Reading Time: 5 minutes“Tarantulas are loners, like you,” says Ryo, resting a weightless hand on Gabriel’s shoulder. “I was a loner too. Perhaps if I had it to do over… But that’s foolish talk. I don’t, I can’t. I don’t know if you can, but…”
Gods and Monsters Installment 44: Premonitions of Endings Read More »
Reading Time: 8 minutesRiver enters Bert’s. In spite of himself, his heart leaps at the sight of Pam. He wants his heart to be stone. He wants never to have met her. But wishes are overrun by desire. Love triumphs over fear.
Gods and Monsters Installment 43: Predator and Prey Read More »
Reading Time: 7 minutesRiver wants to forget her, yet he knows that if he does, a part of him will die. Though he feels betrayed, he cannot keep away. He hangs the chain around his neck. He will go to Bert’s and fasten it about hers. Then he will leave, never to return, the prism remaining, a crystal kiss, a tangible memory, a concrete regret.
Gods and Monsters Installment 42: Death and Memory Read More »
Reading Time: 7 minutesBeethoven does not merely drain his victims, he eviscerates them. When there are no more cats, he moves on to dogs and babies, climbing the food chain with grisly effect.
Gods and Monsters Installment 41: The Color of Empathy Read More »
Reading Time: 7 minutesIt’s twilight. Jeremy has finished his eight hours of practice and is out walking through golden fields. Smoke weaves the smell of burning wood and sugar through the air. At the end of the field is a tall man.
Gods and Monsters Installment 40: The Fabric of the Universe Read More »
Reading Time: 9 minutesAs River’s eyes grow accustomed to the night, he sees a cat emerge from around a corner and disappear down a narrow alleyway. Another follows, and another. Surely, River thinks, there must be some meaning in all of these cats drifting toward a single destiny, their eyes glowing like secrets?
Gods and Monsters Installment 39: Beethoven’s Salt Sonatas Read More »
Reading Time: 8 minutes“If you follow a life,” says Ryo, “one strand leads to another. You take me to Pamela, and Pamela guides me to Jeremy. It is impossible to understand her without him. Jeremy was both her lover and her creator.”
Gods and Monsters Installment 38: A Little Night Music Read More »
Reading Time: 10 minutesWhen Margareta is not working, and if Pamela has been very, very good, Sarah lets her model the lacey cap. When Pam puts on the cap, she becomes an enchanted princess. The dirty pigeons that clutter the ledges of the city are snow white doves that come at her call and do her bidding. She leans out her window, arms spread wide, embracing her kingdom… until Sarah catches her and pulls her inside.
Reading Time: 4 minutesMarsha and Frank are driving along a country road on a rainy night, with Frank regaling Marsha about his knowledge of Japanese Samurai films,
when they encounter a ghostly specter in the middle of the road.
Reading Time: 9 minutesMike grabs Ashley from her quilted comfort. Her head droops back like a wilted flower. Her neck shows white in the night. Mike’s canines grow long with desire and need.
Gods and Monsters Installment 36: Stained Glass Soul Read More »
Reading Time: 7 minutesWhen Hephaestus emerged clubfooted and malformed, Hera tossed him off Mount Olympus. He fell for nine days and nine nights, landing in the sea with a splash so big it caused a tsunami. No wonder then, that he prefers Earth to Olympus and children to gods.
Gods and Monsters Installment 35: Gods and Circuses Read More »
Reading Time: 7 minutesNow, after the advent of dreams and the appearance of color, when Gabriel reads of a killing, something inside him screams. When he looks upon a charcoal figure that so recently possessed unearthly beauty, he mourns. He wants to create, not destroy. He doesn’t like the role in which he has been cast.
Gods and Monsters Installment 34: The Fault Line Within Read More »
Reading Time: 8 minutesVampires followed the deluge of fluid and fear, tracking the lonely, homeless, and lost to the city, drawn by the need for belief, as well as blood.
Reading Time: 7 minutesThanatos never kills. He’s just the messenger.
Gods and Monsters Installment 32: Time Before Time Read More »
Reading Time: 8 minutesThe door is heavy, about four inches thick. A long narrow staircase leads down into darkness. He is in total darkness. Feeling his way slowly along the wall, carefully tapping his feet to see where the stairs begin, he finds a light switch. Harsh fluorescence floods the stairwell. This light would make anyone look dead, River thinks.
