Horror Stories of 1,000 Words or Less
For the month of July 2026, these are the stories that entertain us most.
* Shelf Life by Wyatt Hittelman
* Covered by Lilies by A.R. Lach
* Between Dusk and Dawn by J.S. Bailey
* Puddle Volunteer by William Kitcher
* The Wendingo's Disciple by Tom Kropp
* Squeeze by Blake Wickham
* The Last Laugh Track by Rod White
* I Didn't Mean to Destroy the Most Precious Thing in the World to Me by Shahrzad
* Frank's Fixation by Dominick Lucyk
* No Quarter by M Catherine
* Portraits by Anatoly Loginov
* The Wedding by Koren Cowgill
* Sound in the Silence by Anne Dougherty
* Whaling Trip of One Thousand Demons by Aza Smith
* Divine Intervention by Kevin Ramsden
* A Very Very Bad Case of Acne by Ethan Luce
* Scrunched Up As Small As Possible by Jim Catt
* The Thing in the Lake is Us by Alexa Levitt
* What Came Home by Charlie Ilett
* Saturnalia by Amanda Desiree
* Mother of Mine by Julie Holland
Shelf Life by Wyatt Hittelman
“How could something that beautiful be called a dummy?” He wonders as he loads the trunk of his car with dummy after dummy. He knows he can only take one on stage, but it doesn’t hurt to have options. He is so excited, he’s lucky he feels his phone buzzing.
“Hi! Is this Travis?” The phone inquires.
“This is he.”
“Alright, there’s no easy way to do this. Just don’t shoot the messenger.”
“Sorry, who is this?”
“I’m with the theater, and unfortunately, we have to cancel your show tonight.”
“Are you serious? What about the people who bought tickets?”
“That’s just it. Ticket sales are so low, we’d actually lose money if we opened tonight.”
“No one told me that!”
“Well, I am, right now. Sorry, man, look, your puppets are great, but you’re… nothing special.” The unmistakable sound of a call ending marches its way through Travis’s ear.
Travis shoves the phone into his pocket. Any onlooker would think the man lugging so many puppets is on a walk of shame. But to Travis, it is anything but that; his dummies are embracing him. And why wouldn’t they? To them, Travis is their father; he built them and gave them life.
When his own face was riddled with pimples, bright red and eager to be popped, Travis idolized how dummies were pristine, forever youthful. His pimples were a flaw, but those little red dots painted onto the wooden faces were gorgeous.
Love crept into every corner of his mind. Every Christmas, his list had one item: “A dummy.” He kept lining his shelves with more and more. When they were out of real estate, he’d bring a different one to school every day. His peers would shove him into the walls, throw their trash on him, all of them jealous of the love Travis possessed.
One day, a classmate’s girlfriend said she thought Travis’s puppet was cute. So, after school, the boyfriend and his friends circled Travis like a pack of wolves and tore the dummy from his hands. They spent hours slamming it onto the asphalt. Travis wasn’t worried, though; unlike him, no matter how hard a dummy fell, it never bruised. Travis loved the idea, even long after his death, his puppets would always remain.
The preserving chemicals on his desk keep his workshop almost identical to his childhood room: dummies lining every available shelf.
Travis’s love has only grown stronger now that he’s their father. As a kid, he only saw a reflection in every puppet. Now, a piece even more beautiful than himself is in all of them. He lifts the hand of a puppet the way a prince caresses the hand of a princess. The hand is featureless. Travis can’t understand how his old, varicose-riden hands make something so flawless.
“You’re nothing special.”
Travis doesn’t smile. But the smiles he carves onto his dummies are sculpted into time.
“Your puppets are great.”
Of course, they’re great. They are constant and enchanting—everything Travis aspires to be. No blemishes, no pain, hands always ready to embrace, fingers incapable of spreading. Of course, his puppets are great; they are what people want to see at his shows. Why would people want to see a cheap impersonation when his hand is inside the real thing?
The fingers come first. He takes great care in binding them together. The needle laces his fingers like a boot. The dummies on his shelf smile, knowing their father understands them.
Between his thumb and extended palm, the exacto knife traces around the moles on his skin. Travis carves out the leathery mountain range, making it as smooth as paper.
The sight of blood is the first sign he will at long last be perfect. All that’s in the way is his skin, soft like a mattress begging for someone to lie down and rest. He slices an opening, but instead of springs, the red tongue of his muscle is ready to taste what Travis is going to feed it.
Balsa wood is malleable yet strong enough to prevent bruising. When he reaches for the planks, his loose skin flows and dances in the air like clothes hung out to dry. He muscles the wood under his body’s blanket, jamming and compressing the veins beneath. The craters where Travis’s moles used to reside are filled by the nails he hammers in to keep his new bones in place. His old calcium bones crack under the iron: each strike one step closer to eternity.
Before he can shine, Travis wipes off the red paint seeping from his body. With his mittens, he lathers himself in the lacquer that keeps his dummies permanent. Now he can join them on the shelf, sharing the spotlight.
As he bears witness, he can only hear his heart thumping when he faces the mirror. Travis loves all his creations, so why can’t he love what glares back at him? The eyes. Dummies’ eyes are alluring; Travis’s are not. They're too dull. Too wet.
With his fingers bound, they make perfect shovels. Travis brings them to his swamp-colored eyes and digs. He doesn’t stop until his eyes dangle out of their sockets like snot. He slices the optic nerve, and the new glass eyes become pearls resting in place.
He’s finally done it. Travis is shining, but through his new eyes, the mirror disappears into the abyss. He reaches out, but down and up are one and the same now. Thrashing his way to the ground, Travis embraces himself with his hands designed for hugging, but the lacquer shields the feeling of love’s warmth. In his dance of madness, only the dummies, lining every shelf, can see how perfect Travis has become.
And isn’t he remarkable? He doesn't need eyes to cry.
Wyatt Hittelman has not been previously published. He is a student and sketch comedian. He is a lover of all things scary, silly and everything in-between.
Covered by Lilies by A.R. Lach
“So beautiful,” they said.
“So young.”
“Taken on the eve of her wedding.”
“A dark day for us all.”
When Astara, the daughter of Orla and Tadhg, was found dead at the woods’ edge, Lesha Town mourned as they had grieved their dead since time out of memory.
In the middle of the Old Forest, they wrapped her body in filmy clothes and laid her on the stone altar dedicated to the Four-Faced Goddess. Her mother and sisters wove circlets of snowdrops through the hair that streamed like a river of fire over the dais, mourning the bride she would never be. Through tears, her friends clasped her hands over garlands of lilies, and half the town planted living flowers around the base of the altar.
Finally, Orla laid the death mask over her face, a wax likeness with lips colored the pale pink they had been in life, cheeks faintly stained with rose, flawless and untouched by death.
On a morning when the sun fell golden through the moss-hung branches of the Old Forest, the town gathered around the altar, and her mother began the song of grief and farewell.
Her father and sisters joined first, then her friends and neighbors, the lament swelling as everyone who knew and remembered Astara added their voices. They recalled her life from her first steps to her betrothal: her beauty, her kindness, her wit and humor, even how her nose crinkled when she laughed and how she ran like a swallow in flight. Then it turned to grief as they sang how their lives were left hollow at her departure, how they missed her voice, her kind eyes, her warm heart.
A cold wind swept through the circle, the sky darkened, and the song died, giving way to terrified screams as a wraith-like figure materialized beside the dais where Astara lay. Some of the people scattered, while others stood transfixed by the sight.
The apparition was unnaturally tall and thin, dressed in tattered gray draperies that hung from its body in ribbons. An icy, mold-tasting wind stirred the veils around its face, partly revealing corpse-like features the color of ash, over-long teeth showing between shrunken lips.
The spirit lifted a long, skeletal arm to point at the crowd, and each of the townspeople startled as if the clawed hand had gone through their hearts.
“You,” it said in a horrible, grating voice, like stone grinding over stone. “And you! All of you, people of Lesha, sing of her life like a field of grain destroyed in the summer hail--and you were the ones who took it away. You, Gaihll,” pointing at Astara’s betrothed, “were too weak to say what was in your heart. And you, Revah,” extending a long finger toward Astara’s best friend, standing beside Gaihll with a hand on his arm. “You only loved her for what you could take, and when one thing was refused, your love turned to hate.”
Gaihll turned pale and looked down. Revah’s hands slid off his arm and twisted nervously in her skirts.
“And so, you drew her away into the forest,” it said, then looked at Gaihll with black eyes like pits of muddy water. “And you strangled the breath from her throat. Does it make your kisses sweeter to know there is blood in them?”
A gasp ran among the people, and many began to retreat in slow, trembling steps. Gaihll turned white, then red, his throat working as he started to speak.
“And you,” to another young woman nearby. “You saw it all and said nothing. Orla and Tadhg never taught her to protect herself. You taught her to make herself small, to smile and acquiesce. All of you, murderers and fools, liars and careless, had a share in her death, and now you mourn what you took from yourselves.”
“Begone, foul spirit!” Gaihll shouted, dashing toward the dais. “You dishonor her memory and the goddess by standing in this holy place!”
“Begone?” the spirit replied, the bruise-colored lips curving into a curious smile under its veil. “It was only half an hour ago that you wanted me to come back, Gaihll.”
He froze midstep, his face turning gray as if the breath had been driven out of him. Around his throat, a pattern of dark bruises began to rise like a death mark.
Revah screamed and ran, while the same mark wrapped around her collarbones.
Orla and Tadhg clutched each other’s hands.
A gale swept through the grove, breaking limbs from the ancient trees and throwing up so much debris that for a moment they were left blinded. When they could see again, the flowers around the altar were withered, and the mossy ground lay blasted and dead. The place where the apparition had stood had turned black as if scorched, and Astara’s body had vanished, leaving only the veils lying flat over the dais and the death mask split cleanly in two.
A.R Lach is a fantasy and supernatural/horror writer whose stories often feature feminist themes and monsters with a compassionate twist. She is currently unpublished, and lives in Wisconsin with her family. Connect with her on Instagram @arlachwriting or on her website at https://arlach.wixsite.com/arlach.
Between Dusk and Dawn by J.S. Bailey
Dusk
The red sun sank toward the horizon as a figure on horseback sauntered to the edge of town.
Shortly after the sun had been cut in half by the horizon, he walked past the saloon. A tumbleweed drifted by his feet, pushed by a gentle breeze. He stomped on it, twisting his foot with a hollow crunch as the flattened ball of dead bush cowered into the sand.
"Something the matter?"
The stranger lifted his head slightly at the sound of those words. An old-timer outside the saloon caught a glimpse of the stranger's thick, grey beard—black at the roots—growing high on his cheek as though it reached his eyes.
The stranger grunted and continued on his way, the shoulders of his mud-brown overcoat highlighted by the deep-red glow of the setting sun. It looked, to the old-timer, as though the man carried himself from his haunches as opposed to his feet.
