Horror Stories of 1,000 Words or Less
For the Month of May 2026, these are the stories that entertain us most.
* Lethiferous by Adam Porkolab
* The Whispering Walls by Plamen Vasilev
* The Other Half by Antonette Karsten
* Flippancy: Or Freedom by NR Schmidt
* Hookface Horror by Tom Kropp
* Lucky Rabbit's Feet by Christine Coll
* Cut! by Mike Cahill
* Vessel by Rachel Asher
* Their Sister by Lama Hajjar
* Bottomless Shrimp by Kelley Criss
* Waiting for Lazarus by Gracie M. Chaney
* Campfire Encounter by Alan Watkins
* Our House is Your House by J.P. Young
* Safe and Still by Khen Julia
* The Visitor by Shubhaa Forrest
Lethiferous by Adam Porkolab
They came after the soldiers, always after. The crew of the Ingrid Falk were surveyors: they mapped what the military scouts had already bled for, charting coordinates, logging mineral densities, and cataloguing debris fields. They had not seen another ship in nine weeks, and the most exciting event in that time had been Petrosyan’s kidney stone, which he passed on a Tuesday and kept in a specimen jar on the navigation console like a trophy.
So when the Lethiferous appeared on the scope, a Vanguard-class corvette with cold engines, Halász was the first to say it out loud: no Vanguard had been tasked to this corridor in four years, and a dead ship did not drift this cleanly into a surveyor’s lane unless it had been put there.
The Latin came through before they were close enough to read the registry numbers, a repeat broadcast on the emergency band, machine-voiced and flat, looping every 40 seconds:
QUOD INTUS EST, FORAS EXIET.
Meszner, who had studied classics at Krakow before switching to astrophysics, translated it on the second pass and laughed, once, through her nose. “What is inside will come out.”
Nobody laughed with her.
At 600 meters the Ingrid Falk’s forward cameras resolved the first body. Then four more. Then 11. They hung in the vacuum around the Lethiferous like fish, belly-up in a poisoned lake, suits intact, visors fogged from the inside by a pale, yellowish film that caught the starlight and held it. Several had burst at the abdomen, the suits split along the seams, and what trailed from those openings was a dark, ropy tangle that moved too slowly to be intestine but too deliberately to be debris.
The Lethiferous locked weapons on the Ingrid Falk at 400 meters. Two plasma turrets tracked their hull with the lazy certainty of a cat watching a bird through glass. The surveyors had no countermeasure. Their only ordnance was a geological charge, a shaped rock-blaster meant for asteroid sampling, bolted to the starboard bow, with a yield roughly equivalent to a large car bomb and a range of 90 meters.
Halász ordered the airlock sealed, but the forward sample lock had already cycled once during the approach. Loss, the junior surveyor, had triggered the retrieval arm when a drifting object struck the hull—standard debris protocol, automatic cataloguing. The object turned out to be a detached suit glove, still pressurized, the fingers curled tight inside it. The pressure differential had split the wrist seal by the time Halász reached the lock, and the decontamination tray beneath the glove was full of a thin, colorless liquid that smelled of nothing, which had already reached the deck grating and begun to seep into the ventilation feed.
Loss was the first. He was sitting at the cartography station, updating the lane chart, when he stopped mid-keystroke and pressed both hands flat against his stomach, fingers spread, the way you’d hold a crack in a dam. His face was calm and his breathing was even, but his undershirt darkened at the navel in a spreading circle, a wetness thinner than blood that hissed faintly where it touched the fabric, and when he lifted his shirt the skin beneath had gone translucent and soft, like wet paper, and through it you could see the slow, purposeful contracting of the stomach lining as it worked—not inward, not digesting, but outward, dissolving the abdominal wall from the inside with a patience that had nothing human in it.
Loss made the sound a man makes when he remembers he left the stove on, a small “oh,” and looked down and watched his own belly open the way a mouth opens, and what came out was wet and alive and still working, loops of intestine slithering across the console and onto the lane chart he had been updating, and the chart was still on screen, and the intestines lay across it like rivers on a map that nobody had asked for.
Meszner screamed for him. Then she stopped, because her hands were on her own stomach and the warmth was already there.
Halász reached the weapons console and armed the rock-blaster. 90 meters. The Lethiferous was at 300 and closing—the turrets still tracking, the Latin still looping, and behind him the sound of Loss’s body emptying itself onto the cartography station in slow, slippery pulses that sounded like someone pouring a thick soup very carefully onto a tile floor.
He fired at 200 meters, knowing the charge would detonate at 90, and the Lethiferous would not feel it, knowing the plasma turrets would fire first, knowing all of it. The shaped charge left the bow and spent itself three seconds later in empty vacuum, a bright, useless flash that lit up the bodies hanging outside the corvette and, for one frame, showed what was inside the fogged visors—faces that were intact, eyes open, mouths stretched wide, and every single one of them was smiling.
The flash faded and the Latin looped and Halász sat down at the navigation console, next to Petrosyan’s kidney stone in its little jar, and waited for the warmth in his belly to become something else, and it did.
QUOD INTUS EST, FORAS EXIET.
Adam Porkolab is a Hungarian speculative fiction writer and poet with a PhD in Linguistics. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Pink Hydra, Bullet Points, Zooscape, and NonBinary Review. He lives in Pécs, Hungary. Find him at adamporkolab.com.
The Whispering Walls by Plamen Vasilev
When Willa first saw the crumbling Victorian on the hill, the sky was bruised violet and the wind carried a metallic scent that seemed to come from the house itself. The real‑estate flyer promised “character and endless possibility,” but the moment her foot crossed the threshold, the floorboards groaned a warning that reverberated through her bones.
Dust lay thick as cement on every surface, and the wallpaper—once a cheerful rose‑pattern—had peeled away in long, ragged strips, exposing a rotten plaster that smelled of mildew and something far sweeter, like decayed fruit.
As she stepped deeper, the thin veil of daylight waned, replaced by an oppressive twilight that seemed to seep from the very walls, and a faint, rhythmic tapping began—soft as a distant heartbeat, but unmistakably human.
Willa tried to convince herself it was just the house settling, the old pipes expanding, the wind rattling shutters. She set her bag down, pulled out a notebook, and began cataloguing the oddities: a shattered chandelier hanging like a broken spider’s web, a portrait whose eyes seemed to follow her, and a narrow staircase that spiraled down into darkness, its steps slick with an unidentifiable black residue.
The tapping grew louder, now matching the cadence of her own breathing, and it seemed to emanate from the very stones beneath her feet. She pressed her palm against the cold plaster of the hallway and felt a faint pulse, as if the house were alive, its lifeblood thrumming just beneath the surface.
Compelled by a mixture of curiosity and dread, Willa followed the sound to a small, doorless room at the back of the house. In its center stood an iron trunk, its surface etched with symbols that glowed faintly in the dim light.
The tapping originated from within, a frantic rattle that seemed to come from something trying desperately to escape.
With trembling hands, she pried the lid open. Inside lay a bundle of yellowed papers, bound by a frayed leather strap, and a rusted key that felt unnaturally warm.
As she lifted the first page, the ink—still black despite the years—spilled out like a living thing, forming words that rearranged themselves before her eyes: “Do not read what you cannot unsee.”