Reading Time: 8 minutesThat night, Jackson does not come to Bert’s.
Reading Time: 6 minutesJim is standing on the rocky shore of a dark underground river. The only sound is the constant thrum of pebbles which gently lapping waves draw back and fling up the high strand. There is a whisper, the sound of a shadow gliding over hard round stones. Against the blackness he sees a man, tall and lean.
Reading Time: 7 minutesIt is the first time Gabriel has heard birdsong. Usually, birds drop lifeless at his feet. Hearing the song, Gabriel is warmed by an invincible summer. He stretches his arms toward the light.
Gods and Monsters Installment 25: In the Time of Many Pigeons Read More »
Reading Time: 6 minutesIn the mornings, if he wakes beside the dust of a beautiful stranger, he knows he’s drained the world of a bit of color, a bit of beauty, however deadly.
Reading Time: 2 minutesA hungry ghost, pockets full of whatever money he could collect, visits his favorite diner on Halloween
Reading Time: 5 minutesGuilt, melancholy, and the lost soul of a love form the basis of this twist on the paranormal/magical romance.
Reading Time: 10 minutesA young woman faces her vengeful parents returning from the dead.
Reading Time: 5 minutesA fractured fable and a meal served up in a haunted castle.
Reading Time: 4 minutesHere we have an unexpected intersection of past and present when Fate takes a hand to switch things up.
Reading Time: 21 minutesBen is reveling in his tragically achieved freedom. He thinks he has it made, except for an elusive partner. Then an unknown woman first DMs then stands him up. His troubles have only begun when he realizes how thoroughly someone has infiltrated his technological fortress.
Reading Time: 3 minutesIn this spooky flash story, a woman haunts her own house after a messy breakup.
Reading Time: 5 minutesWhen old Ms. Linton rescues a wounded magpie, memories of her past come winging back.
Reading Time: 16 minutesBrother Silas is unhappy with his lot at the abbey. He sees no alternative until a unique manuscript comes his way.
Reading Time: 11 minutesA remote cabin in the southwest desert is the scene of an alien invasion, but it’s not what you think. Maybe the ghost hunters have it wrong.
Reading Time: 2 minutesThe holidays take on an ominous tone when a woman receives a phone call from the son she murdered.
Reading Time: 9 minutesA little boy sees the ghost of an old man in the mirror. Or is it the old man who sees the ghost of a small boy?
Reading Time: 8 minutesA teenager pushes another teenager into an abandoned well and leaves him there to die. But the victim has other ideas.
Reading Time: 13 minutesJess thought she’d left Derek behind, casting away his ring in the floods of a Seattle storm. But Derek was promised forever, and with another storm brewing, he’s going to remind her just how long forever is.
Reading Time: 4 minutesA dedicated officer refuses to leave until others are safe. Death sometimes does not defer duty.
Reading Time: 15 minutesExcerpt
Lizzie Borden took an axe.
Gave her mother forty whacks.
But did she?
Three grifters get caught up in the Lizzie Borden murders and it plays itself out one hundred years later.
Reading Time: 4 minutesThe sudden appearance of the ghost of Bob, Dave’s best friend, leaves the latter feeling unhinged. Dave has just lost his wife, and Bob has returned to prevent Dave from following after her.
Reading Time: 16 minutesThe spirit of famous Jewish ballet dancer, Franceska Mann, is stuck in time in a parallel dimension in 1943 at Auschwitz Concentration Camp, Poland.
Reading Time: 3 minutesRoger’s virtual digital assistant becomes possessed by the spirit of a vengeful ex-girlfriend who died of a broken heart. She wants to force him to dance himself to death to sixties rock music. The only one who can save Roger is the spirit of his deceased wife, Diane.
Reading Time: 6 minutesHorror meets the near-term sci fi of additive manufacturing in a ghost story unlike most that came before it.
Reading Time: 4 minutesTurner finds himself stranded in the middle of the highway late at night. As he waits for help to arrive, a strange girl appears at his car. Is she real or a ghost of his dark past?
