Micro Fiction Horror
For the month of October 2025, these are the 100-word stories that intrigue us most.
* Night Glow by Leigh Therriault
* The Butcher's Wife by Aliana Marie
* The Pez Dispenser by B.G. Smith
* A Collection for Halloween by Bill Cox
* Branches Like Bones by Francesco Levato
* Sledgehammer by Deanna Salser
* A Simple Mistake by Gordon Eggener
* Copper and Bone by Jacob Seinemeier
* Pumpkin by K.J. Watson
* Trick or Treat by Ria Cabral
* Tomorrow Waits by E.D. Ambrose
* Growing Pains by Nicole Cremeans
* Returned by CM Frost
* Home for Halloween by K.E. Mathieson
* Coeus As We Die by Sean Heffron
* A Mosaic by Catherine Boulay
* The Music Box by Natalie Walters
* The Curse by Ken Poyner
* Going Organic by Leanne Merritt
No Dogs Allowed
Night Glow
by
Leigh Therriault
I emerge from the woods, drenched in sweat, and slink into the shadows of the sleepy suburban street. It must be past midnight now. I’m too late. I begin to run. My feet slap the smooth concrete so hard my shoes tear apart.
My fangs erupt. Hot lava fills my mouth. Not again! Breathless and panting, I finally spot the neon sign: VAMPIRE DENTISTRY. I smash the bell. The door creaks open. The dentist grimaces. My gums beneath my canine teeth throb. The full moon glows.
The dentist points to another flaming sign before slamming the steel door.
No dogs allowed.
Leigh Therriault writes and wonders from Ottawa, Canada, where she awaits haunting her neighbourhood. Her short fiction and poetry has appeared in Voyage YA, Hearth & Coffin, Consilience, DarkWinter, Polar Starlight, and elsewhere. Her debut novel for young readers, THE DARK SHINE is coming Fall 2027 from Orca Book Publishers.
The Butcher's Wife
by
Aliana Marie
“Your meat seems fresh these days, Amelia," a customer said to me.
“Yeah, we changed our supplier a few days ago.”
“May I know where Ernesto is? I haven’t seen him lately.” She said while resting her right hand on her bumped stomach.
“Oh, he’s busy doing things in our house. Here, try this new dish." I pushed the bowl to her.
Her face contorted with pleasure. “Hmm...This is good.” She exclaimed.
“I know, I already tasted him."
She was startled by what I uttered.
You like sharing, right? Now, I share with you, my husband, you cunning witch.”
Aliana Marie is a communication student from the Philippines. She writes stories and poems during her free time or when she is inspired. She currently writes on Wattpad under her pen name, PenInProgress. She's currently trying to complete her novel titled, 12 Days Before Deadline. She also published her poem collection in the said app entitled A Glimpse of Me.
The Pez Dispenser
by
B.G. Smith
I was nine years old when Halloween became horror.
We planned the route, trick-or-treating our neighborhood first. When our families ran out of candy, the show was over.
But across town, houses with sprawling green lawns and tiled roofs gave out large candy bars and silver dollars.
As I climbed the brick stairs to my house, coins jingled in the bulging pillowcase—clink clank.
I dumped my treasure on the floor and shook a Pez dispenser with a witch head. Empty.
I flipped the green face. Inside, a note written in blood with a shaky hand.
Help me.
Bio: B.G. Smith enjoys writing short stories, flash fiction, and micro fiction that focuses on everyday human relationships and emotional truths. His work has appeared in Pocket Fiction, Microfiction Monday Magazine, The Drabble, 101 Words, and ScribesMICROFiction.
Website: bgsmithauthor.com
X: @bgsmithauthor
A Collection for Halloween
by
Bill Cox
“I’m collecting all the superheroes, Mrs Clarke. I’ve got Batman, Spiderman, and Superman. I keep them in my special place. I’m going to make them all fight each other, to see who’ll win!”
“That’s lovely, Benny. You have fun now!”
Sarah continued on her way home, glad that the young man, despite his difficulties, seemed to be enjoying himself.
When she got home, her husband was waiting for her.
“Have you seen this?” he asked, brandishing the newspaper.
‘Trick or Treaters go Missing!’ screamed the headline. It was accompanied by pictures of the three children in their costumes.
Batman. Spiderman. Superman.
Bill Cox lives in Aberdeen, Scotland with his partner Hilary and their daughter Catherine. Writing was a childhood sweetheart that he lost contact with after he left school, only to rekindle the romance in his fourth decade. He writes poetry and short fiction and his work can be found in various places, if you look hard enough.
