Tag Archive for: can’t pick your family

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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 fixed in a soundless scream as his bones realigned and shaped into something no longer human.

The howl that finally broke loose from him was answered by the ones in the distance, understanding his longing to join them in his new form.

Understanding his need to come home.

Amanda Bergloff

Amanda Bergloff is a speculative fiction writer who has had short stories included in anthologies published by World Weaver Press, Darkhouse Books, and Transmundane Press, among others. She lives in Denver, Colorado, and collects vintage toys and books.

Father’s Hungry

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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 malodorous rot burns your nostrils. His greedy eyes fixate on you and he wriggles excitedly.

You extend the crook of your elbow to his mouth. He opens his toothless mouth like a babbling babe. You bring the knife to your vein. Blood wells. He clamps down and slowly sucks.

Ryan Van Ells

Ryan Van Ells is a queer author and lawyer from Wisconsin. You can find him @ryanvanellswrites on Instagram and Bluesky.

Dad’s Secrets

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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 that…you?”

The spidercat’s ears twitch; eight moist eyes ogle her.

The next thing is a mix of garter snake and goldfish. Her goldfish.

More hybrids come out of the dark, one by one, crowding her.

One speaks: half-pillbug, half-boy. “Daddy said you’re not meant to be here.”

Jordan Chase-Young

Jordan Chase-Young is an American-Australian SFF writer. He’s obsessed with the future: What will it look like? What sorts of creatures will shape it? His stories have appeared in Clarkesworld, F&SF, Escape Pod, and many other publications.

The Look

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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 swollen lips.

“He didn’t always look that way.” She’d tell me, but I didn’t believe her. How could a man become something so haunting?

It’s a question I never wanted answered, yet the answer becomes clearer every day.

I really am starting to resemble my dear old dad…

Weird Wilkins

Weird Wilkins is long-time writing enthusiast taking the terrifying plunge into the world of actually submitting work for publication. He’s rooted firmly in the “weird fiction” subgenre of horror with a particular passion for stories revolving around a mounting sense of dread and healthy lashings of body horror. He plans to forge a reputation as a purveyor of frightful short stories in both collaborative collections and his own anthologies.

Twitter: @WeirdWilkins

Picking Off a Bloody Show-Off

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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 into view, smiling sheepishly. “Shoot”—he yanks blade from bone—“I thought the party was tomorrow.”

“You just wanted to show off,” I reply, eye-rolling. “But the best hunter catches their mark completely off-guard.”

Stealthily, I remove the pick hidden in my braid.

I really cannot stomach braggarts.

C.L. Sidell

A native Floridian, C. L. Sidell grew up playing with toads in the rain and indulging in speculative fiction. Her work has appeared in Cosmic Background, Factor Four Magazine, F&SF, Martian Magazine, Stupefying Stories, and others.

Website: crystalsidell.wixsite.com/mysite/publications

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.

Nana

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by G.B. Dinesh

They were talking about death at Nana’s eightieth birthday party. I sat on her lap. “She won’t die, she is a witch,” one of her friends said, cackling.

I looked up; Nana gave me a tired smile. She was already dying, but the spark in her eyes made me think of a blaze that had been burning for centuries.

Soon I dressed like her. I talked like her, ate like her.

Then she died.

Now all I can do is watch. As if looking up from a bottomless well, and choking with tears, I watch the witch living my life.

G.B. Dinesh

G.B. Dinesh is a young writer and software engineer from Chennai, India.

A Father’s Son

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by Crystal N. Ramos

His father always wore a locket, an oddity the son couldn’t help but notice. When asked, his father tucked it inside his shirt and said, “It keeps the demon form locked away.” Curiosity inflamed; the son waited until his father was sleeping to open it.

Fire burst out and consumed them. The son screamed as it seared his body and soul, his clawed demonic form bursting through the human skin he had unknowingly worn.

“Let’s go meet your grandfather, son,” the demon said and put a claw on the son’s shoulder as a portal opened before them.

Crystal N. Ramos

Crystal N. Ramos lives with her husband and two replacement units in Georgia. She has won the Maggie Award twice and has an MA in Professional Writing from Kennesaw State University. Some of her shorter work has appeared in Rescued Hearts: A Hidden Acres Anthology, Black Hare Press: Year Four, and The Dr T. J. Eckleburg Review. In her imaginary spare time, she likes to knit, cross-stitch, and play Minecraft. You can find her on

Facebook: @crystalnramos

Family Fetish

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by Pauline Yates

I resisted the urge for years, hoping the curse had skipped a generation and I’d be spared the gruesome reality that I was indeed the spawn of my father. He disgusts me with his morbid eating habits while I’m spooning down ordinary cereal. But today is different. Today I yearn to dip my fingers into his mug of blood and coat my tongue with the coppery taste. I reach out my hand, but Father slaps it away.

“Not mine, laddie.” He hands me a knife. “Yours.”

Taking the knife, I prick my finger and lick the blood.

I taste good.

 

Pauline Yates

Pauline Yates is an award-winner author of horror and science fiction.

Website: paulineyates.com