The temperature in the room dropped to a bone‑chilling freeze, and the tapping ceased, replaced by a low, guttural whisper that seemed to circle the room: “You have been heard.”
The whisper rose into an eerie chorus, filling the house with a cacophony of voices—children’s laughter twisted into screams, a woman’s sobbing, a man’s guttural mutterings—all layered over one another like a maddening symphony. Willa clutched the papers to her chest and fled, the hallway stretching interminably before her.
Every door she passed was ajar, revealing glimpses of rooms that should not exist: a nursery frozen in perpetual twilight, its toys moving on their own; a kitchen where pots boiled over with black liquid that hissed and steamed; a bedroom where a shadowy figure stood at the foot of the bed, its face a hollow void that seemed to devour light.
The house itself appeared to reconfigure, corridors looping back on themselves, staircases leading nowhere, each turn bringing a new horror that pressed against the edges of her sanity.
As panic surged, Willa remembered the key she had found. She slipped it into the lock of a heavy oak door at the far end of the hallway, a door she had not noticed before. The lock clicked with an ancient, resonant sound, and the door swung open to reveal a narrow staircase descending into a basement drenched in darkness.
The whispering intensified, as though the abyss below were feeding on the fear it sensed. She descended, each step echoing like a funeral drum, until she reached a vaulted chamber illuminated by a single, flickering lantern that cast long, trembling shadows across the stone walls.
In the center of the chamber stood an altar made of bone and obsidian, upon which lay a grotesque effigy—a faceless doll stitched together from torn fabric and human hair. Around it, a circle of shallow graves held the remains of those who had once lived in the house: brittle bones, cracked skulls, and fragments of torn clothing.
Willa’s breath caught as she realized the tapping was not a trap but a warning; the house had been a prison for a malevolent entity that fed on the souls of its occupants, using their suffering to amplify its power.
The whispering now coalesced into a single, deafening voice that seemed to come from within the walls themselves: “Release me, and I shall grant you eternity.” A cold hand brushed her cheek, and the lantern sputtered, casting the room into absolute black.
Summoning every ounce of will, Willa flung the bundle of papers into the flames. The fire roared, devouring the ink as if it were alive, and the symbols on the walls began to crack, bleeding a thick, black ichor that seeped into the stone.
The entity’s scream tore through the chamber, a sound that rattled the very foundations of the house. The altar shattered, and the faceless doll fell apart, its stitched limbs unraveling into a mass of ragged, whispering threads that dissolved into dust.
As the black ichor drained away, the house shuddered, walls collapsing inward, and a blinding light burst from the center of the ruin, swallowing everything in a purifying blaze.
When the light faded, Willa found herself standing on the hill, the morning sun spilling gold over the landscape. The house was gone, reduced to a smooth, bare patch of earth where only the faintest outline of a foundation remained.
In her hand, she clutched a single, charred page that bore no words—just a burnt imprint of a heart.
As she turned to leave, a soft, distant tapping resumed, this time from the very ground beneath her feet, as if the earth itself whispered: “We never truly die.”
The Other Half by Antonette Karsten
Billy died in winter, when the fever tree in our yard had no leaves.
Everyone says twins are mirrors. I guess that’s why Billy still comes back when the wind moves through its branches.
The first night after the funeral, something tapped my bedframe.
Soft. Familiar.
Tap. Tap.
The way Billy used to wake me on Saturdays.
“Timmy,” he whispered.
He was sitting at the end of my bed. His hair stuck up the way it always did after climbing trees. His knees were muddy. He looked exactly the same as the afternoon before everything went wrong.
“You’re supposed to be dead,” I said.
Billy shrugged.
“You’re supposed to be asleep.”
After that, he came most nights.
Sometimes he sat cross-legged on the floor, tracing shapes in the dust. Sometimes he stood by the window, watching the fever tree sway in the dark. His face always looked pale, like moonlight had decided to stay there.
I told Mom once.
She stopped stirring her coffee and looked at me with tired eyes.
“You miss him,” she said softly. “That’s normal.”
“I see him.”
She squeezed my hand like I’d said something sad instead of something true.
“Imaginary friends help when you’re lonely.”
Billy sat on the counter behind her, swinging his legs.
“I’m not imaginary,” he told me.
At school, I talked to him in my head so the other kids wouldn’t stare. Sometimes he finished my sentences before I did.
Teachers say twins are mirrors. But Billy wasn’t a mirror anymore.
Mirrors copy you.
Billy watched.
One afternoon, we sat beneath the fever tree. The bark was smooth and pale, and the roots pushed through the dirt like bones.
“You shouldn’t sit here,” Billy said.
“Why?”
“You remember what happened.”
“I remember you falling.”
Billy didn’t answer. The wind rattled the branches above us.
“You climbed higher than me,” I said quietly. “You always did.”
I could still see it if I tried. Billy scrambling up the trunk. The branch snapping. The terrible thud when he hit the ground.
The ambulance lights turning the yard blue. Mom screaming.
Billy stared at the roots.
“That’s not how it happened,” he said.
Spring came.
The fever tree, filled with small green leaves, then yellow blossoms, made the whole yard smell sweet and strange.
Billy came less often after that.
When he did appear, he looked thinner somehow, like a reflection fading from old glass.
One night, he sat at the end of my bed again.
“You should tell them,” he said.
“Tell them what?”
“That you remember.”
“I told them everything.”
Billy shook his head. “No. You told them the story you needed.”
Outside, the fever tree branches scraped against the roof. Something slippery moved in my memory.
“Billy,” I whispered.
His eyes looked sad in the dark.
“You weren’t the one who fell.”
The memory opened like a door.
The branch breaking beneath my weight. The rush of air. Billy’s scream.
Then silence.
When I blinked, Billy was gone. The room suddenly felt too large.
The next morning, I heard Mom crying again. I followed the sound to the kitchen.
She stood at the window staring at the fever tree, holding two mugs the way she used to when Billy and I came inside after playing.
“Billy still talks to him,” she whispered to Dad.
Dad’s voice sounded tired. “He’s grieving.”
Mom shook her head slowly. “No.”
She kept staring into the yard.
“He’s talking to Timmy.”
Billy sat beneath the fever tree roots, watching the house.
I stood beside him the way I always had.
“Do you see me now?” I asked.
Billy didn’t answer. But that night, he still brought two plates to dinner. Because everyone says twins are mirrors.
And sometimes…the reflection still answers.
Antonette is a South African writer whose work explores psychological horror, folklore, and speculative fiction. Their stories “Perfumer of Noir” and “Second Growth” were published through WATG Press and the Hemlock Journal.
Flippancy: Or Freedom by NR Schmidt
Earning Your Keep
Rebecca Torlwith killed her first husband with a blanket.
No one blamed her; his missing finger (removed by the state) was evidence that he wasn’t well-liked.
But it was noticeable how she did it.
A wet blanket around the face, held down in the tub.
The shower head was on, and it was winter, so the water was bitterly cold.
She was shivering when she finished the deed.
Her thick mane matted with ice water.
But no one knew.
She left the house that day in casual dress and a cardigan.
Self-Medication
Fran Bercher wasn’t much more than she appeared.
Apron over a flowered dress.
Crimped hair and makeup, not too heavy.
Her Edwin passed a year ago, and ten years since her first, Tex, ran off with the dog.
Edwin treated her well, but was boring.