Branches Like Bones
by
Francesco Levato
It eventually stopped squirming—but muffled screams continued long after it had given up the fight. My tendrils stitched it to the forest floor, restraining its limbs, burying its face in a halo of burnt orange leaves.
I have learned much over the eons. My thorny fingers now cut with precision, leaving only the slightest trace. I can separate skin from muscle as one complete piece, fold my branches into its pelt, mimic its shape. I know how to wear its clothes.
This was not the first time I would walk among them—and it would not be the last.
Francesco Levato is a poet, professor, and writer of speculative fiction. Recent books include SCARLET; Arsenal/Sin Documentos; Endless, Beautiful, Exact; and Elegy for Dead Languages. Recent speculative fiction appears in Flash Fiction Online, Tales to Terrify, Savage Planets, and Flash Phantoms, among others. He holds an MFA in Poetry, a PhD in English Studies, and is an Associate Professor of Literature & Writing Studies at California State University San Marcos. More at: francescolevato.com.
Sledgehammer
by
Deanna Salser
“What are you going to say happened?”
“I, uh, I’m going to…Please don’t. Please?”
“Tell me what you’re going to say!”
His hand caressed the smooth wood of the handle.
“I’ll say…” If I didn’t say what he wanted to hear, there’s no telling what he would do. “I’ll say I closed it in the car door!”
“Good. Now hold still and we’ll get this over with.”
My breath came faster, and spots began parading before my eyes. I closed them. If I didn’t look, it wouldn’t hurt as badly. But I heard the wind as the hammer came down.
Professionally, Deanna Salser has been a mechanical drafter for the last thirty-five years. She is enamored with reading, painting, sculpting, and healing, but she has always had a way with words. She has been entering writing contests, hoping to gain recognition for her voice, which she discovered after her first project, a novel titled Procreation, was accepted for publication. In addition to the book, she continues to publish short stories, poetry, and flash fiction pieces in various online magazines. Her life experience, coupled with her lively sense of humor, makes reading her work anything but a chore.
A Simple Mistake
by
Gordon Eggener
“Well, if that isn’t the best costume I’ve seen all night!”
She handed him a Butterfinger bar, genuinely impressed. It was a heck of an ensemble, complete with a bloodied axe and a realistic-looking severed head.
But what really sold it was the look on his face. And those eyes...
She shivered despite herself. A bit old for trick or treating, wasn’t he?
“Well, goodnight,” she said, trying to close the door.
It banged on the boot he’d wedged through.
The man leaned in close. She could smell him now, thick and pungent.
“Just one more thing.”
Gordon E is a librarian on the East Coast. He hasn't published a damned thing.
Copper and Bone
by
Jacob Seinemeier
The Sheriff prays he lost it in the tunnels. The abandoned copper mine is a maze of cave-ins, dead ends…and bones. So many bones...
He stumbles, falls in the dark, but the thing that took the Preacher’s face does not pursue. Mayhap it ain’t finished hollowing out the rest of his deputies.
He reaches the exit, staggering into the night air, fingers raw and bloody from trailing the tunnel walls.
His horse is tied up where he left it. The Sheriff mounts, digs in his spurs.
The animal turns its head…all the way around. Hollow eyes staring.
The beast grins.
Jacob Seinemeier is a Perth-based English teacher, avid writer and reader of speculative fiction. For the last year he has been sitting on a beach in a bottle, throwing stories into the ocean. He may have misunderstood the assignment. Recently, he had a drabble selected for the Happily Never After Anthology, a short story accepted in the horror anthology More Monsters Next Door, and received 2nd Prize in the Reach Your Apex Quick Draw Flash Fiction competition. When not telling tales out of school, he can be found online at www.instagram.com/jacobseinemeierauthor
Pumpkin
by
K.J. Watkins
“This thing is monstrous,” my partner said as he threw my carved pumpkin onto the garden’s compost heap.
“Can I keep the pumpkin guts for soup?” I asked.
In reply, my partner flushed the guts down the toilet.
Later, I stared from the bedroom window at the pumpkin on the compost heap.
Did I carve such a demonic smile? I wondered, then went to bed.
I woke to a scream from the kitchen. There, I found my partner on the floor, his body flaccid. A smell, as of viscera, came from a saucepan. And on the counter, my pumpkin grinned.