He stopped dead at the doors to the bank after hearing the click of a revolver. He held out his open-palmed, gloved hands at his sides.
"That there money belongs to the town, ya hear?"
The stranger shifted his pupils to the corners of his eyes, watching the final slice of sun disappear from view. The glare on his overcoat turned from orange to white, and the air became cold.
"Turn around," said the Sheriff.
A grimace marked the stranger's beard as he slowly twisted on his heels; as he did, he lifted his head, showing the Sheriff thick hair that continued all the way up his face, between yellow eyes and grey-haired ears.
"Well now, you're an odd-looking feller."
The lonesome stranger tipped his hat; sharp nails pierced the fingers of his gloves, and pointed ears puckered up under the shadow of his hat.
The sheriff's eyes widened, and he clasped his revolver with both hands. Cold metal shimmered in his shaky grasp.
The stranger pulled his coat to the sides; no guns. His shoulders raised and grew wider, his legs grew longer and thicker at the thighs, his hands doubled in size, grey hair could be seen at his wrists as his jacket sleeves rode up, stretching arms, and bulging veins painted his neck as it grew from behind a wild rag.
Hollering and hooting sounded from the saloon. Then the growing laughter of women and music intensified.
Under his hat—as the stranger lifted his head completely—a wrinkled snout occupied the centre of his face. Mist plumed from his leathery-black nose, and the stranger finally spoke, his voice gruff and tacky. "Sorry about this, Sheriff."
He leaped at the Sheriff before he could shoot, and the poor man's screams woke townsfolk from their slumber. They sprang and clambered to their windows to see flashes of a bestial event. Collectively, they witnessed a strange figure slash and sink its claws into the meaty body of the Sheriff; tear his limbs from his warm, hollering corpse; and rip his body in two at the waist, leaving his innards to slop and flood the sand beneath.
They watched in horror as something beyond nightmares cursed their awakened minds. Slobbering fangs glinted as the creature-in-clothes howled at the moon, which hung in the darkening sky like a nail on a wall.
Dawn
After the sun peeked over the horizon on the other side of town, the lonesome stranger shrank and fixed his hat over fuzzy, rounded ears. He filled his saddlebags with gold, removed scraps of torn leather from around his ankles, found a suitable pair of boots among many scattered limbs, then rode over red and orange sand in search of another town.
J. S. Bailey is obsessed with the power of words. His short fiction has been published in An Aitiuil: Volume II by the Marthello Journal and Madrigal Press. He has a short commentary on the craft of writing published in an anthology by The People's College. His travel guide on Dublin was published by CZYK Publishing. And he has a short story pending publication with Horrorsmith.
Puddle Volunteer by William Kitcher
A thunderstorm hit us for about the tenth time that day. We’d had numerous storms since the beginning of the month, and the nighttime weather woman on TV said she had no idea when they were going to stop. Something to do with the meteorite showers on New Year’s Day, she thought.
I went to the back door and looked out. A huge puddle had formed in the corner of the patio up against the wall, and it was...well, it was writhing. I put on my raincoat and baseball cap, flipped on the porch light, and opened the door. Two of my dogs looked at the rain and hustled back inside. I went out and looked at the puddle more closely.
It was full of worms. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of them, in the puddle about three inches deep. Wriggling, slithering, like a weird orgy. They were just a little larger than the regular worms I see in gardens, with heads that were kind of triangular and curved, wider than their long, thin bodies.
I love all animals, including the slimy ones. I foster dogs and cats. I volunteer at sanctuaries for rescued racehorses and greyhounds. I take spiders out of my house and put them on the flowers. Once, I climbed a tree to put a baby bird back in its nest after it had tumbled out; its mother didn’t like my touching it and jabbed me with her beak. I regularly see worms in the rain on the driveway, on the sidewalk, on the street, and I wonder how they got there. I always pick them up and throw them into a flower bed.
I got a shovel, scooped up a pile of worms, let the water run off the blade, and deposited them in the vegetable garden. I did it again, and again, and again. After about ten minutes, they were a writhing pile in the green beans.
I went inside, dried off, and went to bed, feeling good about having saved numerous creatures from drowning.
I woke to a tingling sensation all over my body. I turned on the light and looked down. I was covered in worms, and there were worms all over the bed and floor. And they were on my face. I tried to brush them off, but they’d attached themselves to me with little spikes on their tails.
One that was on my nose rose up in front of my eyes and appeared to stare at me.
A strange, unprompted thought happened in my head. We live in water, you idiot. We come out of water only to feed.
The worm crunched down on my eyelid, and I heard other crunches. As I passed out, it occurred to me that my foster dogs and cats were of no help to me whatsoever.
William Kitcher’s stories, plays, and comedy sketches have been published, produced, and/or broadcast in Australia, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Czechia, England, Germany, Guernsey, Holland, India, Ireland, Nigeria, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, the U.S., and Wales. His comic noir novel, “Farewell And Goodbye, My Maltese Sleep”, the second funniest novel ever written, was published in 2023 by Close To The Bone Publishing, and is available on Amazon.
The Wendingo's Disciple by Tom Kropp
The wendigo exploded out of the underbrush in a rush that human eyes could barely follow. Seven-year-old Robert watched out the window of his cabin in horrified disbelief. The wendigo resembled a cross between a dark, bipedal demon and a deer, with strange antlers instead of demon horns and a massive maw out of nightmares, filled with titanic teeth. The dark demon’s colossal claws cut like a chainsaw through the brush. The wendigo was almost upon Robert’s uncle, Michael, when Loretta screamed to her brother out the window.
“Michael, catch!” She threw a twelve-gauge shotgun out the window.
Robert’s father, Thomas, cursed his wife for getting involved and dragged her away from the window.
Michael adeptly snatched the cast weapon, and he spun, firing the shotgun from his hip. The twelve-gauge thundered in a succession of shots as Michael expertly pumped the gun to shuck shells while triggering torrents of buckshot that tagged his target’s torso and even sledged the head.
No living creature should have been able to withstand the welter of buckshot that bludgeoned its body and clobbered its cranium. Michael fired four times in a flaring, fulminating fusillade that flogged but failed to fell the wendigo. The demon rammed into Michael and ripped the gun from his grip.
Michael was a former combat soldier, and his hunting knife flared to life in a savage swipe that should have slashed a bad gash, but instead rasped harmlessly along the demon’s scales, nicking its neck innocuously. Then Michael was screaming in its crushing grasp.
Robert would always wonder exactly what he’d witnessed. A dimensional gateway seemed to open around the demon, and it seemed to pull Michael inside itself as if absorbing his body and soul as he shrieked in agony and terror.
The wendigo looked in the window and made eye contact with Robert. In those eyes, Robert glimpsed a place of both darkness and fire, where demons danced, and human souls screamed in anguish, being tortured for entertainment by the demons. He also briefly glimpsed the flip side: souls that thought they were going to heaven, that instead languished in a prison-type limbo waiting for God to judge them.
“Don’t look at it!” Robert’s father shouted, yanking him away from the window.
Then Thomas screamed at Loretta. “Your sick brother brought the wendigo down on himself by raping and killing those girls. Then he runs here for your help, and you risk our son’s life to help your freak brother!”
Loretta was crying. She loved her little brother, despite his evil side.
“Congratulations, Loretta! Our son looked in the wendigo’s eyes! How do you think that will affect him?”
Loretta could only cry in response.
###
18 Years Later
Over fifty women were rumored to have disappeared on the Trail of Tears through Canada. Robert could personally take credit for 23 of the victims. He’d become a serial killer by age 16, carefully picking his victims and preying on the drug addict and alcoholic prostitutes who often had to hitchhike that long stretch of highway. Robert would offer them rides and get them high and drunk and then make his moves, subduing them swiftly. He had a cabin in the woods, he would take them there and usually keep them for days to torture and rape like toys before killing them.
Looking into the wendigo’s eyes as a boy had given him a look beyond his own dimension. He’d sold his soul to the devil, praying that when he died, he would become a demon able to torture other souls.
He spotted his next victim trudging through the freezing snow along the road and drove up beside her. “Hey, Alecia, need a ride?”
“Thanks,” Alicia climbed in. She was an attractive brunette Inuit woman with a bad heroin addiction.
“I got some stuff if you want to party,” Robert offered.
“That’d be great,’ Alycia responded.
“I got a little hunting cabin nearby,” he suggested.
“Sounds great.”
Robert smiled.
###
Robert gave Alecia a big dose of heroin in the needle and waited for her to grow groggy. Much to his surprise, she stayed fully alert, staring hard into his eyes with an intensity that made him uncomfortable.
“The shot won’t work on me, Robert,” Alecia said in a voice that was suddenly completely inhuman. It sounded like a beast snarling the words at him, and fear flooded Robert.
“You’ve had a lot of fun with the victims you brought here. You did your pathetic praying, thinking you were talking to the devil and making some kind of pact. We watched and laughed at you,” the female demon snarled.
Robert pulled his pistol, and it profusely popped out projectiles that peppered her. But she just shrugged the slugs off and snatched the pistol from his grip with a twist that snapped his wrist.
“What are you?” he screamed in terror and agony.
“You don’t recognize me? We met long ago,” she growled monstrously.
Alecia shape shifted. She morphed from a woman into the wendigo. Robert tried to run for the door, and she lamed his leg with a claw lash that smashed home on bone, fracturing his femur. The wendigo’s claws expertly flayed the flesh from his leg from ankle to thigh and ripped the skin right off his leg. Robert screamed at the overwhelming agony.
“I’m going to pull you apart slowly here,” the wendigo rumbled in its demonic voice. “Then, when you die, and we get your soul to the other side, we’re really going to enjoy working on you. You thought you were some kind of special demon in training. Instead, you’re just a pet for us to play with.
The wendigo’s head dipped down, and its teeth tore through Robert’s testicles.
Tom Kropp’s work has appeared in The Horror Zine, J Journal, Chiron Review, Churches, Children and Daddies, Down in the Dirt, Freedom Fiction Journal, Short-Story Me, Blood Moon Rising, Dark Harbor, Flash Phantoms, You Phantomaniacs Anthology, Wicked Shadow Press, The Listening Eye, Evening Street Review, Conceit, Spotlight on Recovery, Outdoor Life and Muscle and Fitness. His play Jailhouse Confessions was performed at the Kennedy Center in 2019. He has numerous novels and audiobooks available. You can read more of his writings at https://tomkropp.wordpress.com.
Squeeze by Blake Wickham
“Perform the squeeze,” a voice above me says.
I recognize it. It belongs to the man with red eyes from the bar. I remember one pitcher of beer, another, and maybe one more. Did he put something in my drink?
My throat is parched, and my head hurts. I feel like death.
“Hello?” I call.
A small light fixture, flat against the ceiling like the speaker, provides just enough light to see.
