in wretched convulsions.
With a shake of my head, I get back to business. I need to focus. My boss needs a concept, and he needs it today. Hospitality is a fast-paced business, kid. Bars were popping up in all kinds of freaky places. The more bizarre, the better. These days, the customers are all dead inside and don’t care to communicate unless on a screen. These days, what counts isn’t the one you’re with, it’s the instant experience of it all, the snapshot - that’s the only show in town.
As I tiptoe round, I discover an industrial drain in the floor below the counter, set slightly below floor level. The corrugated cover has around thirty holes, crusted and rotted. I gag, imagining the utter filth which has encircled it. The plumbing underneath must be pipe after pipe of decrepit flesh, bony parcels, and long streaks of copper-coloured blood.
A braying scream pierces the dank air. Jesus!
Where the hell is that coming from? Is it behind the walls, the tiles? Is it … in the necrotic pipes below? Has this place trapped the cries of all the poor animals that were slaughtered down here?
I burl around, regaining my senses. I need to get back to the task. I take my photos, I measure. I think of where the downlighters might go.
As the minutes pass, the stench becomes overpowering. At one time, there must have been slop buckets against this back wall, filled with gizzards and cracked bones.
This city enjoys a bit of avant-garde. We’re no stranger to an illicit bar … but a high-class VIP where butchers used to slice and dice, where they’d carve the carcasses?
A new sound strangles what air is left. In the name of the Good Lord! What am I hearing now?! My ears are filled with a distinctly non-human gurgle … like an animal trying to clear its throat of its own blood.
A flash of white light, and a sudden image invades my mind. I see a bloated, snarling man; his dirty grey apron covered in bloody prints. He’s holding a cleaver, and a cigarette hangs from his fat, purple lips. The cleaver rises and falls repeatedly. A piece of … something … falls from his killing table, and he kicks it somewhere down below. The cadaver underneath the counter seems to writhe; to seek escape, and he kicks at it again. And then, the vision clears, as suddenly as it came.
My hands are shaking, and there is sweat on my upper lip. I flip my torch on and tilt my head underneath the counter and… dear God … I see that drain … that crusted drain … and it is undulating.
And then …
A splurge of rancid blood and guts bursts out like a geyser, covering me in decades-old filth, swilling and spewing. I fall backwards, screaming, and all around me drips the excreta from the pipes below.
Help me! Dear God, help me!
I flee; I slip on the puddles of blood forming on the floor. I’m on my hands and knees. As I scramble, the cries of all the dead beasts fill the air.
I grab at the floor to steady myself, and I feel the decrepit grime under my fingernails and the stinking blood soak through my jeans. I put my hands to my ears to stop the death wails and stagger into the fire door.
I fall out into the backcourt, into the blessed night-rain, frantic.
Gasping, I wash the blood and entrails from my hands and hair. I find my breath. I peer down at myself. There is no blood, no gore. It has, all of it, been a figment.
And then, my phone goes. It’s the boss.
“Well now, Lenny,” he says, pronouncing his words like he’s chewing a bloated piece of gristly beef. “What do you make of the new space, then? It’s going to be super exclusive—the real deal. Think we’ll call it … ‘The Abattoir’. What d’ye reckon, Lenny?”
“Lenny? You there? What d’ye reckon?”
I look up. I let the droplets wash over my face.
“You’ll make a killing, boss, a killing.”
JS Apsley is an aspiring author from Glasgow, Scotland. He won the Ringwood Publishing short story prize 2024 for his debut fiction submission, "Immersion". He has since placed various stories including with: Bewildering Stories, Bright Flash Literary, Brussels Literary Review, The Colored Lens, Loft Books, Lowlife Lit Press, Lovecraftiana, and Underside Stories. See www.jsapsley.com."
A Total Romantic by Michael Horton
There was a girl. And a boy. They loved each other very much. Except the boy hated the expression, "loved very much." He felt it quantified his love and hers, and he believed their love was boundless. He didn't want quantified love, something one could weigh or measure. He wanted to commit to and receive endless, boundless, total love. That was the kind of boy he was. It made loving him a full-time job. And, as the girl found out, being loved by him was exhausting. Wonderful at first, heady, marvelous—but after a time, when the onslaught of his total love didn't diminish, when it just kept crashing down upon her, it grew burdensome. This was unexpected. What girl doesn't want to be loved boundlessly, totally, endlessly?
Yet even when one moons about all day totally in love, it really is only for intervals, extended moments, between wondering about lunch, scratching itches, brushing one’s teeth and hair, and thinking about shopping. The notion is a warm breeze, a bright thought-in-passing. Yet with this particular boy, it just went on and on, hours at a time, and the girl found herself wanting to escape the intensity of it.
The boy, for his part, thought he was doing everything right and was confused by the girl’s increasingly distant response—she continued to smile at him, but she was always backing away. She explained she had places to go, things to do, people to see—girl things, and girl-things (it was understood at least by one of them) were not something he could be part of.
Finally, after much misunderstanding, dramatic unhappiness, and great sorrow, the boy cut the girl’s legs off. He kept her in a steamer trunk, one exactly the right size to store her in, which he had purchased at a garage sale after haggling the seller down on the price. It was quite a beautiful trunk. Even the girl was impressed for a split-second before she was overcome (justly) with the horror of her situation, the patent unfairness.
The boy did his utmost to explain his justification—she had made him do it (though she couldn't remember asking for any of this).
If she’d just give it a chance, he gently pointed out, it would all turn out perfect. In no time, she would adjust to it and see that it was aces. And together they would settle into their boundless love. Their infinite love. The girl, whatever her original feelings, had fallen out of boundless love with the boy quite a bit earlier. In fact, she found him monstrous and would have cursed him, clawed out his eyes, and bit his tongue in two, if she weren't concerned with the sharp implements kept close at hand—and his unflinching willingness to use them, which left her in a state of abject terror.
