Tag Archive for: drabble

Trophic Dynamics

/by
by Gabrielle Bleu

 

Sixteen dogs used to roam the back streets in a howling, violent mass. Until one day when their numbers began to dwindle; thirteen, seven, four. Until all that remained were two mangy survivors, tails between their legs. People were happy that the back alleys were safer, not questioning the disappearances. Only one girl wondered, and only after she saw the footprints, large and clawed and numerous.

Only she saw, as the thing with too many legs grew bolder, emerging from the shadows. Only she watched from her window late at night, as it ate the dog pack down to one.

 

Gabrielle Bleu

Gabrielle Bleu’s deepest fears are dogs and the ocean. During the daylight hours, she catalogs long dead things. Her work has appeared in the Story Seed Vault and the Arcanist. Follow her on twitter @BeteMonstrueuse for occasional thoughts about monsters, and read more of her work at gabriellebleu.com.

 

After Glow

/by
by Liam Hogan

 

Huh. Zombies.

Of course it was zombies. The apocalypse scenario that never dies. The dead reborn through the years. Fast zombies, slow zombies, space zombies. Explained away by genetically engineered viruses, or airborne fungal spores, or alien parasites. All of them after your flesh, if not your brains.

A numbers game; the dead quickly overpowering the living and, after a bite or two, converting hunted to hunter.

There shouldn’t be enough nourishment to keep them all going. Didn’t make sense.

But, as Malcolm smashed through the rotten skull with his Louisville slugger, at least these zombies glow in the dark.

 

Liam Hogan

Liam Hogan is a London based short story writer, the host of Liars’ League, and a Ministry of Stories mentor. His story “Ana”, appears in Best of British Science Fiction 2016 (NewCon Press) and his twisted fantasy collection, “Happy Ending Not Guaranteed”, is published by Arachne Press. Http://happyendingnotguaranteed.blogspot.co.uk or tweet @LiamJHogan.

 

Where Her Heart Was

/by
by Adam Breckenridge

 

My girlfriend opened the door in her chest and grabbed a fistful of air.

“I’m giving this to you,” she said, dropping it in my hand.  It was the heaviest air I had ever held.  I looked into her dead eyes as I tried to lift it, dribbles of her life slipping through my fingers.

“Now I want something in return,” she said and dug her fingers into my chest, reaching through the blood and flesh to grab ahold of my tin can soul, so fragile in her grip as she crunched it into a ball and swallowed it whole.

 

Adam Breckenridge

Adam Breckenridge, is a Collegiate Traveling Faculty member of the University of Maryland University College where he travels the world teaching American military stationed overseas and he’s currently based in Japan. His fiction has previously appeared in Independent Ink, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens, the WTF?! Anthology, Strangelet Press and elsewhere, and most recently he was accepted into the Final Summons Anthology from NESW Press, Visions Magazine out of the UK and New Reader Magazine.

 

Reflections

/by
by Lynne Lumsden Green

 

My friend Ben and I loved jumping in puddles; our mothers despaired of our damp and muddy clothes. One day, Ben jumped into a puddle on the footpath and sank up to his armpits.

“Help me,” he screamed. “Something is pulling me down.”

I grabbed at his hand, but I was too late. He disappeared into its depths. I ran for help, but no one believed me. Later that day, when the puddle dried up, it revealed no pit. Just ordinary footpath.

Now days, I don’t jump into puddles. I gaze into them, looking for Ben. I haven’t found him.

 

Lynne Lumsden Green

Lynne Lumsden Green has twin bachelor degrees in both Science and the Arts, giving her the balance between rationality and creativity. She spent fifteen years as the Science Queen for HarperCollins Voyager Online and has written science articles for other online magazines. Currently, she captains the Writing Race for the Australian Writers Marketplace on Facebook. She has had speculative fiction flash fiction and short stories published in anthologies and websites. You can find her blog at: https://cogpunksteamscribe.wordpress.com/ Twitter.

 

AA

/by
by Shane Sinjun

 

“Welcome to AA,” the convenor says. “Please, share.”

I suck in a breath, shut my eyes, and shrug off my coat. Air teases my insectile left arm, folded against me like a mantis. I wait for gasps that don’t come. I open my eyes, expecting looks of horror, but everyone is smiling.

A woman across from me removes her sunglasses, blinking her amphibian third eyelids. Another woman pulls off her mittens and stretches her claws. A man doffs his hat and unfurls his antennae.

For the first time, I’m not alone.

The convenor nods. “You’re safe here at Anthropomorphs Anonymous.”

 

Shane Sinjun

Shane Sinjun writes dark quirky fiction from Melbourne, Australia. He has a heart of gold. The rest is mainly base metals. Follow him on Twitter.