The room is made of scuffed concrete that feels cold and damp against my skin. I am naked. The walls are barren, grooved with scratches from the cruel stone’s past prisoners.
Embedded in one wall is a small hole, around seven inches in diameter.
“Perform the squeeze,” says the man.
“Hey!” I yell, “You can’t do this! People will look for me!”
It’s true. It would be unlike me to miss a day of work. The watering hole companions I call coworkers would definitely think something was amiss by my second undeclared absence. However, something tells me my captor doesn’t care if they notice.
I approach the hole and look through to the other side. The neighboring room is just as empty, sans a wooden door built into the opposite wall.
I squint at the ceiling, noticing telltale lines that suggest the border of a trapdoor. It’s too tall to reach, at least twelve feet above me, explaining the aches and pains in my hip and ankles. I must have been dropped.
“Perform the squeeze,” the man repeats.
“Let me out!” I yell at the speaker, “This isn’t funny!”
There is no answer from above, just the echo of my own pathetic voice.
“Bastard!” I yell.
The anger is refreshing, a welcome distraction. I pound at the walls around me as sweat glistens on my brow and slides down my face. My fingernails are sharp, then dull, then nubs, and finally bloody.
Reaching into the hole provides no solution.
My sweat turns to tears, my grief having skipped the bargaining stage altogether.
I weep helplessly. It’s been hours, and I haven’t had anything to eat or drink. I am going to die in here.
I am not aware of how much time passes before I find myself staring into the hole again.
“Perform the squeeze,” the voice says.
I say nothing. The task is impossible, but necessary.
My left ankle slides past the lip of the hole easily, like the shaft of a boot three sizes too big. The other follows, making the bumps press into each other and clack painfully together. They press, jockeying for position, but find nothing. Both grind together painfully, and I feel them crack.
One ankle breaks, folding itself around the other side of the port while I press on, legs forming an X atop one another. The knee above buckles, crushed by the hole's perimeter. I grit my teeth so hard that one on the top row snaps. The pain of which is a pinprick compared to my legs.
My hips are next, and the melody of the crumbling, knocking bones reminds me of icicles breaking off the bottoms of gutters.
They slide through the hole, making my abdomen swell with pain. I feel like a pressurized can. Will my guts pop out of the tab of my mouth and spill onto the concrete?
My chest introduces a new element to the challenge. Breathing. Ragged, quick breaths turn to nothing as the diameter of the hole prevents me from drawing air. I shove it through, feeling the stabs of my broken ribs poking the soft organs they protect. It sounds like someone is chewing potato chips as they shatter.
I raise my arms on either side of my head. The twin elbow break is delicious. They flop uselessly as my brain sends signals to limbs that physically cannot obey.
My head and my wrists are last.
They scrape and scrape, the pressure tightening on my head like rubber bands around a watermelon. It bulges uncomfortably, my brain unable to escape. I feel my skull break; the pink organ within shifts, suddenly malleable. It is exquisite. My raw, disfigured forehead spits chips of bone dipped in something gray with the viscosity of applesauce.
Blood falls down my face, my limbs, and my torso. I roll uselessly across the concrete; my body twisted in a sweet agony. Everything is broken, dislocated, or shattered. I am no longer the man who drank pitchers of beer in the bar. I am the man who put himself through pain, impossible pain, and conquered.
The door slips open as I writhe against it. I am free.
Blake is a writer from the Chicagoland area. He has previously been published in Piker Press and has a piece upcoming in Schlock Webzine.
The Last Laugh Track by Rod White
Petra Salgado almost skipped the audition. She specialized in media preservation, not performance, and the casting notice read like a joke:
Seeking performer for silent jester role. Must excel in reactive expression. Improvisational instincts required. Background character. No acknowledgment given.
She only went because she had spent three years cataloging lost television recordings, and the show being rebooted, Family Ever After, had one of the strangest archival gaps she’d ever encountered.
The jester appeared in every original episode from 1982 to 1989. Bells on his hat. Porcelain mask with a painted grin. Silent. Always in the background. Never addressed. Never credited.
And somehow…always relevant to the scene.
Petra entered the soundstage, the original set replicated perfectly: floral couch, fake fireplace, aggressively cheerful wallpaper.
A casting assistant handed her a motley costume.
“No script?” Petra asked.
“Just react naturally,” the assistant said.
Petra stepped onto the set as actors performed a sentimental family argument. She leaned against a fake doorway, arms folded, studying them.
Halfway through the scene, the lead actor forgot his line. Petra instinctively tilted her head and clapped twice.
The actor recovered instantly, delivering a new line that wasn’t in the script but landed perfectly.
The director shouted, “Yes! That’s it! That’s exactly what we need.”
Petra got the role.
That night, she streamed old episodes in her apartment, watching carefully. The jester never spoke, but his reactions predicted things. In one episode, he slowly mimed a falling gesture behind a character who later died in a stunt accident months later.
She told herself it was coincidence.
Rehearsals began the next day, but something felt…slippery.
Scenes changed. Dialogues she’d joked about appeared in revised scripts. Once, while she stood behind a kitchen counter during filming, she imagined juggling plates. The next morning, the prop department had placed decorative plates on the counter. During the scene, she tossed three of them to an actor, who dropped them in a clumsy attempt to catch and juggle them.
The studio audience roared with laughter.
No one acknowledged Petra.
But what unsettled her the most was the laugh track.
Producers layered the original 1980s audience recordings into the new footage for nostalgia.
Petra donned headphones to listen. The laughter sounded wrong. Underneath, she could hear whispering.
She removed the headphones, cleared her mind, and replaced them.
Having fun yet?
Petra yanked the headset off.
“Vintage audio bleed,” the sound technician said. “Magnetic overlap. Happens with old reels.”
Petra nodded, but her heart continued to pound.
She tracked down two surviving writers from the original series. One refused to see her. The other, Gerald Pike, agreed reluctantly to meet her at a café.
“You’re playing the Fool now?” Gerald asked, stirring his coffee without drinking.
“Was he improv?” Petra asked. “The original actor?”
Gerald stared at her for a long moment.
“He wasn’t cast,” he said finally.
“What does that mean?”
“He just…showed up during taping one day. The audience loved him, and the network kept him.”
“You didn’t hire him?”
“No contracts. No paperwork. He never spoke. When someone asked what his name was, he just rang the bells on his hat and pointed at the camera.”
Petra felt a chill race up her spine.
“What happened to him?”
Gerald blurted a dry laugh. “We filmed the last episode live. After the curtain call, he just disappeared.”
Back at the studio, Petra requested access to storage archives. An intern led her to a prop vault where she found an odd trunk. Black. Polished.
A brass plague read:
FOOL
Petra hesitated before lifting the lid.
Inside were dozens of porcelain masks, each painted with exaggerated smiles. Thin paper tags dangled from each one.
Petra read through a few.
Danial Morrow -1982
Elaine Brooks – 1885
Thomas Keene – 1987
She flipped through faster. Every season. Different names. Different masks.
At the bottom sat a final mask, pristine white, its smile still unpainted.
A tag hung from it.
Petra turned it over.
Petra Salgado - 2026
Her stomach dropped.
###
Filming for the reboot’s premiere was scheduled live, honoring the original finale tradition. The cast buzzed with nervous energy as the studio audience filled the seats.
Petra stood in costume beside the stage entrance, mask tucked under her arm. She told herself she wouldn’t wear it.
“Places,” the stage manager shouted.
Petra took her usual background position, and the actors delivered their lines flawlessly.
The audience laughed on cue.
Then Petra realized the audience looked…crowded. Too crowded. Rows stretched deeper than the physical building allowed. Faces blurred together, all smiling, all waiting, all staring…at her.
Petra’s heart hammered.
She tried to leave the stage, but her feet wouldn’t move.
The cast continued acting, oblivious to her.
The added laugh track swelled into something layered and hungry.
Petra raised the blank mask with shaking hands.
Through the laughter, she heard the whisper.
Make them laugh.
Petra lowered the mask, and the laughter faltered.
She raised it again, and the audience roared.
Heat spread through her, filling the hollow space inside with electric certainty. She stepped forward and performed instinctively, miming the family’s argument, exaggerating their emotions, twisting their conflict into absurd comedy.
The audience howled.
Petra felt herself growing lighter, thinner, stretched between their laughter and the stage lights.
As the final scene ended, the cast gathered for the curtain call. They bowed. Hugged. Waved.
None of them acknowledged her.
Petra bowed deeply anyway, her white, porcelain mask gleaming beneath the lights.
The audience rose to a standing ovation.
The actors filed offstage, but the applause didn’t stop. It only grew louder. Closer. Endless.
Petra bowed again and again, her bells chiming, the audience waiting for the next joke she hadn’t performed yet.
When she tried to remove the mask, it wouldn’t budge.
She gazed at a monitor and froze in horror.
Her mask was colorful now. Complete with a grotesque smile that stretched beyond normality from ear to ear.
Rod A. White has operated a writing business since 2010, providing services to a global clientele. He is now semi-retired, producing more of his own works. Rod’s stories have been accepted for publication by Flame Tree Publishing, Crimson Quill Press, Dragon Soul Press, Inkd Publishing, and Wolfsinger Publication, among others. Rod runs serial novels on Ko-fi.com and Royal Road. He has also published two novels and numerous nonfiction eBooks on the craft of writing, which can be found at https://payhip.com/RodAWhiteStoryworks.
I Didn't Mean to Destroy the Most Precious Thing in the World to Me by Shahrzad
I leaned my head back against the wall in the Emergency room at our local hospital, tears pouring down my face. And it wasn’t just from the pain either. The swelling and rash had already gone down after several antihistamines and other anti-allergen shots, but my heart was breaking for my poor darling Cara.
I didn’t mean to. I can’t believe I killed the most precious thing to me in the world.
I looked at myself in the selfie view of my phone camera. I still looked deadly ill. The police had questioned me, but there was nothing more than a squashed bloody spider in my bedroom, and they had to let me go. They said they would search for Cara as they helped the paramedics get me out of there. I heard them talking about “mental breakdown” and “paranoid” with the emerg intake.
That day had been like most other days I spent with Cara. We were in bed, and it was her “turn”. I slipped my fingers over her dazzling, silken skin, feeling her soft and lovable under my hands.
And then, I tried to repress the familiar shudder as her limbs elongated and she sprouted four more, bristles poked out of her smooth skin, her head grew large and her eyes multiplied. I rolled away from her.
A spider as big as a beach ball stood quivering on the bed where Cara had been buckling and crying out in pleasure a second ago. The transformation was very fast.
And it only lasted a few minutes, mercifully. I tried to control my face and body so she couldn’t see my fear, which had never lessened, not one iota, through all these months.
I hated and feared spiders since childhood, but that had never come up in the very early days of our relationship.
About three weeks into what had been the best relationship of my life so far, Cara decided she trusted me and told me the reason why she hadn’t let me make her orgasm.