The boy, being less sensitive and empathetic than he believed himself to be, thought the girl’s glimmering tears, her quaking demeanor, her completely quivering response to him when he opened her steamer trunk to chat after his day at the office were instead indicative of total, boundless love. That he had had to make certain modifications to the girl, and that he had to keep her locked in a steamer trunk, deterred him not a whit from conceiving this. He was blessed from birth with the ability to believe whatever he chose to believe, regardless of situations to the contrary.
Needless to say, this particular love story didn’t have a happy ending. The girl succumbed to an infection and blood poisoning despite the boy's best nursing and antiseptic swabbing.
The boy was left in the uncomfortable position of having to start his search for that perfect match all over again. But disappointed as he was, not for a single moment did the boy doubt the possibility or the existence of boundless, total, and complete love. It was a matter of faith, not to mention fate. And he had long since admitted to himself that, when it came to love, he was a total romantic.
At different times Michael has worked as a bookmobile librarian driving Osceola County in Florida, a shift manager at McDonald's, a factory worker in a rubber parts plant, a prep cook, a men’s dormitory janitor, a purchasing agent, and an IT guy—but writing is what he does. His work has appeared in the Alaska Quarterly Review, Glimmer Train, and Iron Horse Review among others, and stories have been nominated for “Best of the Net” and the Pushcart Prize.
It's Only an Animatronic by Carson Fredriksen
When most people see Binky, they usually break into applause.
An orange animatronic squid that rises out of the water, waves its tentacles around, and sprays water into the crowd is quite a sight to behold.
But for me, the one who must go down into said water and keep him up to date, he’d become my greatest adversary.
The job itself is easy enough. The theme park employees dump enough chlorine into the water so that it is perfectly clear. The effects team ensures that the mechanics can withstand the elements just fine.
But staring down into the depths, knowing that giant metal monstrosity was waiting for me, I started to regret taking this job for the summer. It’s only an animatronic, dear,” my mother told me on the phone yesterday. “It’s just gears and pipes and fluids. It can’t possibly harm you. You’re just being paranoid.”
“Well then, why don’t you come down here, so I don’t have to?” I mutter to myself as I plunge into the cool, vivid blue depths of the tank.
Lately, some of the guests had been complaining that the water they were sprayed with looked murky and smelled like burning oil.
It doesn’t take long to see the giant squid in question. For a brief moment I thought his enormous eyes were looking up at me. I blinked rapidly and found that they were indeed staring straight up at me.
“Must have been set like that by the other guys in maintenance,” I thought, almost desperately seeking a rational explanation. “I can see it now, hey guys, let’s prank the new guy by letting him think that the squid has something against him.”
A large groan echoed from the bottom of the tank towards my ears. It almost sounded as if the mechanical contraption was settling. But it had been down in this pit and performing shows for the past five years. Surely it must have settled by now.
Suddenly, the water seemed to have grown ten degrees colder. It also must have bled through my wetsuit because I could feel goosebumps erupt all over my body.
“It’s only an animatronic, it’s only an animatronic.”
I tried repeating this phrase to myself, hoping it would settle my nerves enough for me to perform some actual underwater repairs if need be.
As part of my job, I must inspect every square inch of the beast to make sure it’s in top notch condition. I moved towards the back of the squid and slowly allowed my flippers to make contact. When I told some of my drinking buddies about my methods, they would often joke that I was afraid to face the beast head-on. They would be right. Since I took this position last month, I found that I could barely stare into Binky’s two golden orbs, always wondering if they would suddenly blink.
As my flippers touched the cold, orange metal, I reached into my bag and began pulling out my underwater flashlight.
The orange steel began to move upwards. I nearly spat out my respirator in shock as the tentacles began to slowly rise out of the sand and flail wildly. One of them almost smacked me square in the head as I swam a fair distance away.
“Now those guys must really be messing with me,” I thought as I saw the creature’s head begin to slowly move up and down as if it were breathing heavily. “They knew I was going down here, and they think they can turn the ride on just to freak me out. Man, when this thing gets to the surface, I’ll...”
And that’s when the creature turned its head to face me. Its golden eyes locked onto mine before it narrowed them slightly. Normally, when the ride was in operation, the squid would move its tentacles around under the water, rise above the surface, and then spray everyone before it went back down.
Its tentacles were still writhing around, as if searching for their next meal, but the body didn’t move. It lay there, as if it were waiting for me to make a move first.
“Come to think of it...since when could this freak of machinery even narrow its eyes? They didn’t build it for that! It’s only an animatronic!”
Instinctively, I pulled out my screwdriver from my pack. By now, the sounds of shifting gears and grinding metal were almost deafening as the creature turned its body to face me. Suddenly, I realized that I was about to fight a raging machine with just a hand tool.
“Okay...I’ll just slowly swim towards the surface. If I keep my eyes on the squid and all his parts, I should be able to--”
A stream of black liquid flew out from the creature’s mouth and hit me straight in the face. My mask was awash with the dark liquid, making it impossible to see anything. I heard the gears start to shift, and they seemed to be getting louder.
Suddenly, I felt my adrenaline kick into overdrive.
I tore off my mask, exposing the creature now as just a vaguely orange shape. I began to swim rapidly towards the surface. In the shuffle, I must have thrown away my tools and air tank, as I felt weightless when my face broke through the surface.
The tentacle rose out of the water behind me and wrapped around my throat. I could barely let out a scream as I found myself dragged back under the water. As the overhead fluorescent bulbs grew farther and farther away and the sounds of shifting gears grew louder, only one thought crossed my mind before everything ceased to exist.
“This job sucks.”