K. J. Watson’s stories and poems have appeared on the radio; in comics, magazines, and anthologies; and online.
Trick or Treat
by
Ria Cabral
The jack-o’-lantern’s grin flickered in the wind, its crooked teeth casting shadows across the porch. Emily tightened her grip on the candy bowl, waiting for laughter or the rustle of costumes. But the street was empty. No footsteps, no voices—just the low hum of autumn air. Then came the knock. Slow. Deliberate. She opened the door, expecting children. Instead, the pumpkin on the porch was gone, and in its place stood something taller, its face carved the same way, candlelight burning from within. Emily dropped the candy bowl as it whispered in a voice like cracking leaves, “Trick or treat” …
Ria Cabral is an author, artist, and graphic designer who has always seen the world through a creative lens. From her high school days as a reading, doodling daydreamer, Ria carried a love of stories and imagination into her adult life. Unsure of where her path would lead, she began her studies at the University of Phoenix, where she earned both an Associate of Arts degree and a Bachelor of Science in Communication with a concentration in Journalism. She juggles books, chocolate, kids, a wonderful husband, dirty toilets, neglected laundry, and a deep love for stories—though rarely in that order.
Tomorrow Waits
by
E.D. Ambrose
Dread grows, like a weight in my stomach, as I stare at the abandoned street beneath my window. It forces me to my knees, forehead pressed against the cool glass separating me from the dying world outside.
I wait. Death will come for me as it did my neighbors, my friends, and my family.
Hours pass, and shadows lengthen as the sun creeps lower, and I see him. The skeletal figure strides up the center of the street. Reaching the point just below me, he stops, head turning slowly to look up at me. He speaks:
"Tomorrow."
E.D. Ambrose is a born-and-raised Southerner and grew up surrounded by stories. An avid reader from an early age, she always has multiple books handy. It was a natural next step for her to begin writing her own stories, and her story, "The Glade," was previously published on Flash Phantoms. In addition to reading and writing she enjoys shooting pool (it's how she met her husband) and playing with their rescue dog, Kennedy. She survives on chocolate (preferably dark) and sweet tea.
Growing Pains
by
Nicole Cremeans
My feet grew another size today.
Mother shrieks with glee. “Third time this month!”
So embarrassing.
Makeup covers my paleness, bangs hide my ridiculous forehead, and I never show my teeth.
They’re…unusual.
“We named you after the best of us, Penny.” Dad points at our ancestor’s sneering portrait.
“Have some pride.”
In being a freak? Never.
Yet, I am always starving. Relentlessly furious.
“Puberty,” my therapist diagnoses, ignoring my increasingly red nose and golden eyes.
“Puberty,” teachers agree, even as my jaw unhinges.
“Puberty,” I laugh, dancing into the sewer. My clown suit is dazzling.
Want to float with me?
Nicole Cremeans accidentally majored in accounting and is trying to make up for it through her writing. A native Texan, Colorado always called to her soul, and she finally listened several years ago. When not glaring at a manuscript that refuses to write itself, Nicole can be found rock climbing with her husband, playing with her kid and dogs, or discovering a new whiskey for her smoked old fashioneds. Her short story, "What a Doll," was recently published in the second volume of The Writers' Journal, volume 2: Doors.
Returned
by
CM Frost
Once a year, in late October, I visit my husband’s grave.
He wasn’t a good man: visiting is a gift to myself - proof and forgiveness all in one. But this time, the peaceful scene is disturbed by the shadow of upturned earth and splintered wood poking up like roots, reaching for the shadowing sky. A muddy handprint smears the engraving of his name; dirt is packed into the tracing of the epitaph below:
May God Rest His Soul
Fear wraps around my throat, squeezing until I can barely breathe. Then a familiar, gravelly voice cuts through the deepening shadows.
“Miss me?”
After years of honing her craft, writing for herself, CM is slowly making her way into the publishing world. As a queer author, she loves writing the stories she wants to read– namely, queer feminist fantasy. She has been previously published in the Black Market anthology published by The Hourlings.
When not cuddling her cat, playing too much Final Fantasy XIV, or obsessing about her favorite shows, CM can be found knitting, perusing the local fountain pen shop, or returning to the ice as a competitive figure skater.
Home for Halloween
by
K.E. Mathieson
Who gets booted from prison on Halloween? Me, dammit.
I trudge down the sidewalk. Revelers wearing the requisite serial killer masks stagger into me. Laughter emerges from the latex faces. Scars from desperate fingernails decorate rubbery cheeks.