And had died of a brain bleed, blood too thin.
Curious, though, the prescription was hers.
Catharsis
In high school, a few of the more insecure boys would make fun of Jane Haye.
She was a bit awkward, no doubt, and her butchy hair and her baggy jeans, fraying at the ends, didn’t help.
She knew they were losers, but their words stung anyway.
It frustrated her the way they got under her skin.
She became a plumber.
A number of years later, she was contracted to remove the lead from the pipes in one of their houses.
She took two weeks.
And told them she changed every pipe.
But left remarkably light, each day.
Under the Floorboards
The cats found Bertha Gladdsbottom and had nibbled off the ends of her fingers by the time the authorities came.
But she’d gone out on her own terms, asleep with a glass of wine.
In something comfy and her house slippers.
The floors clean.
No dust on the fan.
The faintest hint of Pine-Sol drifting room to room, carried by the ceiling fans set on low.
Bills paid.
A shame there was no one to pull the weeds in the yard as she rested.
Task complete.
No one missed her husband.
Panama
Hannah Plainer liked the house warm. A degree or two warmer than most.
Her husband complained to her.
Nearly daily.
Not because he was chilly, but that in his wife’s contentment, he saw the fraying ends of his paycheck.
He never smoked.
But died of COPD anyway.
The house is warm now, always.
When they sold it, a month or two after she went to the home, they found a cracked pipe on the side of her husband’s bed.
It blew carbon monoxide.
But only above seventy degrees.
NR Schmidt is a writer originally from America's west coast. This is his first fiction publication.
Hookface Horror by Tom Kropp
Shannon looked around in awe at her boyfriend Dan’s new hunting cabin and property. She was a beautiful brunette with green eyes and an athletic figure. Her boyfriend, Dan, was a tall, muscular, good-looking man with dark hair and blue eyes. The small cabin sat along the edge of a stream in a gorgeous forest clearing.
“How did you get the place so cheap?’ Shannon had to ask again.
Dan sighed, “Probably because of the legends.”
“What legends?’ Shannon asked, upset.
“It’s just a bunch of old wives’ tales,” Dan tried to brush it off.
“Tell me,” Shannon insisted.
Dan sighed heavily but explained. “Well, supposedly, many years ago, an inbred family lived here. One of the daughters got pregnant, supposedly by her father, and they had a local medicine woman come to do the abortion. Supposedly, the medicine woman fished the fetus out with a hook and took the body into the woods to bury it. But rumors started circulating some years later about a boy they called Hookface. Rumors are that when the fishwife dug him out of his mother’s womb, she scarred his face with the hook and then gave the deformed baby to a local couple that wanted a child.
“Hookface was shunned out here. By the time he was a teen, he was almost seven feet tall and heavily muscled. He would beat up grown men or any kids who made fun of him. The law came out to arrest him after he was accused of torturing, raping, and killing another boy out here. But the cops couldn’t find him.
“After that, Hookface’s real family was found tortured, raped, and murdered in their cabin. Then other people started disappearing, so everyone moved out of the area. Over the years since then it’s rumored a few hikers have vanished, but it was never proven they disappeared out here.”
Shannon was furious. “You brought me to a possible mass murder site?”
“Relax. It’s just a bunch of old rumors with no proof. Besides, we’re both armed. “Dan patted the .45 revolver on his hip. “God help any fools that try to mess with us out here.”
Shannon was pissed. She had her own .38 revolver holstered under her shirt. “I thought we were coming out to see your new property and do some shooting for the weekend. Well, I’m not staying the weekend. We’re going home tomorrow. I’d say we’re going home tonight if it wasn’t such a long drive.”
Dan raised his hand in surrender. He knew better than to argue with her when she was pissed.
###
Later that night, they were sitting on the porch under the moonlight when a monster came for them. The hulking figure was freakishly fast as he dashed from the leaves and trees. Dan tried to rise and pull his pistol. The looming titan gripped Dan’s wrist with a savage twist that made Dan’s forearm snap like kindling. Dan didn’t even get a chance to scream before Hookface’s fist jarred into Dan’s jaw like a jackhammer and mangled Dan’s mandible while knocking his noggin unconscious.
Shannon plucked out her pistol and emptied her revolver in a battery of bullets that belted Hookface’s body. Amazingly, Hookface nabbed her hand with a gargantuan grip and ripped away her weapon. Before she could scream, Hookface’s punch crunched, ramming her ribs in a low body blow that dumped her on her rump. He followed up with a kick that clobbered her cranium and clubbed her unconscious.
###
When Shannon opened her eyes, she found herself bound and hanging upside down from a rope and pulley system in a cave. There was a lantern glowing. She could see that Dan was trussed up with his mouth taped up. He screamed in agony into the tape as a mountain of a man finished raping him.
Hookface finished what he was doing to Dan and glanced at Shannon. Shannon gawked in horror. Hookface’s face was grotesquely ugly with inbreeding deformities and a gruesome scar from forehead to chin where a hook had scraped his face during a failed abortion attempt. He was naked and massively built, including a penis at least a foot long.
“Don’t worry, I like girls too,” Hookface slobbered in a burbling voice, speaking with a clear speech impediment. Shannon looked away from his terrifying form and spotted a very large Kevlar vest hanging on a nearby rock. Comprehension dawned on her.
“Yes. Bulletproof,” Hookface laughed. “Got that off a hunter out here one year. Not many people come out here anymore. Even though I eat what I kill and hide the bones here,” Hookface pointed, and Shannon looked over to see a connecting cave chamber filled with countless human bones. Hookface smiled at the fear on her face.
“Thanks for coming. I’ve been so lonely. I’m going to keep you both alive for a good while and have fun with you both. Then I’ll enjoy eating you, and your bones will keep me company. Thanks for buying my family’s old place. “
Shannon screamed into her gag as Hookface laughed in evil, joyous delight.
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, 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.
Lucky Rabbit's Feet by Christine Coll
Most humans were never meant to be lucky, but a rare few were.
Mama told me a rabbit’s foot would be used as good luck, explaining how the small mammal also had connections to the next life.
“They burrow,” she said when I was younger. “They go deep underground and lead people to the next world.”
I thought it was ridiculous, yet the idea fascinated me.
My first rabbit, Poppy, was a temperamental creature, hellbent on biting my fingers whenever she got the chance. When she died, Mama put her in an old shoebox I decorated with plastic beads. She went to the backyard, the rusted chain-link fence a border for all the hoarded tires, old furniture, and trash Mama never took to the dump. Towards the rear, there was a little grassy patch befitting a burial.
“She needs to be deep underground,” I insisted, tears and snot running down my face.
“I’ll dig as deep as I can,” Mama promised.
Over time, the backyard turned into a crowded cemetery, each with tiny headstones from rocks I found by the creek just beyond the property line.
Regardless, I continued to own rabbits.
The years flew by. Veterinary school was long and tedious, making it even more difficult to graduate with Mama’s dementia diagnosis. To keep her company, I took rabbits from work and kept them in cages brimming with straw and shit, hoping they’d bring good luck.
Mama only got sicker.
She threw dishes, she’d wander the streets in the middle of the night, but in brief moments of hope, the light returned to her eyes, and she’d chatter about with fleeting lucidity. However, the moment she stumbled over her words and her blank expression returned, I knew our time was up.
