Tag Archive for: viruses & diseases

Spores on the Wind

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by Chris Clemens

When the mushroom sickness takes over, you’re conscious for a while. Awake. Paralysed. There’s a frantic back-and-forth while it seizes control of your muscles, puppeting limbs like an unfamiliar vehicle. Convulsions on the kitchen floor. If you’re lucky, loved ones will find and kill you.

If not, you might watch yourself vomiting fungal mould into your toddler’s Cheerios, stirring in the mess before anyone wakes up. Bones snapping, you’ll contort impossibly through neighbours’ crawlspaces and vents, retching out cinereous spores. You’ll shudder at the cunning of this alien intelligence dominating your body. At least the mushrooms can’t stop your tears.

 

Chris Clemens

Chris Clemens teaches courses about popular/digital culture in Toronto, where he lives with his wonderful family. His flash fiction has appeared in Invisible City Lit, Apex Magazine, and elsewhere.

Contaminated

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by G.B. Dinesh

When the contamination happens, the genetic engineering laboratory is sealed off automatically, containing the turbocharged plastic-eating bacteria and the three microbiologists within the laboratory.

Ted begins hyperventilating.

“It eats plastic,” John says. “It can’t survive in our bodies.”

“I’m worried more about the quarantine process we’ll have to go through,” Anna says.

But then John coughs up blood and collapses to the floor. Soon Anna’s nose starts bleeding.

“It’s in our food and water,” she says.

Ted feels a stabbing pain in his chest. “What?”

“Microplastics,” she says. “Along with the plastic lodged in our bodies, the bacteria’s eating us.”

 

G.B. Dinesh

G.B. Dinesh is a young writer and software engineer from Chennai, India. Say hello on X (formerly Twitter).

Twitter: @dinesh_bob_

Birth

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by Sophie Wagner

Men and women alike writhed in pain on the ground of the birthing ward as babies slithered between them, smearing black goo everywhere.

Monica screamed in agony as her arm pulsated, the purple gargantuan pouch attached to it nearly bursting. The man beside her was already cold, despite his birthing-sack popping moments ago. A good thing; he would’ve died from the skinning, anyway. The parasite looks like you already, but it craves warmth and fresh flesh is best.

As the world faded to black, Monica saw her old colleague being injected with the disease.

Something in his stomach began wriggling.

 

Sophie Wagner

Sophie Wagner is an emerging student author who has had multiple short story and poetry publications. You can find her work at The Macabre Ladies, Black Ink Fiction, Eerie River Press, Iron Faerie Publishing, Black Hare Press and more. She hopes you have a horror-filled day!

The Frenzy

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by Jessica Gleason

Candace, using her neon polished nails, picked a cornflake-looking scab from her sallow arm. The black wound beneath smelled of rotten fruit, sweet and rancid. She dug a finger into the gaping hole and revelled in the pain it brought.

Coughing, she wiped blood and spittle from her mouth, and laughed as another of her loose, rotted teeth fell free from her angry gums. She rolled the tooth around in her mouth, enjoying its jagged surfaces, and then swallowed it for fun.

Six days ago she’d have been repulsed by such an action, but today she felt feral and free.

 

Jessica Gleason

Jessica Gleason writes horror, sacrificing sleep to expel unkind monsters from her aching head.

Metallicum Caro

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by Don Money

It was only a matter of time until viruses caught up with technology. From the moment Griffen woke and his right hand clanked against his bare chest, he knew it was the virus, Metallicum Caro, metal flesh.

The news coverage of the nanite virus that jumped from artificial intelligence machinery to human host began a month ago, and the panic, as well as the virus, spread like wildfire.

What started along Griffen’s entire right arm and upper torso engulfed both legs by the time the quarantine technicians arrived. His last feeling was the cold of the metal engulfing his brain.

 

Don Money

Don Money writes stories across a variety of genres. He is a middle school language arts teacher. His stories have appeared in a variety of anthologies and magazines.

Growing Strong

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by Kai Delmas

Sammy found the body in the woods. We didn’t believe him at first, but he led the way and showed it to us with a proud smirk.

