Latest Stories
Most recently published stories in Horror.
The Singing Ice
I cried to the first responders to let me see them and officially say goodbye. Over the years, I've learned to imitate appropriate feelings rather than experiencing them for myself first hand. Not much has changed in my heart. I feel the exact same blank emotions I did when they were alive. My parents have always been cold. Now, as I gaze down upon them, they are a different kind of frozen. As they lay immobile, icy, and blue, their newly found solidified condition seems more true to form. Dead people are just more honest. They are what they are and nothing else.
By Alisa Daglio6 years ago in Horror
The Tip
Knock, knock, knock. “Housekeeping.” The maid rapped three times on the door and swiped her pass key over the sensor as she announced her presence in a practiced but cheerful voice. She gently pushed open the door with her right hand and grabbed her tote of cleaning supplies off the cart with her left hand in one fluid motion born of repetition. Her eyes scanned the dark room as she entered and a small, but audible sigh of relief escaped her lips as she realized that room 602 was currently unoccupied. The thought of one more creepy old man leering at her while she cleaned up after him, or worse another “couple” giggling away under the covers as she sifted through their empty beer bottles and Chinese takeout containers… Ugh. She was just happy to find herself alone to do her thankless job in peace, even if there was no tip.
By Celeste Moody6 years ago in Horror
A Ceaseless Buzzing
The quiet of the cemetery is such a comfort to me that I don’t know what I would do without them. That’s a morbid-sounding thing to say, but it’s simply true: I need cemeteries to survive. The problem with living people is that they don’t ever stop; from the moment they can open their eyes they have thoughts after thoughts after thoughts cascading down like a multi-tiered fountain of directionless information and ideas and desires that can’t be meted out or fulfilled because often times the thoughts as so nested into the psyche that the person doesn’t even know they have them.
By Ashton Harris6 years ago in Horror
On the Conservation of Loneliness
My home is a damp place, where the fiery crowns of streetlamps beckon wanderers such as myself through our bone chilling mists, and the solemn drip of the day to day seems to erode us as the broken cobblestone beneath each dreary step we have remaining. The hollow cacophony of distant laughs among shut in houses accompanied a lonely stroll of mine on such an evening four weeks ago. My study is often more of a suffocation chamber than a creative space, with its walls acting as more of a prison sentencing me to the drudgery of work that I would otherwise enjoy were it not for the pressure to produce it for a better shot at food and rent. The irony of going about tasks in an oppressive environment to eventually earn enough wages to sustain such an existence within it, is not lost on me in the slightest. So these walks; as cold, heavy, and haunting as they can be; offer reprieve from the paralyzing fear of being unable to carry my weight financially, or the gripping inadequacy I feel to see the halting progress of my work itself. At least with each step away from my study I feel a measurable displacement along a resistive path, and can see a change in my surroundings until of course hunger or tiredness sets in, and the sum of my efforts brings me once again to this prison of mine.
By Devon Gulley6 years ago in Horror