Between shifts, I shoveled my way beneath the house, excavating my own burrow. She needed to be closer to the next world to safely pass. When the room was complete, turning out more like a dungeon, I strapped her to her wheelchair and dragged her inside, hoping she’d follow a ghostly rabbit.
Mama kept living.
Cataracts devoured eyeballs, infection riddled her paper-thin flesh, her teeth fell onto her lap, stinking and rotted. Mama mumbled nonsense and screamed at the rabbits set loose with her in the dark, cramped room.
She needed more luck.
After work, I headed down the makeshift stairs of backyard trash into the room, my flashlight illuminating thirty-four pairs of floppy ears along with the living skeleton in a wheelchair.
“Good evening, Mama,” I hummed, setting my veterinary bag down on my stainless-steel table. “I’m finally home.”
She gargled in response.
Scalpels, syringes, and bottles of ketamine were spread out in front of me. Midnight and Wallace hopped by my feet, nibbling at my scrubs. I wondered if they could even see the blue.
“It’s time for your medicine, Mama.”
Flashlight under my arm, I scooped Midnight up, his sleek black fur matted with feces, straw, and smashed food pellets. Poor thing. If Midnight was unlucky enough to be in this state, would he be lucky enough for Mama? And if I were to let him go, would he be lucky again to live another day? Or unlucky enough to continue in this hell?
I held him in one hand for a while, debating. Lucky? Or unlucky? Midnight kicked and squirmed, escaping from me and onto the table with a loud clang!
Mama howled in response, the rabbits around her hopping and squealing.
Midnight bounded across the dark room, his beady eyes blending in the moving swarm.
The nearest rabbit was Rufus, who’d bully the others for food; so I considered him lucky to be so well fed and well-groomed compared to the others. His luck would run out, but hopefully, there was enough in his feet for Mama.
I set Rufus on the table, luring him with a pellet to feast on as I injected him with ketamine.
My lucky rabbits. It killed a little piece of me each time I did this, but Mama needed help. More help than any doctor could legally provide. Luckily, I was here. Humans weren’t so different from animals after all.
When Rufus finally fell asleep, I took my cutting instruments and sawed into his rabbit’s foot. Blood burst onto my gloves, spattering across my shirt. I wiped it away, continuing. Back and forth, back and forth. Bone cracked, and finally, I ripped away the hock and bandaged the wound.
My beloved Rufus, doomed to contract a putrid infection from his defiled stump. Once he was gone, I’d get a new Rufus. A new hope for Mama, and some fresh luck.
I left Rufus on the table and went back upstairs to my freezer, pulling out a small plastic bag that was filled with the remaining rabbit’s feet from those buried in the garden. This would be just enough for this week’s dose.
I took my blender from the center of the kitchen counter and pureed the feet.
Mama’s medicine, a pinkish gray sludge, was carefully poured into a plastic Trix Rabbit cup. More rabbits, the better. I stuck a straw in and returned to Mama, kneeling at her side as she drank while I stroked the remaining, thin strands of hair. A dribbling mess oozed from her toothless mouth and onto her lap.
“There, Mama, don’t you feel better?” My hands shook around her head, her gaze so sunken. Nothing.
I slammed a hand against her chair and chucked her medicine into the darkness. “Don’t you see all these fucking rabbits? Just go!”
But like every week, for years and years, Mama remained alive in her wheelchair. As years went by, more rabbits came through, more drinks were made, more rabbits’ feet consumed. Mama kept living.
I guess she was lucky like that.
Christine Coll is an avid fantasy nerd with a fascination for the strange and paranormal. She enjoys D&D, exploring haunted landmarks, and hanging out with her wife and three cats. She was recently published by Little Fruits Magazine for her story "Ruby."
Cut! by Mike Cahill
I have to get out!
Danica had been running far longer than she could remember, her heart pounding and her bare feet sore and bloody. Labyrinthian walls had her lost and alone while obscure figures watched her struggle.
Curled behind the safety of a chest of drawers, she hid. Approaching footsteps sent shockwaves of terror through her. Please don’t find me!
Knees pressed to chest, fingers clamped tight to her mouth, she squeezed her eyes shut and prayed he wouldn’t catch her. Then, the air in her lungs froze with dread: He was there. Several heartbeats passed before the assailant left, echoes of footsteps dissolving away.
Danica slipped out, on trembling tiptoes down the hall, stressed and alert, she flicked glimpses around. Almost making it to the door as the entire room behind shuddered. The attacker, thick, tall, and dressed in bloody overalls and a bone mask, charged her.
They’d done this already–twice, in fact. Danica launched herself forward through the door, passing grotesque halls where bodies hung like windless flags. Following it left before bursting into an old theatre. Once more, finding little solace under the theatre chairs.
The doors smashed apart seconds after. Danica held her hands tight, wide-eyed, beneath and praying the darkness an ally, as the monster man, axe clipping the chairs, rushed past. Adrenaline-fuelled and wanting nothing more than to escape, Danica leapt up. Scrambling on tired legs up the theatre steps and crashing through the swinging doors out into the foyer. She had no perception of time, location, or how to get out of this nightmare; in fact, Danica couldn’t be sure whether this was even real or not. Eyes searched feverishly for an escape– the door to her right erupting as the hulking pursuer entered.
“What do you want?” She screamed, dashing to the only door she could before stumbling down the corridor, the door at the other end looming closer. Arms and fingers ready, she pushed–colliding hard into unmoving metal.
“No, no, no, no. Come on!” She snatched at the handle, shaking it, but her efforts were futile.
Voice a strangled whine. “Open you piece of shit!”
Snapping a look back, dread filled her: the mountain was already halfway down the corridor.
“Damn it!” With all her might, she barged it–once, twice…
Danica’s shirt strangled her as she was dragged down, her palms slapping the cold floor hard.
“Why are you doing this?” She wailed, eyes leaking. Through the bleariness, the axe rose, his figure looming over her.
“Please,” She begged, the axe swung high. Her heart hammered, waiting for the blow.
“And cut!” A voice barked over a megaphone. The room immediately flooded with blinding lights. The attacker dropped the axe, and Danica–real name Cassie–wiped her eyes free from blonde sticky hair and exhaled. Tension melting away instantly with a long smile.
“Good work, everyone. Now that’s a wrap for today,” the director announced. As bodies bustled onto the set, filming was done for another day.
Mike Cahill is an author from Cornwall, now living in Portsmouth, who values the voices of minorities. He likes to think of himself as a writer who advocates for the LGBTQ+ community, championing compelling, dramatic stories set in rich, inclusive settings. His sweet spot, however, is writing horror, romance, and just about anything else that piques his interest.
His Instagram handle is mike_cahill89 / Mikeknowsnothing
Vessel by Rachel Asher
Sister Petra walked into the village, looking for a body. Gordon the mouse clung to her shoulder. She lit the cigarette hanging from her lips as Gordon jumped onto a stone fence. His quick body scampered down the street.
Around them, trees dropped leaves and flowers wilted. The sky bruised into purples and greens. She flicked her cigarette, adjusted her habit, and walked.
Gordon sat on a post-box outside Jackson Lane Shop. “On the left. Four houses down.”
Sister Petra watched the shopkeeper place a tabloid poster in the window. It featured a blurred photo of a giant octopus with the head of a spider and a multitude of eyes.