Mushrooms were growing from its eyes and ears. Some fat and brown, others poisonous, red with white dots. We should’ve stayed clear.

But Daryl dared me to go up to it. I wasn’t afraid. The body wouldn’t do nothin’. But when he dared me to touch it, I refused.

Then he double dog dared me.

I made sure to touch him back the next day when the first ‘shrooms sprouted from my fingertips.

 

Kai Delmas

Kai Delmas loves creating worlds and magic systems and is a slush reader for Apex Magazine. He is a winner of the monthly Apex Microfiction Contest, his fiction is forthcoming in Zooscape, and can be found in Martian, Etherea, Tree and Stone, Wyldblood, and several Shacklebound anthologies. If you like his work you can support him at:patreon.com/kaidelmas and find him on Twitter.

Twitter: @KaiDelmas

It Bytes Back

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by Mary Kuna

My last line deleted itself, and words I hadn’t typed appeared on the screen:

IT’S TOO LATE TO STOP WHAT’S COMING.

“This is the strangest virus I’ve ever seen,” I muttered.

NOT AS STRANGE AS THE ONE YOU’RE GOING TO GET.

How could they hear me? Was someone controlling my computer and webcam remotely?

My arm itched and burned. I scratched it, and my skin rippled. Something was burrowed underneath it. The undulations grew larger, more frantic. A stripe down my forearm split, then burst open.

Once I saw what slithered out, my computer was the least of my problems.

 

Mary Kuna

Mary Kuna is a writer and librarian in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada. Their work has been published in The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Scribes*MICRO*Fiction, and Queer Sci Fi’s flash fiction anthologies Clarity and Innovation. They live with their librarian spouse and a rambunctious cat named Pippa.

Website: marykuna.com

52 Hours

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by David Staiger

Dr Nores emerged from the isolation lab exhausted, relieved, elated.

She’d dismissed her assistant four hours ago, ostensibly to sleep. This strain had been the most virulent they’d ever encountered. It spread rapidly, killed surely. Combating it had taken every
bit of focus and ingenuity.

But the vaccine worked. She knew that with professional—and personal—confidence. Ethics be damned. Just as well that Rebecca had not been there to witness.

52 hours.

With the guidelines issued, the world would be fine. Masks, distancing, travel bans. Surely civilisation had cherished a weekend off.

But why wasn’t anyone answering the phone?

 

David Staiger

David is an emerging fiction author, always on the lookout for new opportunities to expand his writing. His previous work has been featured in Festival of Fear from Black Ink fiction, and Year Four from Black Hare Press.

Wake

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by Ajaye Nic

Another outbreak hits the city and it’s my turn to wake with bleeding gums and no teeth. I ring the hotline, get hauled off for tests, and spend three days in Z-ward waiting for my new teeth to grow. It’s excruciating. No wonder babies do all that crying.

My new teeth are pearly white and pointed. Like a shark’s. The doctors say this is most unusual and I can choose to get them corrected, but I’m already fond of them. The doctors say there will be no ongoing side effects, but they’re wrong. I can feel it in my gills.

 

Ajaye Nic

Ajaye Nic lives in Australia and loves to write very short fiction. Her cat refuses to sit on her keyboard as she types, so Ajaye wonders if it really is a cat.

Tick Tock

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by Pauline Yates

The new virus spreading worldwide should be named after a clock. The nosebleeds begin exactly six hours after infection. At seventy-two hours, vision loss occurs. That surprised everyone. Many people died after crashing their cars or falling down stairs. They were lucky, I suppose. Brain rupture occurs bang on ninety-eight hours; a messy, drawn-out death in every case.

Though blind and bleeding, it took me less time to fashion a noose. Three hours and twenty-two minutes, to be exact. I just need a ladder. Frank next door has one. He’s not using it. He finished his noose two hours ago.

 

Pauline Yates

Pauline Yates, author of horror and science fiction, writes dark stories and loves bright sunrises. 

Website: paulineyates.com