Carson is an neurodivergent writer from Calgary, Alberta who often enjoys rummaging through his dark, albeit unique, imagination to enhance his everyday life. His debut horror novel 'Beyond the Deep' was recently published by Baynam Books Press. His previous works have also appeared in such online publications as: Sometimes Hilarious Horror, CommuterLit, Rooster Republic Press and Howling Wolf Press. He can also be found at: https://www.carsonfredriksen.com/
You Carry it With You by Millie Sullivan
The image of the dead dog, its neck bent at a right angle, its glassy eyes fixed skyward, haunted Will for the rest of the evening. It’s a bad omen, he thought, death follows death.
He tried to dismiss the thoughts, blaming it on the upheaval: new house, new town, and the raw ache left by his mother’s funeral. It wasn’t the grief people talked about. It was a tightness in his chest, a hollowed-out feeling like he’d swallowed something sharp, and it got lodged inside him. He kept thinking of her nails digging into his arm, the way her voice could flay him alive without ever raising a hand. Love and punishment, they'd always blurred together.
There’s nothing here to fear.
The tea was bitter. He left half of it untouched before climbing into bed. The house settled around him, but the sounds were different from the hum of traffic and the low murmur of the neighbor’s television in his former apartment complex. It wasn’t what he imagined his first house would be like. It was old, its bones twisted by a century of winters. The floorboards bowed in places, and strange patterns bloomed in the cracked plaster, vague shapes that looked almost deliberate if he stared too long.
It was better not to dwell on anything for too long. His childhood taught him that.
Beyond the walls, the town of Marrow’s Hollow slumbered. It was a lonely place, half stuck in another century, and the drive up was all empty fields and black skeletal trees. Even the locals, the few he'd seen, looked washed out, as if they were photographs left too long in the sun. There was a wrongness to it that he assumed was him growing too used to city life. Still, the job at the town’s only law office paid well, and the house, old as it was, offered a clean start both far from the city and far from the haunted places of his childhood.
Somewhere deep in the woods beyond his backyard, a bell tolled once, low and mournful. No church bells in Marrow’s Hollow, he remembered reading. The only steeple burnt down in '86; a fire started by a lightning strike. The cemetery beyond the church was guarded by a locked iron gate. He asked his new receptionist, Joanna, a woman with pink hair who was probably the most colorful thing in the town, about it. She’d shrugged and said that no one knew, it had always been that way. Will closed his eyes and told himself the silence was soothing, rather than oppressive.
He woke to a sudden weight at the end of the bed and the sound of ragged breathing.
There, lit by a thin, colorless light that seemed to seep up from the floorboards, crouched the dog, or what had once been a dog. Its fur hung in long, wet strips, patchy as if it had been buried and dug up again. Beneath the clinging clumps, the flesh was gray and rotted, and the bones jutted against the skin at impossible angles. Its head lolled sideways, dangling as if the neck were half severed, the jaws held shut only by strands of rotting sinew. One eye was a wet, dark hole, and the other gleamed a too vivid blue. The smell of rot, heavy and cloyingly sweet, hung in the room, his mother’s sickly sweet perfume, now twisted into something foul.
Will tried to scream but only managed a quiet whimper.
“Shh...no need for noise, not yet at least.” The voice dragged across the room like nails across wet wood, not from the dog itself, but from somewhere deep behind it. Its jaws never moved. “I’m only here to say hello.” From one ruined socket, a fat maggot wriggled free and fell onto Will’s blanket.
“You’re not real.” His own voice sounded far away, too small, and uncertain.
“Are you sure about that? Because I feel really real. Do you feel really real, Will? If you do, and I do, well, there’s only one explanation, isn’t there?”
“I’m dreaming.” Will stretched out his leg, and his foot brushed against something solid, moist, and pulsing with heat. He pulled his leg back and drew his knees to his chest.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I’m dreaming because I found the dog, and I hate change, and I feel bad that I don’t feel bad about mom’s death, and-” He could hear his own heartbeat.
The thing’s jaw unhinged, revealing jagged, broken teeth.
“I’m dreaming and you’re not really anything.” He closed his eyes, but when he opened them, the dog was still there, pinkish saliva dripping from its open mouth.
“Are you sure?” it said, “Maybe you carried me here. Maybe you needed me. All that fear, all that anger, it had to go somewhere.” Its voice peeled apart at the edges, as if there were more than one mouth speaking inside it.
Will snapped awake. The clock on his dresser glowed at 4:00 AM in neon green. He threw on the light and got out of bed.
I’m really real.
Something cold brushed his foot. A thick, bloated maggot crawled across the floorboards. A strangled noise clawed out of Will's throat. He crushed it under with a slipper.
“I ran through dead leaves,” he muttered. “It must have come in on my shoe.” Spoken aloud, it was almost convincing, but it’s easier to believe in the strange during the predawn hours.
Will turned on every light he passed on his way to the kitchen, but the brightness only made the shadows deeper. He fumbled with the kettle, hands shaking, the tap water splashing over the counter as he tried to fill it. There was a tapping at the window. He turned. Nothing, only a tree branch, scraping across the window.
“I’m being stupid. I’m here alone.” The kettle screamed. From the attic, he heard the sound of nails clicking across the floorboards in a restless, pacing rhythm.
Millie is a current MFA student. Her short story, That Which is Sweet, will be published June 9th in The Penmen Review.
A Fresh Start by Barb DeMoney
The wind whipped around the sandstone walls of the monastery. Each gust made me shake and unnerved me more. My husband, Collin, lifted the stiff collar of his leather jacket up around his neck.
"This can be a fresh start for us," he said. "Maybe we can finally find some peace here."
Peace. His favorite word. A mask he hid behind while he chipped away at my fragile soul, piece by painful piece. He'd chosen this remote monastery high in the Alps for a month-long retreat, saying we needed to reconnect.
I assumed he just wanted to isolate me more.
The monks observed still and steadfast, holding ancient secrets and undeclared judgments.