“Gordon, is that you?” Petra laughed.
“I’m seen one time, and I get punished.”
“How long left in that body?”
“Four hundred years.” Gordon dashed up the shopkeeper’s shoulder.
Before the man could react, Gordon whispered in his ear and rushed back. The shopkeeper grabbed the poster and ripped it up.
Petra smiled. “Planting thoughts?”
“Passing time.”
They walked up Jackson Lane to the bungalow of Maria Sandford.
The old lady opened the door. “Can I help you?”
“Hello Mrs Sandford. I'm Sister Petra. I’d like to talk about a program for at-risk children and animals.”
Maria smiled. “Come in.”
Gordon whispered. “Really?”
“It got us in the door.”
“I’ll get tea.” Maria went to the kitchen.
Sister Petra sat and pulled a canister from her pocket.
Gordon crawled onto her leg. “Not as much this time.”
“That wasn’t my fault.” Petra hid the canister in her skirts as Maria returned.
Maria sat and poured.
Sister Petra gave the signal and clutched her rosary. “Is that a mouse?”
Maria turned to see Gordon’s tail disappear into the kitchen. Sister Petra dropped the Henbane into Maria’s cup and grabbed her own. She sipped as Maria turned back, apologising.
“No need. Twice a year, the convent gets overrun like the 15th Century.”
Maria smiled as she drank. “Well, this program...?” She gasped and fell forward.
Sister Petra jumped up and lifted Maria back onto the chair.
Gordon returned. “That was quick.”
Sister Petra began chanting. The room grew sulphurous. Maria’s head shot back, mouth agape. Black mist dove into the old woman’s mouth. Maria’s body jerked with the force and stopped dead.
“Did it work, Petra?”
Maria’s black eyes opened. The voice guttural. “An old lady?”
Sister Petra shrugged. “You said someone religious.”
“So, I could fuck around.” Possessed, Maria jumped up. “What am I going to do in this body?”
“Not my problem. Your boss made a deal. A vessel for you and he releases my sister.” Petra walked to the front door.
The demon kicked the table. “She’s a hundred years old!”
Sister Petra closed the door.
Gordon clung to her habit. “Do you think he’ll let your sister go?”
“I hope so,” she replied. “Otherwise, I'm the biggest asshole in the world.”
Gordon smirked. “Second only to the one Maria’s going to be.”
Rachel Asher is a horror and spec fiction author. Rachel has had several short fiction pieces published across online magazines and longlisted international short story competitions. She lives in Australia and is currently working on a folk horror novella. https://www.instagram.com/rachelasherwrites/.
Their Sister by Lama Hajjar
The first night the wolves called, she thought it was the wind.
By the third night, she knew the sound was meant for her.
The forest stood just beyond the house; a dark line of trees pressed against the horizon like a wall of quiet witnesses. In winter, it looked endless. Snow swallowed the paths, softened the hills, and turned the world into something pale and silent.
Still, the sound reached her.
Every night, the wolves called from the forest behind the house.
Not howling…calling.
The sound was low and patient. It slipped through the window and settled somewhere beneath her ribs, as if the body recognized something the mind refused to understand.
At first, she told herself it was only imagination.
Winter had a way of bending the senses. The wind dragged along the roof, branches rubbed against frozen bark, and the night stretched long enough for thoughts to wander into strange places.
But the sound returned.
Every night.
Closer.
The villagers laughed when she mentioned it.
“Wolves hunt deer,” one of them said. “Not people.”
“Wolves howl,” said another. “They don’t call.”
They spoke with the calm certainty of people who believed the forest followed simple rules.
She stopped mentioning it.
Yet the calls grew clearer each night.
Branches bent. Snow shifted. The dark itself seemed to breathe.
Sometimes she woke moments before the sound arrived, her body already alert, as if something inside her had learned the rhythm of the night.
The call moved through the quiet rooms like a slow tide.
Low.
Patient.
Waiting.
She began to notice small changes.
The cold air outside the window no longer stung her lungs. Instead, it felt sharp and clean, filling her chest in a way the warm air of the house never did.
Her sleep grew lighter.
Her hearing sharper.
Once, while walking along the edge of the forest, she stopped suddenly without knowing why. The trees stood still around her, their dark trunks rising like pillars through the snow.
For a moment, she felt certain something was watching her.
Not hunting.
Watching.
Recognizing.
The feeling passed quickly, yet something in her chest tightened with a strange certainty she could not explain.
That night, the call returned again.
Closer than ever.
Somewhere between waking and dream, a strange recognition formed.
The voice in the night was not unfamiliar.
It stirred something old, something patient, something that felt less like fear and more like remembering.
A memory without words.
The villagers said wolves feared humans.
But the sound outside the house carried no fear.
It carried expectation.
The voice in the night was not a threat.
It was an invitation.
She began waking before the call arrived.
Her body already alert.
Her senses stretched outward into the dark.
When the sound finally rose from the forest, it moved through her bones like a quiet current.
Her breath slowed.
Her heartbeat steadied.
The house around her felt strangely distant, as though she were listening to the world from somewhere deeper inside herself.
Night after night, the calls continued.
Waiting.
Patient.
Certain.
Until one evening, she woke to a silence so complete it felt unnatural.
No wind.
No distant call.
Only the quiet breath of the sleeping house.
She sat upright in bed.
Something had changed.
She rose slowly and walked toward the door.
The floor was cold beneath her feet, yet the cold no longer bothered her.
The house seemed suspended in a strange stillness, as if every object inside it were holding its breath.
Tonight, the door stood open.
She did not remember opening it.
Moonlight spilled across the floor and stretched through the hallway like pale water.
Beyond the doorway, the forest waited.
Dark.
Silent.
Familiar.
It stood there like an old memory returning after years of absence.
For a moment, she turned toward the mirror hanging beside the door.
Her reflection startled her.
Across her shoulders hung a coat she did not remember wearing.
Grey.
Thick.
Soft.
The fabric shifted slightly with her breathing.
Something about her posture had changed. Her shoulders lowered. Her spine bent forward without effort, as if her body had discovered a more natural balance.
Her eyes looked different, too.
Sharper.
Brighter.
More certain.
The forest beyond the doorway felt less like a place and more like a destination she had always known.
She stepped outside.
The snow beneath her feet felt strangely familiar, as if she had walked this path many times before.
Cold air filled her lungs easily.
The trees opened slowly before her as she moved toward them.
Somewhere beyond the branches, shapes moved through the shadows.
Silent.
Watching.
Waiting.
For a long moment, the forest held its breath.
Then the wolves stepped forward into the moonlight.
Grey bodies moving softly between the trees.
Golden eyes reflecting the pale sky.
They did not snarl.
They did not howl.
They simply watched her.
Outside, the pack fell silent.
They were waiting.
Waiting for their sister.
Lama Hajjar is an art therapist, writer, and impressionist artist based in Dubai. Her work lives at the intersection of emotion, nature, and healing, where art becomes a language for what words often cannot hold. Through her practice, Lama creates spaces for individuals to reconnect with themselves using creative expression, guiding them gently through inner landscapes of feeling, memory, and transformation. Her writing and artwork are deeply influenced by the natural world... horses, wolves, earth, and silence, often weaving poetic narratives that explore softness, resilience, and the unseen layers of the human experience. Alongside her artistic practice, she offers online art therapy sessions and continues to build a body of work that invites others into a quieter, more honest way of being.