My mind sees a different face—naïve, Dr. Ashton, always smiling, always coaxing me to spill my guts. She believed my tears of remorse and recommended parole for my sordid tale of childhood trauma.
I glance at the house number. Hers. Phantom pain burns on scars etched in flesh, not latex.
Just one last tale for the good doctor to get me home.
K. E. Mathieson currently resides in southern Maryland where, if she meets you, you might just be the inspiration for the next world rich with life, conflict, and curiosities to remember. She has a short story published in Restless Spirits: An Hourlings Anthology.
Coeus As We Die
by
Sean Heffron
A mallet. Dark metal head. Old, pocked with rusty divots. The other tool looks newer. A sharp, pointy thing with a flat end. Its mirrored shaft reflects the exposed bulb overhead, save for that flat, beveled tip, muted with crimson.
Another flash, more skin and bone sheared away.
A washing machine of terror, appearing and disappearing beneath tumbling garments of disorientation and gore. Why is this happening? Who is this lunatic tormentor? What is the name of that other tool?
My captor pins another finger down and swings. It’s probably better if I die before I get my answers.
Sean attributes his storytelling ability to his Irish roots, although the tree in which he creates sprouted in Pennsylvania, USA. Believing there’s a good analogy for everything, his works carry deeper meaning worthy of a second read. His current published works range from Flash Fiction (“Christmas Carol,” Weird Christmas 2020), Short Story (“Tails of the Eighth Year,” The Lemonwood Quarterly 2025), to a three-book novel series currently in the final stages of publication with Aethon Books. When Sean’s not working, teaching, coaching, reading or writing, he enjoys all things outdoors—hiking, running, skiing, and rock climbing. He currently lives in Connecticut with his favorite characters: his wife and three children.
A Mosaic
by
Catherine Boulay
Thoroughness was key to creating a beautiful enamel mosaic. Therefore, she was focused, bent over her worktable, equipped with a magnifying monocle on her right eye and some tweezers-like picks in her hands to place the pieces.
“You killed him, I know it was you!” he mumbled, spitting blood. He shook his chains.
She dropped the piece she was holding, and it rolled into a crack in the floor.
“Oh dear! Look what you made me do! Now I will have to extract another one.”
With a sigh, she took the cow horn forceps, grabbed his hair, and yanked his head back.
The Music Box
by
Natalie Walters
For years, the music box beckoned, playing sounds only I could hear. It played when no one had wound it, played ancient, mournful harmonies that tines and barrels cannot make.
Over the years, I became attached to this romantic notion that it was my destiny to free the spirit.
The banishing spell seemed simple enough; so simple that it never occurred to me it might require a sacrifice.
The spirit from a music box now bore my face, my mannerisms, wore my favorite coat. I watched in mute horror as she walked out the door, never to return.
Natalie Walters is a writer living in Los Angeles, CA. This is her first fiction publication.
The Curse
by
Ken Poyner
The pharmacist has prepared half a dozen potions, each less tasty and more purgative than the last. The doctor has searched my body for marks, sent me to anger management, hinted at a trip to a voodoo priestess. I appreciate that they all want to cure my transformations, find a cause for why I morph into a monster. I think it is redirected desire. Half the time, when I change back, I am with a woman I can’t remember meeting, looking with evil satisfaction. I suspect they are not keen on finding a solution to my condition. Neither am I.
The latest of Ken’s twelve collections of poetry and flash fiction is “Science Is Not Enough,” speculative poetry. He lives in the lower right-hand corner of Virginia, and is married to a world champion female power lifter. He spent 33 years herding computers. See him in “Analog”, “Asimov’s”, “Café Irreal”, “Blue Unicorn” and another hundred or so places. www.kpoyner.com.
Going Organic
by
Leanne Merritt
All proceeds from this Halloween’s annual Scare-A-Thon would support environmental action. Hoping to raise enough screams to win the competition, Medea had gone all out, decorating her lawn with a spooky family dinner.
Human skeletons enjoyed a feast, while skeleton dogs yapped for scraps. There was even a skeleton bird in a cage, tormented by a skeleton cat.
Inspired by the cause, all of Medea’s props were organic; no toxic store-bought plastic. She was sure to win this year, without her neighbors competing. Grateful, she thanked their donations for bringing the set to life.
Leanne Merritt is a new writer from Sunderland, England. She now lives in California, where she teaches pharmacy students by day, and writes stories by night. She especially loves stories with a twist.