The atmosphere, heavy like an anchor, weighed on me so I couldn't sleep. Every creak of the floorboards, any rattle outside our window, became amplified in the smothering silence.
Collin, of course, slept soundly. He always did. He’d awake refreshed, ready to point out all my flaws and fears.
Days merged into weeks. Collin, initially enthusiastic about the imposed silence and meditation, grew impatient. His barbs, usually veiled in wit, became sharper.
He criticized my posture during prayer, my mumbled chanting, even the way I chewed my food upset him. His harsh comments deflated my spirits like a broken balloon.
“You’re not trying hard enough,” he hissed, his whisper echoing in the halls around us. “You’re embarrassing me.”
I retreated into myself. Finding solace in the familiar routine of the monastery. After learning the monks’ habits, their devoted prayers, their silent acts of service, I strived to emulate them and attempted to gain some of their peace that Collin harped about nonstop.
One day, while watering the herb garden, a monk offered me a small, white pill. His eyes pierced my soul. An unspoken understanding passed between us.
That night, Colin’s verbal attacks increased. Accusing me of being pathetic and a constant disappointment. His words cut like the sharp edge of a sickle against my heart.
That night, as Collin lay snoring next to me, I thought of the unmarked pill I had hidden in the drawer. I didn’t know its contents, yet I knew its purpose, with a certainty that settled into my bones.
The next morning, I made some tea. With trembling hands, I carefully crushed the tiny pill and stirred it into Collin's cup. He didn't notice, too busy complaining.
“You can’t even make tea properly? It’s barely warm and has no flavor,” he chided.
After enduring years of his spite and having him tear me away from my friends and family, I’d had enough.
As the first rays of sunlight crept into our window over the mountains, Collin struggled to breathe.
"Bridget," he moaned, his eyes filled with despair. "What’s happening?"
I looked into his fading grey eyes as the weight of his abuse and control lifted from my shoulders. I felt a strange sense of calm mixed with unexpected tranquility.
"Peace, Collin," I whispered, and for the first time, I actually believed it.
Barbara J. DeMoney is a writer whose work blends drama, comedy, magical realism and fantasy, often reflecting the culture of her small, Upstate NY hometown. Her stories dive into themes of grief, love, and hope. A seasoned participant in flash fiction competitions, Barb’s story “Dancing the Night Away in Toytown” reached the Thrilling 32 in Writing Battle, and she earned an Honorable Mention at NYC Midnight for two of her stories, “Signs Are All Around” and “Trapped.” Her story, “Lightning Crashes” placed eighth and "A Fresh Start" placed in sixth place for a two separate contests for Twist in the Tale. Barb is also a wife and mother of two.
Soup by Vishaal Pathak
As the sun went down and darkness fell, he moved his wheelchair near the window. Lights came on in the flats across the street. Only a flat on the eighth floor, exact opposite to his, was still in darkness. Straining his eyes, he saw two men standing near the open window. To his utter horror, he saw one of them push the other out of the window.
A swooshing sound filled the quiet of the evening, followed by a loud thud on what seemed to be a metallic surface. Blaring alarms and then a few cries reverberated in the street. Mark craned his neck to get a better look at the street below, while also noticing the other man light a cigarette and retreat softly. It’s not the first time this has happened, though, and soon he will find himself dialling the Police, who will first grill him over the details and the whereabouts of the incident, thank him for his help yet again, and assure him that the needful will be done. There will be a patrol car in a flash, and then more cars and detectives and media will throng the street, it will be cordoned off, and people will gradually go back to their flats, shut off the lights, and go to sleep. And the flat on the eighth floor will be put back on the market, yet again. ‘A spacious, three-bedroom flat for sale in a posh neighbourhood, price negotiable’, the ad will read. Some lonely, single guy, who’ll go on to say he’s not afraid of ghosts or demons or whatever’s been lurking there in that flat, will find the flat a great catch at these prices in this part of the city and make an offer as soon as possible. And soon enough, yet another case – the fifth this year – will be closed, for lack of any evidence, as a suicide.
Mark moved his wheelchair back to the kitchen to fix himself some soup. He grabbed a few onions, tomatoes, carrots, capsicum, and beans and began slicing them one by one on the counter. He thinks back to the first couple of times the police interrogated him, making him feel as though he wasn’t a witness but the prime suspect. They even had a few undercover men watching his moves, or so he felt. About a month or so after the second death, they eventually rubbished his claims, calling him delusional and unreliable. And the flat earned the reputation of being haunted, if not in official records, at least in hearsay. Mark – who’d lived alone most of his life and didn’t seem to mind it anyway – was further isolated, what with the neighbours avoiding even pleasantries with him.
Tossing the vegetables into the boiling water, he adjusted the cooking temperature and covered the pan with a lid. It smelled great already, he thought to himself. Mark poured himself a drink and moved his wheelchair again to take a sip by the window. The area was being cordoned off, and the excitement and worry on the street were fading. Two men made their way to the entrance of his building, and the bell to his flat screeched moments later. He took another sip, caught the whiff of his soup, and decided there was still time as he wheeled himself to let them in.
‘So, we meet again, don’t we?’ said the men.
‘And I wonder why, don’t we know how it ends?’ Mark scoffed.
They noted his observations as he intermittently stirred the soup, finally taking it off the stove. He’d have offered them some, but they’d probably turn it down. As he gulped his soup, the duo walked over to the window, and this time, without having to strain his eyes, he watched to his utter horror, one of them push the other out of the window.
The other man lit a cigarette and retreated softly at first, and then disappeared into thin air, as Mark strained his eyes and watched himself in the opposite building, fidgeting with his phonebook to report what had happened, and then slowly wheeled himself towards the kitchen to fix himself some soup.
Vishaal is an emerging writer. One of his favourite publication credits includes 'One Sided Love Stories' on the Yard (a crime fiction journal).