Links:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lama.hajjar?igsh=ampyNHVkcDc2amVl
Substack: https://substack.com/@lamaelhajjar?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=6s2z92
Bottomless Shrimp by Kelley Criss
Café de la Marée was a moderately popular chain seafood restaurant in the Midwest, which is odd considering the low population of French immigrants in the midwestern US and the distance from the ocean. It was just upscale enough to deter the average Joe, but still too expensive to be considered an “any night of the week” place. Top-tier American fine dining. Much like every great restaurant chain, Café de la Marée had a gimmick. Not dancing animatronics or a friendly mascot, they had bottomless shrimp. It was truly bottomless; all you can eat, literally.
Rick considers himself small-town royalty, but he probably would not include the “small town” part. He thought he was hot shit. Rick was the best lawyer in town, mainly handling small-time divorce cases and DUIs, but in a small town, that’s big time. His wife Ann was a schoolteacher, a decent job, especially when married to a lawyer. She always ran for city council and helped with the bake sale, and Rick helped all the grandmas in town with their last will and testament. They had one perfect daughter who was in all the school plays and had the best hair in her class. They were the upper echelon of small-town USA.
Once every few months, Rick and Ann would take their date night into the “big city”, about an hour drive in light traffic. Ann loved to go to a place that she couldn’t pronounce and brag to the other teachers on Monday about the Vodka Cran she ordered, because cranberries seemed exotic. Most of the other teachers were married to blue-collar men, so their date nights usually consisted of Applebee’s and a movie, which was fine with them. Ann does like the traditional Friday night special, but this Friday was the night that she and Rick would venture into the city once again. She told all her friends that Rick was taking her to Café de la Marée.
At the restaurant, they were seated in a dimly lit booth in the middle of the dining room. Rick ordered an Arnold Palmer; he had been taking up golfing on Sundays. Ann ordered a sex on the beach, which she would repeat in hushed tones to her friends on Monday because how risqué. Rick dominated the conversation with talk about his client’s drama, and Ann chimed in with the rumors she had heard at school. The waiter finally approached to take their food order; “I’ll have the lobster pasta and a side salad.” Ann ordered.
“And I’ll take the bottomless shrimp,” Rick said. The waiter stared at Rick, lethargically, but also kind of annoyed, and replied in a monotone manner, “The bottomless shrimp. Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Rick replied.
The waiter walked into the kitchen and relayed to the staff, “Someone has ordered the bottomless shrimp.” The staff quietly looked around the kitchen until all eyes landed on the newest employee, Greg. Greg’s heart started to race, and he looked around in a panic. He thought he would be able to make it until someone else was the “new guy” before a customer ordered the bottomless shrimp. He knew it was a hazard of the job; fine dining is cutthroat, but he thought he had more time. The waiter grabbed him before he could run for the exit. The two burst through the kitchen door and into the dining room, drawing all the customers' attention. The waiter practically had to drag Greg to Rick’s table. The couple now had all eyes on them as Greg was thrown onto the ground in front of their booth.
Greg begged and pleaded on hands and knees, “Please, man, please! Order something else! Anything else! Oh god, I don’t want to die, man!” Greg cried and reached towards Rick’s feet.
The waiter locked eyes with Rick and then looked down at Greg. He apathetically informed Rick that, to offer customers the legendary bottomless shrimp, the newest member of the kitchen staff must be sacrificed. Not just let go, but their life ended. Over Greg’s pleading, the waiter unsympathetically asked Rick once again, “Are you sure you want the bottomless shrimp?”
Rick looked at Greg, who seemed very young, maybe no more than 21, and wearing a busboy uniform. Then he looked around the restaurant at all the other diners, who were all looking back at him. That’s when someone a few tables away started to chant, “Shrimp. Shrimp. Shrimp.” Then the chant picked up and caught on. People were banging their fists on the tables while they chanted. Soon, the whole place was shouting “Shrimp! Shrimp! Shrimp!”
Rick looked down at Greg once more and coldly responded, “I’ll take the Shrimp.”
Kelley Criss is a writer and Chemist from Kansas City who loves Horror and unhappy endings.
Waiting for Lazarus by Gracie M. Chaney
I was 19 when we married, and so in love with life. The little chrysalis that we had formed held me so tightly and shielded me from this world. Really, we were just kids then.
You were 21 when you died, just a few months later. I would like to say you lived your life fully, but I am not a liar. Not as in love with life as I, you did your best to stay at home, scribbling music and poetic leavings into your notebooks. I wish I still had those notebooks.
When you died, I wasn’t the most upset - your father was. After the funeral, he sat in his rocking chair that creak-creak-creaked back and forth as he wept-wept-wept, and sipped his whisky bottle. The parish priest visited him, but he was unreachable.
Everyone in the village - including me - thought he was regressing back to his alcoholic past. So, when he told us you had come back, we hung our heads in embarrassment for him. Poor old man...son’s gone and so is his mind...
And then your father disappeared. No sign of a struggle. Not a bag was packed nor a note left. He simply vanished like a puff of smoke. The villagers searched the forest for him, and each time they came back forlorn.
And then others went missing. One was a student of mine from the grammar school, a quiet nine-year-old named Tommy. You remember him? Of course you do. He used to come over in the summer months and take violin lessons from you. I wonder where he is now. Probably with the others.
It is said that when one becomes a vampire, they go after those closest to them. So, why make me wait? I would have given my life for you. I would have entered your arms of my own free will, and as you pierced my neck with your daggers, I would have cried, “Daniel, sweet Daniel. I am yours,” and you would have turned me into a child of the night. We could have been happy then. We could have traversed the sea of time together, with love as our only god. Yet with each passing night, another villager disappears, along with more of my hope. All I have now is the gnawing fear that one day, just a heartbeat away, I will wake up to an empty village and be the only one you’ve left behind.
Gracie M. Chaney is a short story writer and poet based on Paris, France.
Campfire Encounter by Alan Watkins
As I came upon the stream that ran through the encampment I was approaching, I knew I hadn't arrived in time. The water flowed with the blood of the dead from the area not more than fifty feet away from me. I could see the flames of the fire, still burning, that the people had probably been gathered around laughing and dancing not ten minutes before.
I put on my gloves to load my revolver. I took six bullets out of a Ziploc bag and put them into the chamber, and then flicked it back into place with my wrist like they do in the movies. I resealed the Ziploc, put it back in my bag, and started creeping slowly toward the fire.
When I was about ten feet from the clearing where the fire was, I heard the familiar sounds of eating chicken wings. Sure, it’s human flesh, but it still always sounded like someone eating chicken wings to me.
As I passed all but the last of the trees that separated the woods and the clearing, I saw the hairy beast through the flames on the other side, devouring one of the now-limp victims. I readied my revolver in one hand and picked up a rock from the ground in the other. I threw the rock into the stream behind him with a loud splash, and the creature immediately sprang up several feet in the air and landed near the water where the rock went in.
The night was silent at that point except for the crackling fire and the cocking of the hammer on my revolver. That sound made the creature slowly turn his head toward me, emitting a guttural growl. In one motion, he turned and leapt in the air towards me, and my gun rang out in the darkness three times. The body fell roughly three feet in front of me, already turning back to its human form.