“I turn into a spider” she had murmured.
I froze. I knew immediately she wasn’t joking or mad, simply telling the bald truth.
“No one else knows. I’ve never orgasmed with a partner before.” She snuggled up to me. “There was a mirror next to my bed when I was a child. I was, you know, experimenting, and then it happened. I could see the spider in the mirror.”
I couldn’t say anything. She looked up at me, worry shadowing her beautiful green eyes. “You don’t mind do you? It doesn’t change anything. I - I love you so much - I’ve never told anyone - I want to be with you properly, let you do all the things to me.” She pressed against me, naked, and my heart had melted even as I became aroused. I drew her close and whispered, “Shhh, baby, it’s ok. I would love you even if you turned into a worm, remember?”
She laugh-cried and then opened up to me. I reached deep inside her, and soon enough, she orgasmed.
That had been six months ago. I always let go of her as soon as she started transforming, so I wouldn’t have to feel her body shrinking and ballooning, the limbs growing and the bristles. Oh the bristles.
I couldn’t get used to it. I walked to the bedroom window. It was getting worse. Because now Cara’s love had grown, she wanted me to hold her while she came, to pet her while she was in spider form. She wanted more. She never said so, but I knew, by the look of reproach and longing on her beautiful face as she flickered back into human form. And she had been talking about marriage and commitment.
She was only a spider for a few minutes. And everything else was perfect.
A movement caught my eye - I turned. She was scuttling towards me. She had never done that before. Wordlessly understanding my aversion, she had always respected my distance while she was a spider.
But now she was approaching. I took a step back, impulsively reached down, grabbed my slipper and raised it.
The large spider jumped on me and then bit, releasing venom into my blood. I screamed in agony, and then I lashed out with the slipper. The pain and horror befuddling me, the slipper squashed my beloved Cara fully. I fell howling to the floor in a paroxysm of grief and pain.
I will never love again.
Sharhzad is a woman of colour and first-generation immigrant living in Canada. Otherwise, she prefers to remain anonymous. Her work has appeared in the NoSleep and Creepy Pod podcasts, and she writes feverishly on Reddit, where she has more than 400 followers.
Frank's Fixation by Dominick Lucyk
“I just don’t get it, Frank.”
Frankly, Frank didn’t get it either.
Well, he got plenty of It… but that was the whole problem.
It was seductive, yet It was slowly sapping the now middle-aged man’s life from him. Not just him, either. He was just one of the sorry masses upon whom It now exerted Itself.
Frank knew that It wasn’t helping, that life would be so much better without It. And yet… It was so, so sweet. Similar to the smell that wafts up from a trashcan behind the grocery store; the rotting, cloying stench of decayed fruit has that has a sweet tinge to it… that is, before it starts ripping your nostrils apart and making you gag.
Frank sighed.
“I don’t either, Emily.”
“Just… put It away, lock It in a room and wait for It to die. Hell, I’ll take care of It for you until…”
That was too much.
“You shut your goddamn mouth! It is not going anywhere near you, and I don’t care if that means you’ll never talk to me again!”
Frank’s fist, quite forcefully, slammed into the table. Erica shuddered slightly at the sight, especially as blood began to bubble from Frank’s first few fingers.
But she had seen worse. Even if she had never seen It.
Erica expected another outburst, but Frank forewent that particular course of action.
Instead, he let out another sigh.
Erica reached over the table. It took an extreme effort, but she managed to force her face into a facsimile of the sweet smile she used to flash so naturally.
At least the little dimples on her cheeks were visible. That wasn’t enough to get a smile out of Frank, but maybe a few years ago, it would have been.
But there was only a moment for her slight fingers to finely feel their way across Frank’s forearm. He grunted and grabbed her thin wrist, tossing it to the side. Not gently, either.
It was Erica’s turn to sigh. Wordlessly, she began to rise.
She walked the scant few steps away to the dingy apartment’s door and began to turn the knob. As the ancient mechanism let out a squeak, Frank closed his eyes tightly.
Then, reluctantly, he raised his voice.
“Wait. Erica. Don’t leave. Fine, I’ll… I’ll show you. But just once, so you can… so you can understand.”
She jerked her slender neck sharply towards him, beautiful blonde hair swishing.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
She wasn’t sure if she should clap or cry, so she did neither.
Instead, Frank slowly stood. His knees clicked as he made the effort. The pale, paltry light in the apartment made his skin look almost grey. His bald head was wrinkled and dull, without any of the lustrous shine so common upon the scalps of men without hair.
He shuffled, quite sluggishly, to the nearby closet door. Digging into his pocket, he pulled out a rusty key. Most people in this day and age relied on electric locks… but not so in Frank’s apartment. That was money that could go to supporting It. It was the same reason there was so little light, and why Frank had never bothered to pay to repair the gigantic hole in the crotch of his only pair of pants.
The lock creaked as it greedily received the key. Then, a series of excited squeaks rung out, piercing through the silence that had settled over the apartment.
It came out.
It was about six feet long and stood on four paws, Its head reaching up to Frank’s waist. Of course, It had been much smaller in the years prior. Its skin was scaly, and yet smooth, somewhat similar to a snake's. Still, the odd tuft of fur stuck out along its sinewy length… especially on top of its too-small head. Bright eyes, much like a man’s, were settled into its all-too-human face. Its mouth was quite distinct, though – it stuck out like a pig’s snout, but with tiny nostrils like a lizard’s. Its jaw was filled with rows of jagged teeth, and claws nearly a foot long protruded from its front paws.
Emily stood in shock as It waddled over to her, snuffling against her foot. She couldn’t begin to list the strange things about It, but perhaps the strangest was how she couldn’t quite tell what color It was. On one glance, It was uniformly green. Then, she blinked, and It seemed to be brilliantly multicolored, like a peacock. At the next look, It was a dull, depressing gray. And so on.
She squealed with excitement and began vigorously rubbing It along Its cheeks. A cute, dimpled, perfectly sincere smile lit her face. It had been so long since Frank had seen that smile.
For Its part, It seemed happy as well, snorting and gyrating as Emily lavished her attention upon It.
Frank sighed.
He reached further into the closet and pulled something out.
Bang.
It was momentarily distracted, but It then directed Its attention towards Frank, trotting over and nuzzling against his leg.
Briefly, he looked at the gun in his hand, then down at Emily’s corpse.
Frank sighed. Then he dropped the gun and began to nuzzle It.
He missed Emily already, but not quite as much as he missed Rachel. Rachel had been great. And what about… yes, Jillian, that had been her name. Jillian had probably been his favorite.
It didn’t seem to care, or maybe It didn’t even notice, as the blood seeped onto Its paws.
Frank sighed.
Dominick Lucyk is constantly accosted by ideas swimming through his mind. On occasion, an idea will magically spring, fully-formed, into a story. When he's not writing, he enjoys staring at wildlife, starting arguments with strangers, and word-based board games.
No Quarter by M Catherine
The flickering lamp near the washing machine and dryer reveals the silhouette of my stepfather. I have tied him to a metal folding chair, and he’s starting to regain consciousness. I haven’t seen him in over 30 years. That was when Mom kicked him out of the house. I have dreamed of this day ever since.
"Wake up, wake up, sleepyhead!” I say cheerfully. “It’s almost 8 o’clock. If you had slept any longer, we would have missed our favorite show.”
Confused, his eyes dart around the room, finally meeting my gaze. “My god…it really is you,” he stammers. “How did you find me?”
I pull over another folding chair and place a black duffel bag on the seat. I unzip the top and gently spread it open. His eyes bulge as he sees what I’ve brought to celebrate our reunion. A broad grin slowly crawls across my lips.
“Hear me out,” he pleads. “I know I have a problem. I…I didn’t mean for it to happen that way.”
I can feel heat creeping beneath my skin. “All these years later, I can’t sleep unless the lights are on…unless my bedroom door is deadbolted. You think I don’t remember? Mom looking away. Pretending she didn’t hear me crying in my room late at night. She let you do those things to me, she fucking let you...”
“Your mother…she knew. We tried to make it work. You were like a daughter to me. I never…”
I interrupt him. “Well, would you look at that, it’s 8 o’clock already. Let’s start the show just for old times’ sake. What do you say?” I open the streaming app as Carol Miller is finishing her introduction for tonight’s episode of Get the Led Out. The opening riffs of “No Quarter” begin to play. The room swells with the eerie sounds of John Paul Jones’s keyboard, followed by the slow, driving guitar and drumbeats from Jimmy Page and John Bonham. I close my eyes for an instant as Robert Plant’s haunting vocals tug at the edges of my mind, urging me ahead.
He watches me pull a tire iron out of the duffel bag and set it on the seat. It’s the same one he used to keep in the trunk of his 1989 Buick Regal. He taught me how to change a flat tire with it.
His eyes betray him. He finally comprehends there will be no mercy.
I pick up the tire iron. I pause, letting him sit in this a little longer. A fly buzzes around his head and lands on his temple. He flinches, then starts whimpering like a wounded animal. For a second, I wonder if he remembers the music. We used to sing this song together in his Buick. I almost burst out laughing. He sure as fuck won’t be singing tonight.
I raise the tire iron and bring it down as hard as I can. The sound of my heartbeat drowns out the music. Striking him again and again, time seems to buckle under the weight of my fury.
I cease only when my arm starts to ache. He’s gone. Long gone. Blood and bone fragments splatter the wall behind him. I drop the tire iron. It lands with a percussive clank, pulling me from my reverie. There’s no satisfaction yet. Just temporary stillness, like the moment between lightning and the loud clap of thunder that follows.
I reach back through decades and grasp the hand of the 10-year-old girl I used to be. Looking into her eyes, I nod and embrace her. She doesn’t let go. Neither do I.
Martine Maculaitis is a psychologist and public health research scientist. Her work appears in the peer-reviewed scientific literature; she is now exploring fiction.
Portraits by Anatoly Loginov
The portrait of Kim Il-sung had moved overnight.
Cho Hee noticed it as soon as she began wiping the glass. The Great Leader wasn’t looking at the center of the room anymore. His gaze had shifted — just slightly — toward her bed in the corner. The glass felt warm. Too warm. Like someone had just breathed against it.
Her stomach twisted. She stepped back. Her mother had always said it: dust on the portrait is dust on the soul. That was before they took her mother in 2019. “Sent for labor re-education in the provinces,” they had said. Cho Hee had stopped asking long ago.
She pulled out the small plumb line — the copper weight on a string her father had made years ago for their old house. Pressing it against the frame, she watched it swing. Her hand shook slightly, even though the room was perfectly still. Three degrees. Nothing more. Impossible.
Carefully, she lifted the portrait, cleaned the wall behind it, and hung it back. Perfectly straight. She let out a long breath.
After that, she stopped entering the room.
She moved entirely into the corridor — sleeping there, eating there, rushing through her washing only to retreat again.
