09 Mar Essence
Lee was proud of his first apartment. He would have been more proud had he been able to share it with Alyssa, but she wasn’t ready for that yet. He hoped it would come in time if he was patient. They had been dating since...
07 Mar The Plunge
Wes didn’t care that it was dark. He didn’t care that it was cold. He didn’t care that he was miles from home. He just cared about getting away, about clearing his head. He wanted to be free under the stars for a while. He...
06 Mar A Nightmarish Reunion
Corey was at the bar getting himself another old-fashioned with an Irish stout chaser when he stopped to look towards the back of the bar. He saw someone on his way up from the outside smoking patio, someone that looked familiar, but he couldn’t place...
28 Feb Noseblind
I’ve been walking around for the past five and a half weeks without feeling like I’m truly alive. The positive test showed up first, and the symptoms came to plague me shortly after. Our son was kind enough to agree to stay with us until...
25 Feb Octopus Man
Being a police detective means you see a lot of horrible things. Things you can’t unsee. They haunt your dreams at night, and the images spill over into the daytime. Waking nightmares – ever hear of those? I get them all the time. Pretty soon, every time you...
24 Feb I Came to Earth From Outer Space
Every time I fall asleep, I have the same horrifying nightmare – a flashback of what we went through. In the dream, we’re back on Xangrath again. Everything is just the way it was, and my heart aches for reasons my sleeping mind can’t comprehend. My...
23 Feb The Monster in My Dead Father’s Basement Is Getting Bigger
The couch reeked of cigarette smoke, ashes, and body odor. It was faded yellow like the wallpaper, its springs creaking loudly as I sat down. It smells like him, I thought to myself, surveying my late father’s living room and its precarious stacks of old books...
22 Feb Be Careful Hiring Killers on the Dark Web
There hadn’t been a murder in Franzburg for over five years. Not since old man Weathers killed his wife over a Monopoly match gone sour and a marriage gone even sourer. Up until last week, that was. Now I’ve got three different files sitting on my desk,...
21 Feb The Trees Won’t Let Me Leave
“Let’s go hiking!” she said. “It’ll be fun, babe!” she said. Yeah…yeah, it’s definitely real fuckin’ fun right now… I’m sorry, I gotta…gotta stay calm, right? Okay… okay, let me start again. It was around 10:00 this morning when Selena woke me up with a thing of doughnuts...
17 Feb Odyssey of the Despairing Mind
I believe there are imperceptible forces, energies and intangible things, which, arising from some sub-dimensional source, act on our minds, influence our thoughts, and perhaps even create entirely new thoughts—ideas which we wouldn’t have normally, naturally considered. The human brain largely remains a mystery and is still yet...
16 Feb A Gift of the Undivine
I have only a few things to say, a few terrible events to relate, and then I must go and join my best friend. She is in the other room, struggling against her restraints, crying out wildly, madly, shrieking like a thing inhuman. In many...
15 Feb It Blew (Up) My Mind
The worst thing about trying to stop your brain from re-entering your skull is that, with it being your brain, you can’t exactly resist the commands it issues. You can struggle, dimly, bodily, but in the end, the brain wins out. It gets back into...
14 Feb We Can Put You Back Together
I’m sitting in a bar right now, somewhere in the more southern portions of Missouri; Howell County, I think. I haven’t bothered to ask. The police are on their way, the owner of the bar called them the moment she saw me stumble through the...
12 Feb The Demon in the White Suit
Snow. I absentmindedly watched the white flakes lazily drift down from the sky, remembering that the forecast called for a blizzard by noon. It didn’t seem like it would get that bad, at least not now. But I couldn’t spend all day looking at the...
09 Feb The Thing Inside the Cave
It awoke to the sounds of bootfalls on rocks. Voices followed. Someone had come into its cave again. It listened. “Matt! Look out for the camera!” “I’m looking! I’m looking!” “I could put that in my bag, you know.” “And let it get crushed by your two tons of gear? ...
08 Feb Signed
In some ways, it is terrifying to imagine just how close the town of Marchington came to obliteration by the tentacles of a demonic cephalopod. THE END It was finished. Months of toil had finally given way to Marty’s latest masterpiece. Of his eighteen novels to...
07 Feb Cotton Face
Vestwell Subway was a pedestrian tunnel which ran beneath the busy A37, linking East Lydford with West. A notorious accident blackspot, few ever chose to use it, preferring to risk life and limb crossing the road above. Indeed, many fatalities had been recorded at the...
30 Jan Long Jaw
I was running as fast as I could, but I knew it was gaining on me. I swear it was trying to step in every puddle so I knew it was running faster. I turned my head where I could see it. Its arms were...
30 Jan Palms Up
The town my wife Violet was raised in is almost unremarkable. You won’t find it on any ‘Best of’ lists or see it signified on any map or atlas. She said she was happy as heaven to get out of there when we met. I...
21 Jan Santa’s Helpers
In the beginning, what we did was beautiful. It all started in 345 when Saint Nicholas supposedly “died.” Or at least, that was the story given out. What a bad joke. As if a man who could resurrect pickled meat into living breathing children would ever...