He looked up at me, life slowly fading from his eyes. “Why?” he asked.
“This is my territory,” I responded.
“Why didn’t you just ask me to leave?” he pleaded.
I replied, “You know we are allowed to kill trespassers, and there’s already too many of us.”
As his life faded, I began my own transformation so I could consume the only still-fresh meat in the vicinity...eating around the silver bullets, of course.
Our House is Your House by J.P. Young
Strangers are nature's way.
The only thing stronger than Mr. and Mrs. Stultus' love for each other was their altruism. Until not too long ago, there had been a third target of their love: the love of their only child, their daughter Rustica, the result of the former.
They raised Rustica to love all, and the Stultus's friends said Rustica had her mother's beauty, her father's intelligence, and the couple's undying compassion for all. As the time passed, their daughter grew through childhood, then schooling, then her higher learning, where, to no one's surprise, she studied social welfare work and earned her degree and place in the world. During her internship, Rustica was murdered by one of the people she looked after. The law enforcement and the other authorities deemed it best not to disclose to her parents that she had been brutalised and raped before her lengthy murder. The Stultus's would blame poverty, ignorance, and misunderstanding for Rustica's departure from their world.
Their planet, Mundo, had been welcoming visitors who had escaped from the planet Externum, a distant world of tyranny. The authorities of Mundo would express their sadness at the totalitarian regime of Externum, but words and wishes were their only means of interplanetary communication. Externum warned Mundo to mind its own affairs but would only mildly object to Mundo giving sanctuary to Externum's fugitives.
The ruling regime of Mundo had similar feelings of selflessness as the Stultus's. As the guest hostels for the incomers from Externum filled up, the Mundo media begged those on the planet to take an Externumite into their own homes.
“Our house is your house, Salutor!”
“Thank you. Please call me Sal.”
Mr. and Mrs. Stultus smiled at Salutor, their new boarder. He had been taught a working knowledge of the language, customs, social benefits, and financial entitlements of Mundo at the regime's guest hostel. He would live in Rustica's former room. Mr. and Mrs. Stultus were once again a family, treating Sal in a kind paternal and maternal way.
Sal had no interest in the main recreation of Mr. and Mrs. Stultus, walking through the nature areas of their planet's forests and water features.
It was a pleasant day as usual.
“Look at the small insect, my beloved. He looks so lost and alone.”
“The insects that look lost and alone are scouts for their hive. They search for food and the lay of the land and report back to their community.”
Sal had no work; he received remuneration from the regime. Sal would tell his hosts stories of the misery of Externum that sounded like a truly horrible place, and the tragedy of the murder of his wife and children by the cruel authorities of his planet.
One day, when the Stultus's returned from their nature walk, there was a new female face in their house.
“Mr. and Mrs. Stultus! A miracle has happened! This is my wife Uxorem! I thought her dead, but she was merely enslaved, and she escaped as I did. Will you please let her live with me?”
“Our house is your house, Uxorem!”
All those in the Stultus's house were happy.
###
The Stultus's went on another nature walk.
“Look at the beautiful foliage on that tree, my darling.”
“Those are creepers, love of my life. They grow upon a tree and cover it with wonder. Sadly, the original tree dies from want of nutrients and atmosphere.”
The pair returned home, and Sal and Uxo, as they called her, beamed with delight to say they had a wonderful surprise. Their three children, whom they had believed to have been murdered in a cruel captivity, had not only remained alive, but they escaped from Externum. The Mundo regime sent them to be with their parents.
“Our house is your house!”
All was joy.
The only difficulty was that Rustica's former room would be too small for the family and their children. The Stultus's looked at each other and nodded, for the pair seemed to have the gift of telepathy.
“Let us change rooms! We will move into your old room that belonged to our daughter. Sal and Uxo, you can move into our room, and we will convert our study and office into your children's rooms!”
There were hugs and smiles all around.
The children were noisy and damaged some of the house, but the Stultus's convinced each other that when Rustica was a child, she did the same thing, though both of them knew that she really hadn't.
###
This time on their nature walk, they noticed that the grassy areas were covered with weeds.
Upon their return home, Sal, Uxo, and their three children announced that they had a wonderful surprise.
“I thought my brother and his wife, and their two children, were dead, but they have arrived here to live with us!”
“Our house is your house!”
“But where will you all stay?” Mr. Stultus added.
“We have another surprise! You have taken care of us, now we shall take care of you! Please close your eyes and come up to our room to see!” Uxo smiled.
The Stultus's were guided up the stairs, and they were laid on the bed together.
“Now look up at the ceiling, Mr. and Mrs. Stultus!”
The Stultus's looked up, their wrists were held by their two male guests, their children held a blanket over the Stultus's bodies as the female guests placed pillows over their faces, muffling their cries and suffocating them. The last thing they heard was their guests’ voices,
“This is our house! This is our house! This is our house!”
J.P. Young is a former international private, commercial and government investigator who resides in seaside paradise, Kiama, Australia.
Safe and Still by Khen Julia
Maya has been holding her breath for eighteen days.
It is a spectacular achievement. Before this, her record in the Stillness Game was only four minutes, back when she would hide under the cellar stairs and wait for Mother to find her. Now, she sits in the floral armchair by the bay window from morning until night, her gaze fixed entirely on the great oak tree in the front yard.
Mother says Maya has finally learned how to be a perfect lady.
Every morning at eight o’clock, Mother brings in the white porcelain basin, a yellow sponge, and a small glass bottle of lavender oil. I carry the towels. It is my job to help, because Maya is so committed to the game that she refuses to wash herself.
“Careful with her arm, Leo,” Mother murmurs, her voice a soft, approving hum. “She’s very focused today. We don’t want to break her concentration.”
I nod, gripping my sister’s wrist. It is heavy and unyielding. The skin is pale and remarkably cool, like the surface of the porcelain basin. When I try to lift her arm so Mother can sponge beneath it, Maya’s shoulder makes a quiet, dry popping sound.
Mother tuts gently, uncapping a small glass jar of pink paste.
“The cold weather is settling right into her joints,” Mother explains, dipping two fingers into the jar. She rubs the paste in small, meticulous circles over Maya’s cheeks. Maya is usually quite pale, but the paste gives her a bright, permanent flush. “There. Doesn't your sister look beautiful, Leo?”
“Yes, Mother,” I say. And she does. Her eyes are wide and glossy, catching the morning light. She doesn’t even blink when Mother accidentally brushes her eyelashes with the sponge. That is the kind of discipline I am trying to cultivate.
Mother is very particular about discipline. The world outside our front door, she explains, is a terrible, chaotic place. Sometimes Mother stands by the locked deadbolt, listening to the muffled sounds of cars and sirens, her hands trembling against her collarbone. “Noise is an infection,” she tells us. “It gets inside your head and rots you from the inside out. The only cure is quiet.”
Maya used to be infected. She would yell, run heavily through the upstairs halls, and bang her fists against the front door, begging to go out to the sidewalk to ride her bicycle. Mother would weep, holding her hands over her ears, devastated by the rotting taking place inside her daughter.
It took a long time for Mother’s special syrup to finally calm Maya down. Even when Maya drank it, she would thrash and choke, her body fighting the cure. But Mother was patient. Mother is nothing if not patient.
