by Patrick Campbell Months after returning, he still awoke at night sweat-drenched with lingering dreams of the terrors that had kept him awake in the Amazon. Spiders that lay eggs under your skin. Parasites that swim up your urethrae. Frogs that paralyse you with venom. He inspected the bite on his hand. The guide had […]
by Amy Tasillo We’re lost, but that’s beside the point. I don’t know how long we’ve been wandering—I remember nothing before we ate the fruit. We grabbed it by the handful and ate desperately. It grew low over the forest floor, its crimson inside gelatinous and painfully tart. Feeling dizzy, I yell, “Stop.” The man […]
by Randall Andrews From the look of it, the jungle Kai and I are gathering fruit in could be the Amazon back on Earth. But it’s not. Not by twenty light years. “Have you tried one of these apple-looking things?” he asks as he reaches for a low-hanging branch. I fail to respond because I’m […]
by Amanda Bergloff “You’re not my family!” “We are now, Zuri, and when you call us, we will always answer.” Zuri paced the floor, remembering their last words to him. Words that bound him to them. Words that condemned him. You’re not my family, Zuri thought when the pain drove him to his knees…his mouth […]
by Ryan Van Ells Father hasn’t eaten. His rumble reverberates from the basement stairs, rattling the walls. Mother is little more than a skeleton, unable to feed him. Your sister trembles beside you. The noises scare her. You go down the basement steps. Father, too large to move, lies in his too small bed. A […]
by Jordan Chase-Young Candice sneaks into Dad’s lab using the passcode she watched him enter through her binoculars. The lab is cold and dark, hissing with fluids and stinking of formaldehyde. What greets her first is a cross between cat and spider. She doesn’t know whether to pet it or run. “Winston?” she whispers. “Is […]
by Weird Wilkins As a child, I always feared the picture my mother kept by her bedside. I never understood why she would frame an image of such a grotesque monster. It looked like a man deformed in ways I can barely fathom. Those bulging eyes, skin so pallid it was translucent, sunken cheeks and […]
by C.L. Sidell Uncle’s hosting this year’s family get-together. I steer along the winding road. Birdsong floats through the open windows, spring foliage perfumes my nose. Reaching Uncle’s cabin, I spy a tattered man running towards me from the woods. “Help!” He extends bloodied hands, right as a pinwheeling hatchet strikes him dead. Uncle strides […]
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. […]
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 […]