Four days later, the upstairs neighbor knocked.
“You haven’t played the anthem. Not once. Five days now,” the woman said, pressing closer to the narrow opening. Her eyes were red, strained, as if sleep hadn’t come to her in days. “People are talking. And… they’ve been asking about you.”
A chill ran down Cho Hee’s spine.
“Who’s been asking?”
The neighbor didn’t answer. Just gave her a long, heavy look.
“They turned for me once too,” she murmured. “But I corrected it quickly. Don’t repeat my mistakes, girl.”
She turned and went back up the stairs. No reply. No pause.
Cho Hee pressed against the door. Her chest was racing. “They” weren’t just the portraits anymore. That night, a soft creak woke her. As if a heavy frame were twisting slowly on its nail.
Then footsteps. Soft but heavy. Moving across the wooden floor of the corridor. Straight toward her.
She lay still, eyes closed. The air thickened and grew icy. The smell of old printer’s ink and formalin hit her nostrils. Someone stopped above her. Heavy, measured breathing stirred the hair on the crown of her head.
“You have forgotten us, Comrade Cho Hee,” said the voice, low and rasping, like a loudspeaker in the central square. “You do not sing the anthem. You do not wipe our faces. You avert your eyes.” Cold, dry fingers touched her cheek. Papery. Rough. Smelling of ink and dust.
“Do you think we cannot see?” The voice softened. “We always see. Every speck of dust. Every thought. Every doubt.”
She could not move. Her throat tightened.
“You are forgetting who you are. But we remember. And we will not let you forget.”
Cho Hee opened her eyes.
The corridor was empty. The door stood open.
She crawled to it. Looked inside.
Both of them. Straight. Just like the first day.
She stayed on her knees for a long moment. Not moving. Barely breathing.
Then — slowly — she rose. Stepped inside. Took the cloth. Wiped the glass. Her hands shook.
Warm again.
She turned on the radio. The anthem played. Cho Hee stood at attention, eyes fixed on them, not averting her gaze.
The neighbors stopped banging.
Glass. Anthem. Smile. Every morning.
But sometimes, in the dead of night, she wakes. Too quiet. That’s what does it. She lies there, staring at the two pale rectangles on the wall. They don’t move. Or maybe… just barely.
She leans toward the mirror. The pale, ashy print on her left cheek hasn’t faded. Like someone pressed a finger against her skin and never let go. It won’t come off. She rubs it, harder than she means to. The cold spreads into her hand anyway.
She stops trying.
Goes back to the room. Wipes the portraits. Turns on the anthem. Smiles.
Soon… they will be smiling too.
Anatoly is a psychologist and educator from Saint Petersburg, author of over a hundred scientific and methodological works. Their fiction has been accepted by Sibirskiye Ogni and Quotidian Bagatelle (forthcoming), with additional work currently under consideration elsewhere. Their most recent literary publication was the analytical essay "The Narrow Neck of Being" in Asymptote (Winter 2026), which the editor-in-chief described as a "tour de force."
The Wedding by Koren Cowgill
“It’s a...nice day for a...white wedding,” you sing in your best Billy Idol voice. By golly, he was a hottie back in the day. You’re wound up. The dress fits snug and sleek. Everything’s in place for your Plan—except for the veil, the final touch. Then you notice the can on a cobwebby shelf in the garage. Perfect. Mick Jagger and his song, “Paint it Black,” occur to you, and you grab the can off the shelf. “...with flowers and my love both never to come back...” You sing and jiggle the can—the clackety-clatter of it delights you.
You continue to shake the can of spray paint as you prance around the garage in the wedding dress you never got to wear. With the witch’s hat, your ensemble will steal the show. You’ll never need this dress again. Ever. So you spray it black—with maniacal glee. Fumes from the paint might even give you a little buzz.
You shake your head and snort. He left you—that rotten dinkus—all because he didn’t want children. Then those fuck-wits overturned Roe vs. Wade, so you can’t be free of the burden either—you could go to prison, even if you traveled to another state where such procedures are still legal.
And you could never raise a child on your own, alone.
You close the garage door behind you and step into the dusky gloaming, your sooty dress trailing behind you. Shadows from spindly tree branches weep on the browning grass.
Sounds of laughter approach. Trick-or-Treaters roam the neighborhood in search of goodies. Before you implement your Plan, you take in the atmosphere. Scant sunbeams bleed through leaden clouds that almost block the sunset. You bend down, flip the spotlight’s switch, and stick the spike thingie into the ground. The light strobes rays of green, mixing murky with yellow remnants of daylight.
Then you climb, carefully, to see if the tree bears your weight well enough. Yours, and the weight of your unborn child. Once the black veil conceals your tear-streaked face, you slip the noose over your head—wedded to your grief, your despair.
Costumed children approach, and say, “Freaky-creepy Halloween stuff—that witch kinda looks real.”
You relax your body and muster your gall, then swallow the lump of fear in your throat. “Hello there, my pretties, come have some candy,” you cackle, and pray the Lord will take your soul.
The Trick-or-Treaters turn towards you, and you step off the limb. Your neck snaps as the strobe light flashes its grungy green light, and the screams of children pierce the night.
Koren Cowgill received her undergraduate and doctoral degrees in Music Composition from the Eastman School of Music and her Master of Music from Yale. As a writer, Koren completed her first novel, The Final Months of Hoo-hah, in 2019, and it’s available on Amazon in both paperback and eBook formats. Her high fantasy novel, Teurith of Loring, is available on Amazon in eBook and paperback formats. In the fall of 2024, her short story, The Shuffler, was published in Hedge Apple Magazine’s Labyrinth issue. Koren lives in Cape May County with her husband, Richard, and their dog, Saffron.
Sound in the Silence by Anne Dougherty
A teacher calls it an early night only to be woken up before her alarm.
A TV dinner called my name after a grueling day with seventh graders. Hours of debating the usefulness of algebra in the real world with teenagers was extra tiring.
Never-ending quizzes exhausted both my red pen and me this evening, so after a quick shower to wash away the day, I climbed into bed early. I set the alarm clock on my nightstand before powering down my cell phone. I place it on the far side of the stand so I won’t be tempted to turn it back on again until morning. I’ll have an extra hour of sleep tonight by going to bed now. I anticipate how refreshed I’ll feel tomorrow.
Like a whole new person.
I drift off to sleep with lingering thoughts about next week's lesson plan.
It's 3 am.
My body is awake.
Aware.
It understands before I do. There's a soft noise: it's out of place… new… but in my sleep-deprived brain fog, I'm having trouble deciphering it.
Until it clicks.
I stiffen with realization as my heart races in an effort to break out of my chest.
A muffled phone rings in my room.
It's close by, but hard to pinpoint where exactly in the darkness of this large room.
My eyes dart to my nightstand, where only my alarm clock stands illuminated. My breath hitches while I listen, intent on not making my own sounds. Not bringing attention to myself.
Just in case.
Maybe I'm just hearing things in this old, small house.
Silently, I reach for my still-dark phone. My slender fingers slip along the case as I attempt to slide it toward me without moving positions. It twists and turns away, balancing precariously off the stand.
Giving an internal huff of fear and relief, I lean ever-so-forward just enough to try again.
My forefinger catches the edge of my phone at the perfect angle… Until, slipping my grip, it clatters with a solid thump under my bed.
My breath catches as ice fills my veins.
I have no other choice.
I gather my courage.
Sliding over the side of my bed, I’m careful not to disturb my mattress or cause any further sound than absolutely necessary.
I peer underneath my bed frame, a scream escaping my mouth as I find the source of the ringing.
It’s not my phone.
Anne Dougherty resides in the suburbs of Philadelphia, PA with her husband, Jonathan, their dog, Ruby Tuesday, and her cat, Theodore. She's worked in the veterinary field for over a decade. When not working, she can be found biking, reading, or writing. Her work can be found in In-Parenthesis, The Write Launch, Pfeiffer Phoenix, and others.
Whaling Trip of One Thousand Demons by Aza Smith
Off the coast of Hokkaido, the whaling fleet was on its weekly catch.
On his Captain's orders, Hiro opened the hatch where they kept the nets, and his daughter Miki was nesting in them.
“Hi, otōchan,” said Miki.
“Miki, what are you doing?” asked Hiro. “I told you you couldn’t come with!”
“But why?” asked Miki, wanting to catch and kill majestic sea-creatures just like her cool dad.
“A boat is no place for a woman, much less a little girl like yourself,” said Hiro. “If the Captain found out–”
“What am I finding out?” asked the Captain. He saw Miki. “You brought a woman on my boat?!”
The entire crew heard his cry of alarm. One of them even prostrated and started praying.
“Do you not understand the gravity of what you’ve done?!”
“Why? I won’t get in the way,” said Miki.
“Women on boats are bad luck,” said the Captain. “We need to drop her off at the port before something happens.”
“Something’s happening!” cried the Barrelman. Something slammed into the boat, and the Barrelman lost his balance and fell out of the crow’s nest into the water. Half the crew went to the side of the boat to fish him out, only to see a school of Sazae-oni swarm him. The men were enraptured by the aquatic yokai, since, aside from their grotesque, mollusk-like heads, they were attractive from the neck down, their bare bottoms reflecting like pearls beneath the surface. The mermaid-creatures removed the Barrelman’s pants and bit his dick off with their beaks. What happened afterward was obscured by a cloud of red from the chum that had once been their comrade.
“Nope,” cried out one of the crewmen. Phantom pain rippled through the crew’s collective crotch as they each found an oar and tried turning the ship around, the other half tipping over before finding their footing.
“Otōchan, what’s happening?” asked Miki.
“What’s happening is that you killed us all, kid,” said the Captain. “Not unless we get back to the harbor.”
The sky, once clear, darkened instantly with storm clouds. Unsteady waves shoved the boat from every direction.
A crash starboard scattered the Sazae-oni, and a titanic mass rose from the water. A pair of eyes, white and blinding like a lighthouse, stared down at them. What few features it had were obscured by heavy rain while a clan of tengu flocked its forehead like seagulls.
“Umibozu!” cried out the First Mate. “I knew it! Pay up.”
The Second Mate, who bet that sea-dwelling giants didn’t exist, dropped five copper coins into the First Mate’s open palm. Easy money at the time, now a grim, hard reality.
“Quick, get the barrel,” said the Captain.
Relying on old fish tales, Hiro found the one barrel onboard with a loose bottom and popped it out, knowing that the Umibozu would want nothing more than to fill a barrel with seawater and flood their ship with it. As the yokai reached for it with a hand blackened by muck from the ocean floor, another colossus breached. It looked like a humpback whale stripped of all its flesh, its bones held together with spite and ectoplasm. Its baleen plates bit into the giant’s arm.
“Bake-Kujira!” shouted the Second Mate, who smuggly took back his money from the First Mate, who had bet that while sea-dwelling giants existed, vengeful skeleton-ghost whales did not.