Splitting Image by Adam Little
It was like a bucket full of water had fallen over my head, and its ocean spirit crushed me as its metal jaw tightened. I sat up from a dreamless sleep, clutching at my skull, trying to scratch the root of this itch beneath my skin. An itch that felt like dull knives multiplying down the inside of my skull.
My heart beat faster and faster as I sat up, stumbling to a standing position from my sweat-coated bed. I hit my ankle on a pile of books as I made my way to the bathroom. Shoving aside a bag to get to the medicine cabinet, it was getting harder to think, and the throbbing was ever present. I grimaced through the aching, frantically grasping a bottle of pain relievers, but I realized I couldn’t read the letters on the label. I rubbed my eyes, but that didn’t help, so I just decided to pop two in my mouth.
The headache finally stopped.
My heart was still beating, I grew conscious of the sweat trickling down my back, of the small mess of pill bottles and shower towels I’d made in my quest for relief.
Something shifted beneath my skin. Vision doubled, like I’d gone cross-eyed—then it quadrupled. I lurched forward, feeling suddenly queasy, but I didn’t know which of the two toilets was the real one. I swallowed down the acrid bile bubbling in my throat, taking a minute to steady myself. Then my face started to twist, and I could feel my hair multiplying outward and cascading down my shoulders.
My heart started to beat erratically, I shifted, stumbled to my feet to face the mirror, and then I did throw up.
Two extra ears were starting to sprout below the originals, four eyes marred my face, whose flesh warped into a spiral. My mouth was grinning in a way my muscles didn’t feel, teeth were sticking out of my cheek, and a nose just right of the one I could smell from. It smelled like sweat, like vomit. I was enraptured by the process—even as I looked away I could feel pieces of me stretching off and detaching like taffy. My legs gave out then, and when I looked down, I could see two pairs of feet attached to me, two pairs of arms, two mouths, two pairs of ears, two noses, two of myself. And the other me finally expanded off from me with a sickening squelch and snap.
I lay there hyperventilating amongst the dust and strewn towels of the tile bathroom floor, afraid, drained, in shock. My chest throbbed in tune with my head, and I couldn’t think through the pain and exhaustion.
A head that looked like mine leaned down to look me in the eye, and I could feel my mind strain, my head spinning despite my immobility and despite the medication—or because of it. It looked just like me.
It smiled at me with my smile.
No, it fucking grinned at me.
Adam Little is a newbie writer with a proclivity for short horror stories. He enjoys reading, playing video games, designing tabletop games, worldbuilding, and last but not least writing poetry and short stories. He specializes in the horror genre with a specific focus on undeath, rebirth, and body horror taking inspiration from real-world mythology and folklore to shape his stories and worlds.
Insides, Outsides by Taylor Ward
It was Tuesday when we pulled you down from there.
I tried to be gentle; I really did, with, well, how it seemed you had been handled so roughly up there. You deserved a moment of tenderness in your sleep. We lowered you down like a babe in a bassinet, daring not to rock, lest we wake you, lest we make the babe cry. We handled you with care, I promise.
My boss said it was a bobcat, or something, maybe a bear. I find it hard to believe, but it's much easier to digest that way, with your offal being strung about in the tree like that; I didn’t find it very jolly. I don’t think anyone did, but that’s what it looked like, as if whatever was playing with you was having itself not a white, but a red Christmas. You were ornaments, lights twinkling and bright, popcorn and mistletoe draped over the limbs with fervor, your face a dazzling star.
I’m sorry, this feels a bit insensitive.
It took a whole team to take you down, to untangle you, to try to stuff what had become your outsides back into you, that way they could be your insides again. Being inside out doesn’t sound too pleasant, now does it? We took you down and stared at you, our hands on our hips as we talked about what even to do, as if there’s anything we could have done, as if we could magic you back to life. We couldn’t.
We had to stuff you into the body bag, and I mean stuff. You were spilling out. I had to nudge you in with my foot, as if I were kicking an ice cube under the fridge. Discarded completely. We zipped you up, not wanting to look at your bloated face any longer. We couldn’t stand it.
You didn’t have any ID. I decided to call you Jacob.
###
The next week, we found a deer in the same tree as you—well, that’s not quite right. Its legs and body stood still beneath the tree, its head and kingly antlers sitting at the very top of the tree, red dribbling from its neck and heavying the branches, dying it a deep red, still wet and warm when we arrived. The body was still twitching somehow. Isn’t that something, Jacob?
The same man called it in, and he seemed even more rattled this time, as if finding you wasn’t scary enough, as if a decapitated deer is worse than finding some man tangled up in his tree. He told us it just wasn’t right. It just wasn’t right, he said, shaking his head as he looked at the deer. It wasn’t right that it was going to waste, that something with so much life left to live was cut short.
He had never mentioned that when we took you down, Jacob.
He had asked if he could keep the meat, process it, as how could we possibly allow something to go to waste like that? I think you’ll be happy to know that we told him no, and that frankly, he should consider staying somewhere else until we discovered exactly what was happening, as we still hadn’t decided the cause of your death. Boss still said it was some animal.
The man stomped off to his cabin, muttering about shithead teenagers and what have you. His son, a boy with shaggy hair, sat beneath the tree, throwing sticks and rocks up at the head, trying to knock it down. Before we could tell him to cut it out, the head came down, down, down.
It landed on the ground with a wet thud, tongue sticking out of its mouth, wet and swollen. Its nose was still damp, as if it had taken a drink from the nearby stream only minutes ago. But it hadn’t. It was split in two, body upright, head plopped into the grass, staring up at me.
The teenager threw another stick at the thing before his father shouted at him to come back inside the cabin, slamming the door once the boy was inside. The man continued to watch us as we loaded the deer, shaking his head and lighting a cigarette.
