On Murder Island
The north wind’s been spraying Mainland Runoff in our faces for days, but that’s nothing new, nothing worth complaining about. Here on Murder Island, we have a little saying: “If ever you don’t like...
View ArticleChew
Anton’s American soldier had whipped out the torn front page of the newspaper for him to translate the headline. His German was very bad and Anton’s English worse, but they worked it out anyhow,...
View ArticleSacred Cows
Clara Maloney peered down the long Brooklyn block. She and baby Sally had been waiting in the cold for twenty minutes, and still no sign of Pop. Figured. Even to pick out his wife’s casket, the old man...
View ArticleCry Room
The church looked normal from the outside. All steepled and angular in the way of good, rural Indiana churches of a certain age. Red brick and stained glass, St. Thomas Aquinas, surrounded on three...
View ArticleThe Sign in the Moonlight
You will have heard, no doubt, of the Bergenssen expedition—if only from the manner of its loss. For a short while, that tragedy was deemed significant and remarkable enough to adorn the covers of...
View ArticleNo Breather in the World But Thee
The cook didn’t like that the eyes of the dead fish shifted to stare at him as he cut their heads off. The cook’s assistant, who was also his lover, didn’t like that he woke to find just a sack of...
View ArticleBonfires
The shore was dark when we showed up, but it would soon be blazing, and that thought was all I needed to warm me while we built the bonfires. The waves slopped in and sucked out again like black tar,...
View ArticleGravitas
He stared bleary-eyed at the broken glass studding the land. This was his crop, seeded over the span of four weeks, irrigated from the residue of Napa Valley grapes, sun-kissed until it glistened like...
View ArticleCentipede Heartbeat
Each time Lisa rested her head against Joette’s breasts, she heard the centipedes. In between heartbeats there was the tiny sound of hundreds of chitinous footsteps against bone, of miniature mandibles...
View ArticleDoll Re Mi
Folscyvio saw the Thing in a small cramped shop off the Via Silvia. In fact, he almost passed it by. He had just come from the Laguna, climbed the forty mildewy, green-velveted steps to the Ponte...
View ArticleThe House on Cobb Street
The house itself was razed, its lot now surrounded by a high fence bearing a sign that announces the construction presumably in progress behind it as the future offices of Drs. Laura Gonzales and Didi...
View ArticleFishwife
The men went out in boats to fish the cold waters of the bay because their fathers had, because men in this village always had. The women waited to gather in the catch, gut and clean and carry the fish...
View ArticleAnd Yet, Her Eyes
Sasha came back from Kandahar in pieces, a sack of broken glass in the shape of a woman. She knew her edges stuck out at hard, invisible angles, waiting for an unwary hand to snag and recoil, so she...
View ArticleThey Called Him Monster
The sprite feels wood against her fingertips. Old wood. It’s the wild, gnarled trunk of an oak tree hewn, shaped and molded back together as a table. It’s a free thing bound into shape by a carpenter...
View ArticleHow Far to Englishman’s Bay
Max had made the decision that April morning to close up the bookshop and go away for once and for all, but he hadn’t told anyone yet, and he needed somebody to take the cat, so it was a good thing...
View ArticleAll My Princes Are Gone
When the world was young, it was filled with monsters. The post All My Princes Are Gone appeared first on Nightmare Magazine.
View ArticleHalfway Home
“Those diagrams are terribly optimistic,” the woman in the seat beside me said, eyeing the brochure as our plane climbed away from Manila. She spoke masterful English, clipped with a Filipino accent....
View ArticleThe Nest
“Come in, come in!” the man said, sitting like a god in the middle of the room, grinning at me through broken teeth. He levered himself out of his chair, breathing heavily, and then tottered over to...
View Article10/31: Bloody Mary
The boy isn’t very large. The way things are these days, he figures that’s a plus. He is less of a target at night, and for this reason he has come to trust the darkness. Strange to trust darkness in a...
View ArticleThe Crowgirl
From the camp on the hill they could see everything, the river and the barn with its silos of molding grain, the hunting crows, and far to the west, in the square white farmhouse with its padlocked...
View ArticleThe Beasts of the Earth, the Madness of Men
The crew is drowned, the ship is flayed to ribbons and splinters, and her own arms are a-rotted down to yellowed bone and salt-cured jerky not even the gulls will touch. Cross-legged on her chunk of...
View ArticleWaiting for the Light
It had taken three days before the supervisor—“call me Marty”—asked Finn for the favour. He knew by the looks on the faces of the other staff—the little upturning of their heads that meant they were...
View Article57 Reasons for the Slate Quarry Suicides
1. Because it would take the patience of a saint or Dalai Lama to smilingly turn the other cheek to those six savage boys day after day, to emerge unembittered from each new round of psychological and...
View ArticleA Home in the Dark
We didn’t even notice the calamity and probably slept through it. If a luxury liner takes on a little water, that’s not news; if the ship keels over or sinks, that’s news. If a racecar driver whined to...
View Article