“I’ve got no choice,” said the Captain. “Hiro, you’re gonna have to take one for the team.”
“What are you saying, Sir?” asked Hiro, shielding his daughter.
“Throw the girl overboard,” said the Captain.
“What?!”
“It’s either her or us. I’ve got my bo–I mean, my crew to think about,” said the Captain.
“Otōchan, what’s he talking about?” asked Miki, clinging to her father for dear life.
“This is why women aren’t allowed on boats,” said the Captain, taking a moment to nudge a kairai, a human-faced carp yokai that had flopped aboard, back into the water with his foot. “You brought the girl, and then a storm, and now sea-monsters. It’s just science.”
The massive red octopoidal tentacles of an Akkorokamui flopped aboard and suction-cupped themselves to the deck. The seamen stabbed at the appendages with harpoons, trying to keep the boat from capsizing with its pull. A few cadets gave up and instead pointed their spears at Hiro and Miki.
“Don’t do this,” pleaded Hiro, shielding his daughter.
“Sorry,” said a cadet. “But it’s her or us.”
Hiro and Miki were backed against the edge, and, seeing no way out of it, Hiro dove into the water with Miki in his arms. They swam as hard as they could before resurfacing, took a deep breath, and noticed that the sky was clear and sunny again. The waves were equally as mild, the swarm of yokai having gone as soon as they came.
The crew, still clutching their weapons, made no sudden movements, no one willing to tempt fate. Even Hiro, realizing that he was actually in shallow water and rose to his feet, stared at the tranquil sky with apprehension.
“You see?” said the Captain, breaking the silence. “Women on boats are bad luck. No women, no–”
A pair of jaws clamped on each side of the ship. The boat rose as the long, serpentine neck of a Yamata no Orochi breached miles up into the air and, between its teeth, crushed and swallowed it and the entire crew before sinking back into the water.
Hiro and Miki stared at the spot where the boat used to be.
“Nope,” said Hiro.
Miki still in his arms, he turned around and made a break for the beach.
“Nope, nope, nope.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t listen,” said Miki, making a fist in her father’s shirt. “I promise I’ll never get on a fishing boat again.”
“That’s okay, Miki,” said Hiro, still running even as his feet found the beach. “Me neither.”
Aza Smith is a fine artist who, after receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Texas A&M – Commerce, returned to Creative Writing in 2024 to help with burnout. He has since published short stories for publishers like Flash Fiction Magazine, Flash Phantoms, The Molotov Cocktail, Jokes Literary Review, Last Girls Club: The Witch's Cosmo, Curious Curls Publishing, Nat 1 Publishing, and SM Sykes Books. His hobbies include painting, drawing, sewing, tarot readings, freelance information-brokering for the Department of Darkness, Hierophant duties for the Star-God Cult, erotic graphic novels, experimental taco recipes, traditional pizza recipes, commercial lattes, and trashy isekai. (https://azawsmith.wixsite.com/mysite)
Divine Intervention by Kevin Ramsden
It is an ink-black night. A pale moon standing sentinel in a cloudless sky. The gentlest of breezes whispers between the leaves of the many trees of assorted shapes and sizes that dot the shrine grounds. The general quiet is broken only by the soft crunch of boots on gravel, belonging to two black-clad figures making their way as stealthily as possible towards their target. The large egg-timer-shaped pond that serves as the centerpiece of this holy site, with its low stone bridge crossing about halfway along its length. Each intruder is carrying an oversized, custom-made black canvas bag with an industrial-strength plastic lining. Heavy-duty, Ziplock-like fasteners on top, purpose-built for preventing the escape of anything liquid or solid placed therein.
Upon reaching their destination, the lead interloper reaches around and removes a large, fine mesh landing net he has slung across his back. With his partner’s help, he opens and extends the telescopic handle and stands it over the edge of the pond. Time to go to work. Below them, at the water's surface, several large, slow-moving visitors begin to gather in the weak moonlight, the subtle slapping of their fins and the faintly audible popping of their mouths announcing their presence as they emerge from the shallows, sleek and curious. Beautiful, sacrosanct and, to some, immensely valuable. Shrine Koi.
After filling the bags half full of pond water, one of the thieves slips a hand into his pocket and pulls out a small pot of fish food. Common or garden flakes, but once dispensed, the calm waters will erupt in a wild thrashing of fins and scales as each of the much beloved and revered fish below fights for their share. Readying the net for the first catch, carpnapper number one’s head is snapped sideways by an insistent finger jabbing from his colleague, who is pointing frantically in the direction of the main shrine building. Dropping the net in surprise, he immediately registers the reason for his partner’s alarm. Rising up and above the red colored eaves over the doorway to the hall is some kind of airborne entity. Morphing and pulsing like a beating heart, it is joined out of nowhere by a colossal roaring that cuts through the silence, as a ferocious whirlwind crashes through the trees all around them, snapping branches and tossing foliage in all directions. Both men instantly start to scramble for a way to the nearest exit, their mission and all their equipment completely forgotten, only to be stopped in their tracks by the crazed jangling of the suzu, the ball-shaped, hollow metal bell hung in front of the main hall, usually rung by visitors to summon the deities enshrined within. Though it is not the clattering of the bell in itself that sears into their souls, but the sight of the thick rope beneath it being violently shaken to and fro with no assistance from any human hand. As the crescendo of sound builds by the second, it is only matched in intensity by the terror searing the hearts of the men it is being directed at.
The next morning, a lone priest enters the shrine grounds through a side entrance and, after retrieving his favorite, wide-headed, palm bark and bamboo broom from a small shed adjacent to the gate, sets about his first chores of the day. Taken aback by the swathe of leaves and limbs strewn across the paved walkways leading to the main shrine hall and the pond, he comes to a sudden halt as he approaches the mossy surround of the body of water. There below him, floating face down, their black attire ballooning slightly around them, are two obviously deceased persons. The bags and net accompanying them in their watery grave only serve to confirm these individuals had likely been up to no good.
His reaction to this sight, however, is not exactly one of alarm. He knows this is not the first time such a scenario has played out on this hallowed ground. He is aware of the widely held belief among many of his contemporaries and elders alike that the beautiful beings now swimming lazily around the prone figures who have invaded their space are unlike any other creature on earth. They are not of this world, and as such have the unlimited protection of the gods themselves. This shrine is home to a number of vengeful spirits, who, when roused, are wont to exact a heavy price on anyone foolish enough to enter their world harboring thoughts of desecration. Sighing heavily, the priest reaches in and removes a smartphone from the folds of his robes, searching for the number of the local constabulary. Earthly justice must now be rendered in addition to that from on high.
Kevin Ramsden resides in Kyoto, Japan, and is a professor of Global Studies at a university in the city. Other than writing, his interests include listening to reggae music and complaining about the performances of West Ham United football club. He has also self-published a collection of short stories titled “Here Comes Kenji – Stories from Contemporary Japan”, some of which have found homes in Japan-based journals and magazines along with several others accepted for publication elsewhere.
A Very Very Bad Case of Acne by Ethan Luce
While I generally don’t resort to Reddit for medical advice, I’m desperate. I have a nasty skin condition, and it isn’t getting any better.
I thought it was eczema at first. My elbows and knees were redder than a firetruck. There were little holes over them, moon craters of raw pink. It was crusty and rough to the touch, flaking with dead skin.
Anytime something even brushed slightly past them, they burned. It was all I could do to stop from yelping each time.
My dermatologist Dr. Roykirk prescribed me some antibiotics. So, I rubbed them all over the eczema every day as he said, and hoped it would go away. It did not.
###
Soon, there were big, pink, raw lumps of acne all over my arms and along my back, right down to my butt. It itched. I couldn’t sit or sleep.
I didn’t like people staring at the lumps, so it was long-sleeve shirts for me. The fabric on the pimples felt like fire ants biting them.
Dr. Roykirk prescribed an anti-acne cream for me. I wanted to scratch myself bloody. I wanted to just take a knife and cut it all off. But I used the ointment instead.
I ran out of ointment in three days. Dr. Roykirk got all condescending about me overusing it.
“Have some self-control, would you? It’s just acne.”
I told him to shut up and give me a stronger dosage. Well, I said "please" instead of "shut up," but I really wanted to. Reluctantly, he agreed, and I thought everything would be okay.
###
It was while I was using the toilet that things got worse.
The rim of the seat made all that acne itch! I squeezed my stomach harder and harder so I could get it over with. I succeeded.
Something in the bowl squeaked.
I stood up lightning fast and pulled up my pants even quicker. I was thinking it had to be a rat in the bowl. But it wasn’t.
It was an eyeless pink slug-thing. Its skin was rough and craggy. It swam lazily down the drain.
I called the landlord and recommended that he call an exterminator. He told me in no uncertain terms that I was full of a certain four-letter word, that he would do no such thing, and hung up.
Okay, then. Not my fault. Just to be safe, I felt my butt just to make sure the slug hadn’t done any damage. It was sticky and wet. I brought my hand up. It was covered in blood.
The slug had come out of me.
The mere thought made me hurl on the floor right there.
###
I called Dr. Roykirk and told him about the slug. I asked if the acne could be a symptom of a parasite. He responded that it couldn’t. I hazarded the possibility that it could be a tapeworm or something.
“They don’t grow that big, OP. Quit making things up.”
I was too sick to argue. My acne still itched like crazy, and vomit flecks still covered my mouth. I wanted nothing more than to just sleep the day away, but I needed to clean the puke off the bathroom floor.
I armed myself with a paper towel roll, a Fantastik bottle, and a garbage bag. The vomit was orange and thick, and full of slithering little things. More slugs.
They were actually cute and endearingly roly-poly. I couldn’t bring myself to squish them.
It had been a long day, and I suspected that I might be about to die. I decided if I did, I’d die cozy. I wrapped myself in a blanket, curled up on my couch, and lay down.
I needed five minutes of nothing happening to refresh, then I’d go to the ER. I’d rest my eyes for those five minutes. Only those five minutes.
###
I woke up to my door getting kicked in by four guys in hazmat suits. In the time I had been asleep, the entire apartment had been covered in a pink moss.
Surprisingly, I was feeling much better. I actually felt strong. Also, I was happy to not be dead.
The hazmat guys were yelling stuff over their walkie-talkies. Stuff like “it’s worse than we thought” and “this must be where the outbreak originated.” I didn’t know what that meant. I figured they were high or drunk or something. They shot at me, but it didn’t do anything, so they were probably toy guns.
I ripped off their hazmat masks and vomited slugs down their mouths to sober them up. They lay down for a bit, then stood up and ran jerkily down the hallway.
They must have had killer hangovers. The one thing slugs can’t cure. That and itchiness.
###
Even though I felt better, my skin was even pinker and lumpier and itchier. So, I called in sick to work and watched the news.