The smoke spilled out of his home like a swirling, curling snake. I thought I saw it slither to the tree.
###
Animals continued to die over the next month, the man calling them in each and every time, and after a while, we stopped coming. There’s only so many times we can look into a mountain lion killing things in a weird, silly way, Jacob. At this point, we had ruled your death as something like that. We didn’t have any leads. So, we thought it was settled.
Then he called us again, one night, voice low and quiet, close to his phone as he rasped and seemed to shake. He told us he didn’t mean to, that we ought to come by and fix his mess.
And we did. We did. And that’s when I saw you again, dearest Jacob, your guts trailing behind you as you danced round and round the tree, fireflies clinging to your greying skin, bugs weaving in and out of the deer’s decapitated head which you hold so lovingly as the thing waltzes, standing upon its two feet, the other animals that had been killed danced round and round, too.
The man was still holding his phone, hanging upside down, blood dripping from his mouth, shrieked upon a limb. His son took your hand and began to spin with you, the animals throwing rocks and bleating their wonderful songs up at the man who hung there, dripping onto the ground.
You turned to me and smiled, your teeth dirty with the ash of your cremation, grey and awful. I had never seen anything so beautiful.
We began to dance. I don’t think I have stopped, Jacob.
Taylor Ward is an author and artist from the Midwest whose interests lie in queer, trans, and indigenous horror. Taylor has been published in Flash Phantoms Magazine and serves as an assistant editor for Moon City Review.
When Did We Get a Cat? by Tom Ramey
"When did we get a cat?" Sarah called to her husband, who was sitting at the dinner table with their two kids.
David looked up from his phone. "What do you mean?"
She held up a toy. "This is a cat toy. Little gray mouse with a bell."
Sarah had pulled the small fabric mouse from beneath the kitchen table, its gray felt body worn smooth by countless pounces. The tiny bell inside gave a muffled chime as she shook the toy at her husband.
He set down his phone and examined it. "That's weird. How did that get here?"
Sarah glanced toward the back door, noticing the small rectangular flap cut into the bottom panel. "We have a cat door too."
"I think that's a dog door," David said.
"Is there a difference?"
"I don't know. But that explains it." He returned to scrolling with a shrug.
Carrying dinner to the table, she said, “Explains what?"
"A neighbor's cat probably came in to get out of the rain and left its toy behind."
Sarah pocketed the mouse, an odd weight settling in her chest. "I wonder if it's still here somewhere. You know, I've always wanted a cat."
Their son Eric asked, “If I find the cat, can we keep it?”
“No! Cat’s make my eyes all itchy.” His little sister Ellie declared.
“How would you know?”
“I don’t know, I just do.”
Sarah stepped in, sensing a fight brewing. “We aren’t getting a cat right now. There’s no point in arguing over something that isn’t happening.”
Supporting Sarah, David told them to stop bickering and eat their dinner.
That night, Ellie asked her older brother, "Can you sleep in my room tonight?"
“You’re 10. It’s a little too old to be scared of the dark.” Eric said with the confidence of a twelve-year-old.
"I’m not scared! I just keep feeling like something's watching me. Like there's a face just outside where I can see when I'm reading or watching TV. Every time I turn to look, it pulls back."
Eric's smirk faded slightly as he studied his sister's earnest expression. "That's freaky. Thanks for that thought right before bed."
"Will you stay? Please," she said, dragging out the last word.
Eric sighed dramatically but nodded. "Sure."
He kicked off his socks and flopped down next to her on the twin bed, the mattress creaking under their combined weight.
“What do you think it wants?”
“I feel like it's waiting to grab me,” Ellie whispered, pulling her knees up to her chest.
“Well, maybe it'll grab me and hold me so I can sleep after that horror story you told.” He said before laughing at his own joke.
“That’s not funny!” Ellie said, her eyes wide with panic.
“Okay, okay. I’m sorry.” He said, realizing she was really upset. Picking at her wasn’t as fun if she wasn’t in the mood to fight back.
"There's a boy in my class who keeps asking his mom why they have a pink bike in the garage."
"So?"
"She doesn't know either. And he doesn't have a sister. But he keeps having dreams about playing with one."
"That's weird."
Ellie's voice got smaller. "Eric... what if the thing that's been watching me already got someone? What if that's what it does? Take people and make everyone forget about them."
“I’d never forget about you, Ellie. You’re my little sister. You’re safe with me.” In a rare display of affection, he hugged his sister until they both fell asleep.
In the shadows of the room, darkness pooled and spread across the floor like spilled ink. Black tendrils crept up the bed frame, reaching toward the sleeping children.
Wanting them.
Enveloping them.
In the master bedroom, Sarah stirred restlessly, her subconscious grasping for something that had been torn away. Beside her, David tossed and turned, muttering names that would soon mean nothing to either of them.
Sarah dreamed of small hands tugging at her sleeve, the weight of little bodies climbing into bed during thunderstorms, and whispered fears about monsters in closets.
The dreams clung to her through the dark hours until morning light filtered through the bedroom window. She woke with tears on her cheeks and a name on her lips that dissolved before she could grasp it.
She set four places at breakfast before catching herself and removing two. The dining room seemed too large, their conversation echoing slightly in the space. The meal felt oddly quiet.
After the dishes were cleared, Sarah wandered the hallway, that same unsettled feeling following her. She paused outside one of the unused bedrooms, her hand on the doorknob. Inside, dust motes danced in the morning light filtering through the curtains.
"Why haven't we done anything with these rooms?" she asked David as he joined her in the hallway.
David frowned, looking into the empty room as if seeing it for the first time. "You know, I'm not sure why we haven't done anything with these." He moved to the adjacent bedroom, confusion flickering across his face. "This one too. It's like we had plans but..." He trailed off, unable to finish the thought.