Now, the house is perfectly peaceful. The only disruption is a faint, stubborn odor that has begun to seep from the floorboards beneath Maya’s chair. It smells sweet and thick, like a vase of cut lilies left too long in stagnant water, but it is heavily masked by clouds of lavender. Mother says it is just the house settling. She brought home a dozen green pine-tree air fresheners yesterday and hung them from the curtain rods. They dangle like little ornaments, spinning slowly in the draft.
I practice my stillness every afternoon. I sit on the rug at the foot of Maya’s chair, cross my legs, and try to stop the rising and falling of my chest. It is hard. My lungs burn, and my heart knocks against my ribs like a trapped bird. Usually, I only last a minute before I have to gasp for air.
Mother always strokes my hair when I fail. “Don't rush it, my little bird,” she says, her fingers cool and reassuring against my scalp. “Your sister is older. She had more practice. Your time is coming.”
I know she is right, because yesterday, a deliveryman brought a new chair.
It is upholstered in dark blue velvet, soft to the touch, and smaller than Maya’s floral armchair. Mother spent an hour positioning it right next to Maya’s, angling it so I would have a perfect view of the oak tree, too. She smoothed out the velvet cushions and smiled at me with tears in her eyes.
Tonight, Mother makes my favorite dinner: macaroni with extra cheese. I eat every bite. Afterward, she brings me a small crystal glass filled with the dark, heavy syrup.
“For the infection, Leo,” she whispers, kneeling beside my chair. Her eyes are brimming with that deep, bottomless love she reserves only for the very good. “So you can join your sister. So we can be a quiet place, forever.”
The syrup tastes like rusted metal and crushed black cherries. I swallow it all, handing the glass back to her. Almost immediately, a warm, heavy blanket drapes over my mind. My legs turn to sand.
Mother lifts me up. She carries me into the sitting room, humming our favorite lullaby, and sets me gently into the blue velvet chair.
The room is dim, smelling intensely of lavender and that dark, sweet rot. Beside me, Maya stares out the window. A large, iridescent blue fly crawls lazily across the bridge of her nose. It wanders down to her open eye, stepping right onto the glossy surface of it.
Maya doesn’t flinch. She doesn't even twitch.
My eyelids are growing impossibly heavy. My breathing slows, the air catching in my throat as my chest simply forgets how to rise. I rest my hands on the velvet armrests, feeling the cold stillness creeping up my fingers, locking my joints into place.
Mother pulls up a wooden stool and sits in front of us, her hands clasped in her lap, beaming with absolute pride.
I look at the fly on Maya’s eye. Then I look at Mother. I am so tired, but I force my eyes to stay open. I am going to be just as good as Maya. I promise myself I won’t flinch.
Khen P. Julia is a Filipino emerging writer and student journalist who became internationally published at the age of 16.
https://www.facebook.com/itsmeknji
The Visitor by Shubhaa Forrest
I am Tom
“Shall we have a look at the next chapter in Tracy’s story?” Peter called out to get the group’s attention, the sound of his pen tapping on the large screen, signalling it was time to pause the animated conversations around the table.
“Only a few things from me, let's see the opening paragraph. Tom stood at the front door…”
“That…that is not my chapter; it is the same title, but the first paragraph is different. Did I send you the wrong file?”
“Let me open it again.” Peter tinkered with his laptop while the rest of the group quickly engaged in conversations about everything and anything.
“Here we are. Is this the one?”
“This is very strange. The rest of the chapter is fine, but I don’t have a Tom in my story. Who is writing about a Tom?”
A quick exchange of glances and shaking heads was interrupted by a cold breath of air and a chain reaction of goose bumps around the table.
“I think I have a printed copy, yes, here.”
“Thanks, Tracy,” Louise stood up and kindly took the piece of paper from Tracy’s hands. “Let me make a few copies. See, technology, nothing like pen and paper…”
“While Louise makes the copies, shall we have a look at Steve’s piece? Let me put it on the screen… Steve, this is your crime story. Is it part four?”
“Peter, I think your computer is playing funny games today. That paragraph in Tracy’s text, look, it is there again. See?” Steve showed his printed copy to the group. “I have no Tom either.”
“What was that? Did you feel the cold draft? There must be an open window somewhere.” Tracy asked the rest of the group, all slightly shrunken by a sudden cold breeze.
“This old building doesn’t like winter... anyway, the screen, sorry guys, it was all working perfectly fine earlier on. We may as well leave the screen for today. Steve, shall I make some copies of yours, too?”
Peter joined Louise by the printer, leaving the group in an unusual silence, broken only by a few whispers about their misfortunes with technology and the noisy flicker of the room lights.
“The council is going to let this building crumble; first the draft, now the light, we must complain.”
“Steve, you know what they are like, by the way, remind me to send you the petition. Now, here is a copy of both stories.” Peter handed out the printed sheets around the table and sat with his back to the switched-off screen. “Who would like to start?” he encouraged. “Anybody?”
“Is it the one starting, ‘Tom stood at the front door…?’” a confused Louise asked.
A cold gust of wind blasted through the window, leaving a trail of cold chills around the room and a jumble of papers scattered on the table and all over the floor.
Louise rushed to the window and pushed it closed. “Told you the building is falling to bits, now the window!”
“Tracy, why don’t you read your original aloud?” Peter urged, trying to regain control of the situation.
“Let me see if I can find it. Has anybody seen my original?” Tracy asked, rummaging through the mixed-up copies. “Here… oh dear…”
“Are you all right, Tracy?” Louise asked, emerging from under the table with a few pens and pages in her hand. “Tracy? Tracy!”
“Sorry, I am so freaking out!” Tracy’s shaking hands pushed a piece of paper forward. “If this is a joke, let me tell you, it's not funny.”
“What do you mean, Tracy? What joke?” Steve asked whilst sorting the scattered pages in front of him.
“Look, guys, someone has scribbled a sentence… You are kidding me, what on earth?” Tracy pushed the desecrated text away. “I swear that line wasn’t here before, Peter. You saw it when you made the copies; there was nothing handwritten on it.”
“But what does it say, Tracy?” Steve asked, with more apprehension than curiosity.
“I am not touching that, no chance, you read it.” Tracy took a pen and pushed the feared sheet towards Peter.
“I will read it, damn, I forgot my glasses again.” Peter held the paper in front of his face, his arm extending away to see it more clearly. “Here, ready? Tom stood at the front door…”
A sudden power dip caused the flickering lights to dim for a few seconds, adding a hint of fear to the exchange of inquisitive looks that Peter's words had triggered. Steve jumped on his chair, sparking a succession of gasps and shivers.
“Mine…see…it is also…Look, the same scribbled sentence… Tom stood at the front door…” A subtle rustle of cold wind, shaking the spread-out papers, interrupted Steve and turned shivers into tremors.
“Guys…look…oh my God…the screen…” Louise whispered, her right hand instinctively reaching out to the chair beside her, trying to grab Tracy’s arm.
A faint glow on the screen captured the group’s apprehensive attention as the black background slowly brightened. In the midst of a deathly silence, a string of rushed handwritten words appeared on the screen, slowly moving from almost imperceptible to fully opaque.
Hi.
I am Tom,
sorry to interfere…
I need you…
I was a nobody…
forever forgotten…
unless…
unless you…
let me live forever
in your stories.