I had to scrape the pink moss off my TV, but it still worked fine. Every channel was talking about some kind of parasitic outbreak. I didn’t really pay attention.
Eventually, Dr. Roykirk came into my room. His white coat was rumpled. He was holding a syringe. I was about to ask if he could prescribe me a better medication when he tried to stab me with it.
“I’m sorry. I had no right to play God! I thought my creation would help mankind, not create a monster.”
I grabbed his wrist with my clawed hands and brought up the pincers lining my abdomen to hold him at a safe distance. I had no clue what he was talking about. He must’ve been high, too.
I must have a stomach bug on top of everything, because I vomited all over poor Dr. Roykirk, and it melted his face right off. Fortunately, the Fantastik and the paper towels and the garbage bags cleaned it right up.
Anyway, I’m still pretty itchy.
If anyone knows any home remedies, I’d be very grateful.
Ethan has been previously published in Blood Moon Rising Magazine, Borderline Tales, Dear Human, and Quotidian Bagatelle. He studied Creative Writing at SUNY Purchase and earned a Bachelor of Arts. His senior project, the currently unpublished horror novel Dirt God, was the co-winner of the James Greenwood Prize for Best Senior Project.
Scrunched Up As Small As Possible by Jim Catt
I have been scrunched up inside my own body for almost two days now. I am fully aware of everything that is happening. It is just not me doing it, and it is unbearable.
I watch myself chained to a bed, screaming at my family. I know, with absolute certainty, that if I were not restrained, whatever is in charge would tear them apart. I can feel the want of it. The need. The frustration of not being able to act shakes through my body like a fever. I fold myself smaller inside, pressing down into whatever corner I have been shoved into. I want nothing to do with what is happening out there. I want no part of it.
I felt odd over the last few weeks. Like, I was never really alone. Thoughts and opinions that were not my own became the main focus of my mind. Two days ago, I was in the garden when I saw a bird.
It was a small thing, a sparrow, lying on the ground. Its neck bent at an angle that made it obvious it was not sleeping. I stopped. I felt that familiar, stupid pull. The urge to feel sorry for it. To imagine where it had come from. To give it a life. A nest. A family that would notice it had not come back.
That was when I felt myself tighten.
Not pain. Not resistance. Just a narrowing. Like something heavy settling into a space it had always been meant to occupy. My body did not fight it. It welcomed it. Even from the inside, I could tell it fit better than I ever had.
I was not in charge anymore.
So, I curled in on myself as small as I could get, while something else stood up and stretched inside my skin.
As I chewed, the tiny bones crunched between my teeth. Warm blood dribbled from my mouth, down my chin, my fingers greedily wiping it up.
The taste of copper stung the back of my throat. Made me gag. The one in control loved it. Each swallow was like a jolt of electricity, powering whatever engine was running me now.
Now I listen to myself scream. I watch my family cry.
They locked me away. I love them so much for that.
My throat is dry from all of its shrieking. It wants to carry on. To keep letting everyone know how much it hates them all. The exhaustion is too much. It slows down. Then the world becomes dark.
It sleeps. I do not.
I stay awake in the darkness, scrunched up.
My compacted body burns. An inferno all around me. The smell of my smoldering insides fills my small corner of solitude. It is its slumbering detest and hatred, trying to intensify the flames.
I did not sleep. I just spent my time making sure I did not remember anything.
I do not remember when the man in black turned up. I just remember feeling water splash on my face. My body was writhing around. The thing in control was screaming in agony, but there was no pain.
The man spat words at me with fury and authority.
“We drive you from us, whoever you may be.”
The words meant to hurt it had no effect. Still, it contorted my body, as if the intended actions were having their desired result.
“Unclean spirits, all satanic powers,” he continued, throwing water over me, which the thing inside allowed them to believe burned.
“All infernal invaders, all wicked legions, assemblies and sects.” He yelled the words like an overzealous schoolmaster losing control of an unruly pupil.
I tried to stay as small as possible, turning a blind eye to everything happening everywhere else.
But I was hoisted to my feet. My body began to stretch out, my arms and legs reaching to the furthest parts of me. As my body unfolded, its body became smaller and smaller. As I expanded in my own skin, it began to scrunch up into the same small corner I had been hiding in.
My eyes did not open immediately. It did not want them to, and it could still control them. Even from its tiny little nook.
“Tell no one of me,” it whispered. “I have the power to destroy everything you have ever known.”
I agreed.
We both live here now. I am allowed to go about my life with the quiet one in the passenger seat.
I do not think he will stay scrunched up for long.
Jim Catt is a short story writer based in Leeds. He writes emotionally honest horror that likes to make you laugh just before it hurts you. His work blends horror, dark comedy, and warmth, even when someone is being dragged to hell. He is currently working on his first novella.
The Thing in the Lake is Us by Alexa Levitt
Meet me at the lake.
Tonight.
2:56 am
The letter in my hand drops to the floor. I don’t get letters. Not in the form of folded-up pieces of paper on my bedside table. Not with looping ink like moonlight. Not on dark green paper, the color of seaweed.
And not today, no, not when I’ve spent all day picking at the gloss on the fake-wood pews in Mabel’s church, listening to the priest she hated so much blather on about how she was nice and kind and good, and nothing about how she loved her pretty blue eyes and swimming and wanted to be a botanist to study algae.
Not anything about how she liked climbing trees and believed in fairies and monsters, because she said we were never too old to believe in magic.
I don't get letters, and certainly not ones that lie on the white paint of my bedside table, folded in half, breaking the stillness reflected in my bedroom mirror, pages fluttering like a midnight butterfly.
I leave the letter on the floor and pull my blankets up over my head.
Where were you last night?
I was waiting for you.
I'll be waiting tonight.
I found the second letter, just like the last, with green paper wings on my white bedside table. But I still won’t go.
I won’t go because I hear myself asking Mabel’s mother if I can come over to her house, because Mabel had just painted her nails silver, to go with her blue eyes, and she said she would do mine too, even though silver doesn't go as well with brown.
I won't go because I hear Mabel’s mother on the phone, crying, telling me Mabel has gone to the lake, and I won’t go because I hear myself tell her mother that it's okay, that I can meet her there, and maybe we could go swimming.
I won’t go because I don't want to go alone.
I won’t go to the lake where Mabel played, I won’t go to the lake where Mabel swam, I won’t go to the lake where Mabel drowned.
I won’t go.
You didn’t come.
Come tonight. Please.
You know what time.
I look away from the green paper and silver ink to the dark walls of my bedroom. I smell seaweed.
I lock eyes with my reflection in the mirror. She has blue eyes.
She nods slightly at me. Yes.
And the mirror shatters.
You got my warning.
Come to the lake.
Or more than your mirror will break.
I don't want to go, but my stomach twists, and I am drowning in the ringing of my ears. The glass on the floor is ready to slice my skin, and the blue veins on my arm pulse with fresh blood.
I don't want to go; Mabel’s dead, and I'm all alone.
I'll go, stepping over shards of glass in a pile on my bedroom floor, reflecting broken pieces of my face, eyes dutifully brown.
I’ll go, opening the door as slowly as I can to be quiet, like I taught Mabel how to do, because she was always slamming doors. I’ll go, slipping into the cool night air and into the woods to the lake. It isn't far, I can be back before dawn.
I keep my eyes on my feet as I walk, only on the path. Eyes on the path. Not on the fairy garden you built together. On the path! Not on the tree you two used to climb together. Eyes on the path!
Not on that shadow there, moving across the trees. That you, Mabel? She does like hide-and-seek. No! She's dead. Eyes on the path!
The path ends, all paths do, but I keep walking towards the water. The leaves rustle, but it's just me and seaweed and moonlight being stolen by the dark water. I check the time. 2:54. I look towards the lake, but my eyes catch on a message scrawled in the sand.
You’re here.
Good.
Wait.
I’ll wait, like I waited three days for Mabel’s memorial, three days until they gave up searching for her body, three days before they decided the lake devoured her whole and left nothing for us.
I’ll wait, like Mabel used to wait for me before running off into the woods. She was impatient, especially when there were trees to climb or lakes to swim in. She would beg me to come faster, ending every sentence with please. Hurry! Please. But she always tried to wait for me. She was nice like that.
I pick my nails, plain and boring, because Mabel never got around to painting them silver, and I don’t have the heart to anymore. There are lots of things I don't have the heart to do anymore.
The minute hand on my watch clicks into place. 2:56. What am I waiting for? I stare at my reflection, wavy on the surface of the lake.
Are you there, Mabel?
A crow squawks and flutters off over the branches, iridescent black feathers reflecting on the lake.
The water is still. The leaves blow in the wind. I peer over the edge, leaning myself forward until I am about to fall.
The water comes to catch me.
It smashes open, crashing, splintering my reflection. I shriek into the night. Something cold grabs my ankle. I gasp, choking on air. Fingers, nails painted silver. Silver, like moonlight ink on a page, as dark green as the lake is tonight. I’m plummeting towards the sand, falling until my face slams into the ground and grains invade my nose.
I’m being dragged down, wet sand clinging to my shirt, scratching my skin. I claw at the ground, but it falls away as the hand pulls harder at my leg. I scream, but it’s muffled by sand. Water splashes on my feet.
The lake swallows me whole.
And now there are two.
What Came Home by Charlie Ilett
Katla’s fear was a natural occurrence. It did not come from a dream or some hollow outside the world. It came from the night.
She stood with her back to the turf wall, facing the door and the horn window beside it, her breath slow and tattered. Cool, damp earth drew the heat from her in sharp bursts of relief. Moisture crept through the linen at her spine. When she shifted, grit whispered behind her belt.
Outside, along the far wall, footsteps kneaded the snow, each stride landing like a grave tamped shut. The thing reached the corner.
Katla’s ligaments snared.
A growl charged the wind: dark brown, doglike, clotted with mud and death. Then a shadow bled under the door. She recognized the knotted musculature of the arms, the corded neck, the shivering jowls. She wanted to reach out and hold it. The shadow passed across the threshold.
The footsteps rounded the house. Katla swallowed and tasted dark copper.
Smoke and wind snuffled through the rafters. The sod roof had collapsed at the centre, spilling clods across the floor, and white volleys of rain and snow lanced through the hole. The fire pit spat and hissed. Beyond its lessening reach, a chest, a loom, hanging skins; everything smeared into murk.
The footsteps came along the wall behind her. The turf trembled against her spine.
Katla kept her head still and turned her eyes towards the horn window. A shape crossed it in warped pieces. A shoulder swollen by amber blur. A bent, low head dragging through the cloudy light. With every step, it dipped and heaved beneath some terrible weight.
The winter glow bruised around it. Then it was gone.
For one breath, the house held still. Then the next footfall shuddered through the wall at Katla’s back.
The door rattled before her.
Her heartbeat rose with her breathing. The warm pores of her flesh suckered shut. Her organs bunched, heavy and wrong. Terror had entered the open chambers of her heart and barred them behind it.