Sarah felt that familiar incompleteness again. "I keep thinking we should use them for something. A family, maybe."
"Yeah," David said quietly. "I wish we had made time for that."
David slipped his arm around her shoulders, and they stood together in the quiet hallway, surrounded by rooms that waited for something neither of them could name. In Sarah's pocket, the small gray mouse seemed to grow heavier, its tiny bell silent now, as if whatever had once made it ring with joy had simply vanished into the morning light.
Outside, a cat yowled in the distance, but when Sarah looked through the window, she saw only an empty yard, only space where something should have been.
Tom Ramey is a horror and crime fiction writer that has been a fan of works in the genre since long before he should have been allowed to consume them. He's recently been published by Close to the Bone Publishing, Suddenly and Without Warning, and Flash Phantoms. Currently living in Delaware with his wife and three kids, he hopes his readers come away from his work with goosebumps, a racing pulse, and maybe even a smirk.
The Yellow Room by Jason L Benskin
She couldn’t decide whether to loathe yellow’s garish glare or to kneel in trembling reverence before its blistering radiance. Yellow wasn’t a color—it was a curse. A diseased halo. It shimmered like sun-scalded flesh, blistering and bubbling across the senses, and it stung like acid poured on open memory.
They told her this room would heal her.
###
The chamber was a breathing wound.
Its walls weren’t painted—they were stretched. Living tissue, thin and translucent, veined with black capillaries and stitched tight at the corners with thick cords of braided human hair. When she stepped inside, her boots squelched softly on the slick floor—damp with old fluids that shimmered green in the jaundiced light.
The latch bit shut behind her with a sharp click, too alive to be mechanical. Her heart slammed like a sledgehammer against the inside of her chest, matching the pulse of the room. She wasn’t alone.
She never had been.
###
The yellow inhaled.
It drew in her scent, her heat, the last dregs of her resistance. Each breath the room took tugged at her skin, like unseen hooks had been buried just beneath her surface.
She tried to blink—but the walls beat her to it. They shuddered. Fluttered. And blinked back.
###
Daniel appeared at the threshold, haloed in flickering fluorescence. His silhouette twitched. One hand clutched a clipboard like a crucifix. His other shook as he offered her a tray.
“You’re not eating,” he said. His voice cracked. Like something wearing his voice hadn’t yet figured out how to use it.
“There’s something inside it,” she whispered.
Daniel smiled—wrong. His lips moved, but the teeth didn’t match. “It’s all in your head.”
But she could see the truth now. She watched as his skin sloughed away—not bloodily, but dry, like old wallpaper peeling from damp wood. Beneath it: bone, knotted tendon, and something smiling that had far too many teeth.
###
Beneath her own skin, something moved.
Not metaphor. Not madness.
Legs.
Needles.
Antennas.
They skittered through her muscle and marrow, nesting in her bones. She fell to the ground, screaming, and drove her nails into her thigh until she tore it open. But no blood came—just thick, black ichor bubbling with foreign sigils.
Her flesh burned with unreadable runes—cruel geometry etched in muscle, marking her like a map for something to follow. Or something already here.
She was no longer a person.
She was a door.
###
By the third week, she no longer wept.
She understood: the Yellow Room was a feeding thing—an altar to the color of infection and madness.
And now, it was hungry for her.
###
One night, the walls split open—not torn, but parted, as if obeying ancient command. The seam peeled wide, leaking hot, steaming pus that hissed as it struck the floor.
Behind the rupture: a corridor of jointed limbs—pale, bloodless fingers, knuckles reversed, curling and uncurling like insect legs. Some brushed her face as she passed. Some held her gently. One stroked her hair.
At the far end, a mirror.
But the thing inside wasn’t her reflection. It was a contender. Her body—reimagined. Eyeless. Smiling. Jaw too wide. Mouth open not for words but to let something else speak through.
It raised a dripping hand and reached toward her.
And she stepped forward.
###
By dawn, she was no longer herself.
Her hands folded neatly in her lap. Her face wore a serenity that didn’t belong to the human world. The thing inside her wore her skin like silk—tight, seamless, and smiling.
“I’m cured,” she said, voice dry as parchment cracking in fire.
Daniel staggered back. He knew.
But the yellow had already entered his mind.
Not through the walls.
Through her.
It whispered to him now, feeding from the fear curling behind his ribs.
###
Three days later, they found him in his office.
Face split wide.
Eyes missing.
Arms etched with a lattice of symbols carved deep into the muscle—sigils made of blood and purpose.
And on the walls of the chamber—
The yellow pulsed.
Slow. Hungry.
Alive.
Beware When Dreams Come True by Marc Audet
After Kayla's husband received the big promotion, he began traveling. He would be gone Monday through Friday, along with his new associate, who had just graduated from business school.
"Take advantage of the free time," he reassured her. "You can finally finish that English degree you started before we got married."
At the local college, she skimmed the course catalog and enrolled in "Romanticism and the Macabre in Victorian Literature". She had read "Dracula" and "Wuthering Heights" in high school and wondered about the dark side of love and passion.
This is when the dream started, recurring on weekdays, always the same.
The stairs creaked as Kevin crept out of the house. She followed him as he walked towards the church, shivering in the cold autumn air as the clock struck quarter past three. He entered the cemetery and stopped by an open grave. "Who died?" she asked. He did not answer. When she tried to touch him, he vanished. She saw that the grave was filled in and the tombstone shimmered in the dim starlight.
This particular night, she could make out the first letter of the name, "K", and part of the date, "October 31st". Kayla woke up in a cold sweat. Tomorrow was Halloween. Would Kevin die? Perhaps his plane would crash. The premonition unnerved her. She must call him, warn him, and beg him not to fly.
"It's only a dream, just those creepy stories you're reading," he said later that morning. "I'll be home tomorrow. Have to run! Love you."
