It’s All About the Blood

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by Andrew Kurtz

“Enos, I’m your brother!” Ted screamed as he was being lowered into the vat of scalding acid.

“Satan demands the sacrifice of a blood relative in order for me to receive the dark power!” Enos shouted maniacally.

“You were…” Ted didn’t finish as the acid engulfed him, disintegrating his flesh and bones.

“I have done as you asked, now grant me my reward!” Enos demanded as a red bolt of lightning streaked across the room, electrocuting Enos’s body until only a charred skeleton remained on the ground.

If Ted had one second more, Enos would have heard the word, “adopted.”

Andrew Kurtz

Andrew Kurtz is an up-and-coming horror author who writes very graphic and violent short stories which have appeared in numerous horror anthologies.

Since childhood, he has loved horror films and literature. His favourite authors are Stephen King, Clive Barker, H.G. Wells, Richard Matheson, Edgar Rice Boroughs, and Ian Fleming.

Website: linktr.ee/horror672

Fairy-mother is Magic, Fairy-mother is Good

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by Michael Sonray-Kelly

Fairy-mother’s sharp teeth mirror moonlight, promising terrible things for a price. Poor, ash-covered Ella, whose sisters’ cruel laughs echo still, offers Fairy-mother her pet mice, garden geese, a rotten pumpkin.

Fairy-mother accepts, weaves song, fills the air with squeaks and screams.

Mice bones outgrow their splitting skin, stab and snap to equine angles; horse’s heads fix to new flesh, snorting. Garden geese bulge and pop. Skeletal soldiers spill and squirm from feathered viscera. The pumpkin, now carriage, longs for death.

Fairy-mother gifts the girl glass slippers and a burning candle, whispering, “Before midnight, dance on their ashes.”

Cinderella, eager, twirls.

Michael Sonray-Kelly

Michael Sonray-Kelly lives in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, where the ghosts of his ancestors lament the rising cost of living.