The latch lifted.
She held her chalk-white hands out.
“Þór,” she cried, her voice shrill and mad with something beyond terror. “Þór. You’re home.”
When Þór died, talk passed from house to byre at Bjarg.
“Lie still, bane of your own blood. Christ keeps no bench for such a man.”
No one mourned him openly. Þór never took a drink without finding a quarrel at the bottom of the cup. Katla had often gone veiled, bruises dark beneath her sleeves.
As for the child, people spoke more softly. Þór had stumbled, drunk, and dropped him against the hearthstone. A mishap, some said. Yet the boy died.
Katla found Þór at dawn, sprawled in the mire behind the privy, his last cup overturned in the frost. From that morning, she missed him.
At times, the house seemed so empty that she would have endured his hand, his curses, even the old grief of their son’s death, merely to hear Þór stamping snow from his boots again.
They buried him beyond the home-field beneath stones and frozen turf. The priest spoke the proper words. Men laid rocks over the grave in stale custom, and no one lingered after the final prayer.
Perhaps Katla’s longing followed him. Perhaps, in the blackest winter night, he heard it through the earth and mistook it for an invitation.
When the grave was found open, men joked of a haugbúi gone walking.
The jest soon died.
Goats were found with broken skulls. Roof-turf was torn away while families slept. Something broad passed behind the horn window, making the wall tremble.
The farmstead learned that fear was not a thing confined to stories.
Now here he was, in the doorway, framed by ashen snow and ashen stars.
Þór had never bowed to Christ’s law, and death found him no more obedient, for the grave had not rotted him. The black and blue blotches that had marked Katla had not bloomed over his skin. But his flesh had the unmistakable stench of fetid death.
Þór ducked beneath the lintel. He stooped as he always had, first to the left and then the right, searching for a place to set the knife at his belt. Finding no peg, he drove its point into the table.
The sound loosened something in Katla.
How often had she heard it while kneading dough, while nursing the child, while holding a cloth to her mouth so that blood would not fall into the meal? The knife struck wood. His weight settled onto the bench. The long breath through his nose before he found fault.
Þór looked towards the hearth. For an instant, his gaze rested upon the stone where their son’s head had struck. No recognition moved across his face.
“See to the pot, bondwoman.” Þór groaned, “I will not ask twice.”
Katla bowed her head. Her body remembered before she did: the shortened steps, the lowered shoulders, the careful turning of her cheek away. She scurried to the waning fire and hitched the cauldron down. Behind her, the bench creaked beneath a weight it had not borne since autumn.
The house was no longer empty.
If she did not prepare it fast enough, his hand would find her face again.
She smiled and waited for his touch.
Charlie Ilett is a writer based in Guildford, drawn to the biologically strange and the psychologically specific. He is awaiting publication in Antipodean SF and Seize The Press. He believes there is nothing scarier than a thought so bizarre it could only have been real.
Saturnalia by Amanda Desiree
“Welcome,” the Master said. “Please come in and be merry.”
He escorted Androcles across the salon to a large, throne-like chair covered in soft purple material. “Sit here and rest yourself. You have worked hard and deserve to be comfortable.”
He brought Gaius to a chair beside the fire. “Here, your old bones may be warmed. Have some mulled wine, too. It will delight your senses.”
Old Vespatia asked in a soft, hesitant voice, “M-master? M-may I please have a cushion to ease my gouty leg?”
“But, of course, you may, and more than that!” He clapped his hands, and his two teenage daughters scurried to fetch a basin and fill it with water.
“Please allow us to bathe your feet and soak your leg in the warmth,” the eldest girl said with a smile.
Soon, the Master’s wife entered the salon. “The meal is ready.”
Everyone passed into the banquet hall. The young girls helped the elderly slaves to their seats.
“Enjoy the venison my wife has prepared! I shot the hind myself this morning. Here, Tiberius, you may have the first cut.” He offered a large haunch to his faithful retainer.
“More wine?” asked the younger daughter. She circled the table, filling each goblet to the brim.
“May I have an orange, Master?” ventured Portia.
“May I have two oranges, Master?” asked Remus.
“Yes, yes. Take all you wish!” urged the Master. “On this night, anything you want is yours. The gods will it so.”
“Another slice of venison!” crowed Cassius.
“Certainly! You may have the best of everything. It is my duty to serve you,” the Master said and set a plate before him.
Ignatius spoke up. “Master, I would ask a boon of thee.”
“Ask away, my good man, and you shall have it,” the Master promised.
“Kill your wife and daughters for me,” ordered Ignatius.
Silence filled the great hall. Everyone stared. The two youngsters clung to each other, and their mother wrung her hands as she awaited her husband’s response. The Master swallowed. The lump in his throat bobbed up and down, and his fists clenched. Then he sighed heavily.
“The gods have commanded that I obey all orders my servants give this night.” The Master took up a knife from the table. He stepped behind his youngest daughter. Then, he slit her throat and those of his eldest daughter and his wife. One by one, their bodies collapsed to the floor, twitching. Their blood spread over the mosaic tile, staining the image of Caesar, pooling and reflecting the light from the great fire in the hearth. Portia cringed when she thought of how she must clean up this mess on the morrow.
“It is done,” the Master said in a low, trembling voice. “Are you pleased?”
“Not quite,” said Ignatius. “Now I want you to kill yourself.”
The Master hesitated. He looked at the corpses cooling at his feet. Then, he brought the knife to his own throat and dug the blade in. He fell to the floor, choking, before he could draw the blade completely across.
Everyone remained as still as if they had been turned to stone by gorgons, watching the Master turn into a cadaver. Then, Ignatius lifted his wine goblet.
“Now there are no more masters, and we are free. This is indeed a merry Saturnalia!”
Amanda's prior publications under her pen name Amanda Desiree include the novels Smithy (2021), In the Shadow of the Skull (2023), and Webster (2024). More information about her writing and her sources of inspiration can be found on her website http://desireesbooks.com/. She is child-free and lives in Las Vegas, NV.
Mother of Mine by Julie Holland
I walk into the shrine I have created for my mother’s oncoming death. The curtains remain drawn even though the day is bright. A lamp lights her face. This is death. No loudness. No gaiety. No brightness allowed. All is as it should be, except for the vials of morphine on the bedside table.
“Enough to kill an elephant,” said the pharmacist.
“How much?” I ask the doctor.
“Whenever she’s in pain,” he replies as he backs out the door.
I sit by my mother. The skin drawn over her face is shrunken like a corpse left in a tomb a thousand years ago. But she is alive. Her eyes shine out from her skull, but do not move, nor do they blink. Only her steady breath is an indication of life. The covers come up to her chin. Underneath, her bones lay scattered in an untidy pile. There’s no flesh and no strong, purposeful muscle – just skeletal remains held together by a papery skin bag. And the smell of decay, of shit that stains the white padding beneath her cadaverous frame, unties any threads of hope.
I lean forward to look at her. Her eyes glow. Is she still here? She who prayed and knew everything about Sunday hate. She who taught me about demons that move at dusk. About the devils that inhabit her world. About things that wait in corners and behind doors. She who babbled bible verses by rote and carried hymns in her handbag. As her cancer took muscle and bone, it was she who ignored doctors and skipped appointments because only God can heal.
My mother makes a sound. A low moan. Is this pain? I snap the top from the morphine and pour the contents into her mouth. Her breath smells of something long dead and rank. She lies still, and I want to speak, to say the words, but I’m afraid. Coldness touches my hand, and I yank my warmth away. But it’s just her hand, dropped out from under the covers. The bones of her fingers curl into a claw. Her nails are long. As she has withered, they have grown strong and horrible. I’m afraid to touch my mother’s hand. To move it under the covers to the dreadful place where it belongs.
I look into her face. Her lips are winter-sky grey, pale and cracked like skeleton leaves. I pick up the small sponge the nurses have left behind and wet it as they showed me. She moans again. I remind myself she can no longer hurt me. I take another morphine vial and snap off the end. The doctor said.
She does not sleep. Her eyes flash, and for a moment she looks directly at me. I dare not breathe. I empty another morphine and another and another. Does she know? Is her God watching?
I wake up, and it’s dark. I need to pee. The only light creeps under the door. I’m four years old, and my mother has locked me away with cobwebs that touch my face, with spiders that covet darkness, to teach me a lesson. I’m cold, but I know not to make a sound. My thin arms clutch my knees together as I curl into myself. I must be quiet. Monsters lurk behind shadows. I see shapes that do not belong here. Sounds are muffled. But hour after hour, the noises begin to sharpen. A raven calls, somewhere off, a black harbinger of doom. My mother said. I make out the drone of a solitary fly and hear the quiet chink of plates dripping wet with suds. Another meal I have missed. The urge to pee grows until a warm, damp feeling spreads. I can’t hold it. It will stain the floorboards. And she will know my shame. And I will be the disappointment I can’t outgrow. And I will become more of a shadow, more of a ghost, trapped inside this cupboard under the stairs.
I’ve given my mother’s eulogy, and now I must make certain her burial. I will not sleep otherwise. Waves sound the funeral dirge. The sky lies heavy, ashen over the pale strand. The small graveyard clings to the cliffs above the bay. I think my mother will be cold here. The mourners have worn coats, dark wool, blacks, and blues, to ward off the bitterness of winter. A sea wind cuts through to our bones.
“Take a handful,” instructs the priest as he passes a box filled with dark sandy soil. “Throw it onto the coffin and remember her.”
Old people she knew from church stepped forward; they are seasoned grievers. They know the score – endure this and be rewarded with sandwiches and sherry.
“It blew back,” spits an old woman standing by my side, “into my mouth.”
“It’s over,” I whisper as I turn away. I’m free of her.
She wakes, and it’s dark. And cold. She has no strength. There’s a hardness under her body of bones. The only sound is her breath, slow, but strong. She moves her hand to find warmth but hits a barrier. Her nails scratch against something solid. She wakes her left hand, asleep as if for an age, and slowly claws it sideways, searching for the covers that must have slipped during the night. The exertion is nearly too much; her eyes close, but the cold prevents sleep. She opens her mouth to call me. She listens, but all she hears is the low rumble of waves crashing on a distant shore. She gathers strength to lift her head. It knocks against something hard, and then she knows. She pushes at the lid, but it does not budge. My mother cries out for help, but no one comes.
Julie Holland is an Australian author known for the crime thriller series, The Swan River Killers. Shortlisted for an Ethel Webb Bundell Literary Award, a finalist in the Four Tulips Writing Contest, and highly commended in the Peter Cowan Short Story Competition, her latest novel, ShadowTan, is a dystopian romance. Julie worked as a teacher for many years, both in Australia and the UK, and now lives in Perth, where, when not writing, she restores a house on the beach and battles an adorable ginger tomcat called Rokh. You can find her work at julieholland.com.au or @juliehollandauthor.