 

We’ll Always Have Venus

/by
by Shawn M. Klimek

 

To humanity’s great relief, the aliens who had arrived by warp-gate were not conquerors, but law-abiding capitalists who had come hoping to develop our system’s underutilized real estate. In exchange for forfeiting Earth claims to Mars, they proposed to make Venus habitable for human expansion—a price too good to refuse. As more aliens colonized the red planet, and cities grew on Venus, trade between all three flourished.

When Earthlings eventually noticed the New Martians had begun mining Jupiter and terraforming Titan, they demanded compensation.

“Oh, we already own Jupiter by law,” the aliens responded. “Our planet is the nearest.”

 

Shawn M. Klimek

Shawn M. Klimek’s stories and poems have been published in scores of e-zines and anthologies, including “Grumpy Old Gods, Volume 1”, Zombie Pirate Publishing’s “World War Four”, and “Gold: The Best of Clarendon House Anthologies, Volume One, 2017/2018. Find more, including links to all his published works at A Jot In The Dark

 

Hand

/by
by Belinda Brady

 

“Fancy a drink?” Dave asks.

“I’m teleconferencing with head office soon, so not tonight,” Jillian replies.

“Don’t work too hard then.” He smiles, exiting the gazebo with a laugh.

The discovery of a mummy at the dig site was unexpected and moving it was complicated, requiring daily overtime from an exhausted Jillian.

She slumps back in her chair, closing her eyes briefly. Movement outside the gazebo makes her jump, just as a hand closes around her throat.

Jillian wakes in darkness, underneath something dusty and rotting. Horrified, she realises she’s in the mummy’s coffin.

That same hand strangles her screams.

 

Belinda Brady

Belinda is passionate about stories and after years of procrastinating, has finally turned her hand to writing them, with a preference for supernatural and thriller themes; her love of both often competing for her attention. She has had several stories published in a variety of publications, both online and in anthologies. Belinda lives in Australia with her family and has been known to enjoy the company of cats over people.

Quietus

/by
by Chitra Gopalakrishnan

 

Release travels to me through the icy waters of my beloved river Beas. Not drenched in apprehension but in lightness.

As I wade across its blue-green, glassy waters, head down, inverted images of Kangra’s snow-wrinkled mountains scuttle around me. Surface reflections of upside down deodars with spiky leaves, conical crowns, level branches and droopy branchlets sway with liquid grace.

Mermaid-brave, I eddy past these lures towards the deep end. This to complete my ritual of immersion – scales, fins, tail and all. And to find my very own restful quietus.

I now call this inviolate part of the underworld ‘home’.

 

Chitra Gopalakrishnan

I am a journalist by training, a social development communications consultant by profession and a creative writer by choice. My focus is on issues of gender, environment and health. I dabble in poetry on the sly and literary creations openly on the website using social media.

Link: www.oomna.com (completely my creation)

The Carrion Maven

/by
by Casey Douglass

 

It seeps through the streets like a pressure wave, its higher dimensional traversal sending billowing ripples of aether amongst the massed crowd. It probes their glowing minds. Myriad carnival light-bulbs flicker as its broiling black smoke sucks at their glass.

Millennia old, it hunts for novelty, for new experiences to shape and to occupy, for lives to subsume. A murder here, an affair there, despair everywhere. It gurgles and clicks as one mind gives off an unknown shade. It has not seen this variety before! It penetrates and gorges, revelling in the psychic flotsam.

The world grows one shade dimmer.

 

Casey Douglass

Casey Douglass is a horror author and freelance writing geek who lives at www.Casey-Douglass.com. If it’s not dark and twisted, he generally isn’t interested.

Casey-Douglass.com – His website features dark tales, reviews and links to his other writing.

@Casey_Douglass – Follow him on Twitter

Buzzards

/by
by Vonnie Winslow Crist

 

The trouble began when Jimmie put food out for the feral cats he’d spotted skulking along the edge of the woods. Cats crept to the porch and ate—but they weren’t the only ones.

Buzzards arrived a week later. Wings spread like cloaks, the carrion eaters perched on the porch railing in the morning sun.

“They’re just warming up,” explained his wife, “so they can fly.”

Jimmie wasn’t convinced. He’d seen them eating cat food and staring in the windows.

The day he tumbled down the porch steps and broke his neck, Jimmie discovered just what the buzzards were after.

 

Vonnie Winslow Crist

Vonnie Winslow Crist’s books include The Enchanted Dagger, Owl Light, The Greener Forest, and Murder on Marawa Prime. Her fiction is published in “Amazing Stories,” “Cast of Wonders,” Killing It Softly 2, Chilling Ghost Short Stories, Potter’s Field (4&5), Dia de los Muertos, and elsewhere. For more information: http://www.vonniewinslowcrist.com