That night, the dream returned, this time showing a full moon. Everything was clear now, Kevin standing by the covered grave, holding a knife, blood dripping. She read the name on the tombstone, "Kayla", and heard the sensuous whispering of his new associate, "Finally, you're free!"
Marc Audet lives near New Haven, Connecticut, where he is self-employed as a web application developer. He has traveled and lived in Canada, England, and Ireland. In addition to writing computer code in various languages, he also writes short stories, creative nonfiction, and poetry. His work has appeared in Across the Margin, The Gilded Weathervane, Flash Fiction Magazine, Rappahannock Review, The Prose Poem, Exquisite Death, and elsewhere.
Tangled by Jennifer Weigel
Damn, of all the places to get a flat. There’s not much civilization to be found out here on the panhandle these days – some derelict ruins now and again, vestiges of old ranching activities and long-ago tourism careening by at 95 miles an hour in a blur. The main road rerouted around this wasteland long ago, and I’d have joined it if not for my aversion to tolls and desire to take the shortest route.
I haven’t seen another car or truck in well over an hour and a half, even after stopping. Sigh. And, to top it off, my cell phone is still flatlining – no bars, no service. Hell, it’s been a while since I’ve seen any signs about service for that matter. If it weren’t for the state road, there would be no sense that a human presence had been felt out here in at least fifty years. And this so-called highway isn’t much to speak of – as many potholes as pavement.
The crumbling façade of an abandoned gas station greets me, surrounded by lowland scrub. But gas hasn’t been less than $1 in the whole of my lifetime, as the cattywampus sign here declares, so my aforementioned quip about fifty years seems an understatement. But although the building appears vacant, I know better than to make such assumptions.
“Is anybody there?” I call to the empty husk. I stand half-in and half-out of my car, peering over the hood as if hiding behind a shield. The wind moans low in response, and a single light flickers on deep within the ruins, from a distant second-story window.
“Shit,” I yell, leaping back into the sanctuary of my once-blue, now-gray-brown car, coated in a fine layer of silt as if trying to camouflage itself within its surroundings. I huddle in the driver’s seat at an off-kilter angle, staring at the yellow light out the passenger rear window as best I can. The wind continues to lash out, sandblasting my car with yet more detritus. The light remains on, and the sky grows darker as dusk settles. There is no movement other than the billowing wind driving more dust and stray tumbleweeds to bury what little evidence of my presence remains. I open the car door yet again, standing to peer at the second-story window.
The building itself wails, wind rushing through its sagging form, its roof collapsing in on itself in slow motion. Its boarded-up windows strain to hold what little remains of the walls in order, as if they had the power to do anything to stop the lingering effects of time and wind. The front door is shut, warning any would-be trespassers to Keep Out. And yet, still peeking out from the far window is the distant yellow light, reminiscent of those old incandescent bulbs that my parents used to set on a timer to deter burglars. Wait – that’s it! The light must be on a timer. Amazed anyone still has power out here, though.
Crap. It’s getting late now, and I need to think about changing the tire or doing something, anything, to get back on the road. I exit the car and sidle around the front to the passenger side, where what’s left of the blown-out tire rests in tatters on the ground, victim of one of the gaping potholes I had been so carefully trying to dodge. The car slumps towards its injury. As I edge closer to the ruins, a nervous chill worms even further up my spine. The entire building seems to be held together by some kind of shimmering substance, glistening like saliva in the dimming light. Luminescence creeps from the interior auto light, dancing along these threads with the weak incandescent glow from the second-story – filaments stretching along the ground between rocks and rubble as far as the eye can see.
A thick, viscous mesh of sticky, silken fibers, dusted with dirt, wraps itself around my right foot as I work my way along the length of the car, my eyes fixated on the yellow light. The webbing clings to my shoe and sock, sending shudders up my leg and spine, warning of tiny, unseen feet crawling all over me. I look down to find I must have stepped in an old, gritty cobweb, its tattered, dusty ends trailing in the wind like a ghost. I shake my foot to rid it of the discharge when a sudden click at the periphery of my mind draws my attention, and I glance up hurriedly to find myself in near-darkness. The second-story light is out, and the waiting night consumes me. The faint glow from within the car casts eerie shadows along the ground, the barely discernible forms of the gas station and sign lost to shadow, more like a giant webbed funnel than a building.
I rush towards my car door only to trip over what at first appears to be a small child, about six or seven years old, wearing an ancient, tattered gossamer nightgown of the same silken webbing. The child is pale and listless and turns towards me, neck careening at an odd angle like a puppet. Its myriad eyes are black and wide, all too many of them reflecting the faint interior auto light like pinpoint stars in a sea of nothingness, and its mouth hangs open, poisoned fangs glistening within.
The child lurches towards me, grasping hold of my leg in a swift motion. I attempt to crawl over the hood of my car, swiping at the strange figure, only to grab a handful of tattered cobwebs. A gust of wind abruptly blows the car door closed and, as the interior auto light is lost to the inky night, I notice hundreds of pinpoint starlit black eyes surrounding me, borne by yet more creepy child-creatures. In darkness, their clawed hands grab at me, pulling me from the hood of the car and towards the gaping vortex of the funnel.
Multi-disciplinary mixed media conceptual artist Jennifer Weigel lives in Kansas, USA. Weigel is an avid art collector and enjoys playing board and role-playing games, junk store thrifting, and mail art. Her kindred animal is the deer though if she were a dog she’d be a beagle. Weigel’s favorite foods are unagi don or broiled calamari steak and frosting with or without cake. Weigel has been a regular contributor to Haunted MTL and is involved with Nat1 Publishing. Author of Witch Hayzelle’s Recipes for Disaster novella / chapbook trilogy and a myriad of short stories, poems, art discourse, and more drifting around the Interwebs. Learn more on her website here. https://jenniferweigelart.com/