fiction
Horror fiction that delivers on its promise to scare, startle, frighten and unsettle. These stories are fake, but the shivers down your spine won't be.
The Doldrums
For many decades Harbor Masters, seafarers and fishermen alike have handed down a legend that is as chilling as it is compelling. It is that of the strange, eerie sightings of a ship that many have thought to be that of the Stella Del Mattino, a ship rumored to have sailed over the horizon and off the face of earth altogether. Now I, a retired Captain in a small fishing town on the West Coast of Italy, have inherited the legend. But in a most unusual way.
By Alder Strauss5 years ago in Horror
The Man Without Age
There is a man, some say, who never grows old and who was never young. He lives all alone at the end of a road that no path can lead to or no carriage will go. And nothing planted within that land grows except that which hosts poison and thorn.
By Alder Strauss5 years ago in Horror
Orgasm at 104 (18+)
Todd was a high school senior, a notorious antagonist, an average student, and an above-average thrill seeker. Mary, a junior in the same school, was an excellent student and a mediocre extrovert. But tonight that all would change. Tonight they would take their love to a whole new level.
By Alder Strauss5 years ago in Horror
The House Upon the Sea
The next morning the fisherman awoke to the horror of a most terrible discovery. Three fishermen went to sleep in one room, but only two woke up in it. One was missing. The two sprang up in a frightful, desperate panic. They immediately looked out the window. The tide was out. It looked as if it never had come. The window did not cradle glass within its frame. Rather, it was clean and open, allowing anyone, or anything to come into the room from the water’s height, which was about a couple feet under the bottom frame. There were no signs of entry from what the two could see. Before long, they came upon what they were looking for. The bedroom door, which they closed, was now wide open. Leading from where their mate slept on out into the hallway were white streaks amidst pools of seawater. They led out of the room and down the hallway and stairs. From this discovery, the two came to a ghastly conclusion. Someone, or something had taken their mate. Frightened, the two followed the trails, determined to find their missing peer. From the hallway they led down the stairs and around the corner to where they stopped at an adjacent wall. The trail looked like it had disappeared into it. Puzzled, the two looked at each other and negotiated the possibilities of what this meant. In their examinations they came to the conclusion that there was something beyond the wall that stood before them. They knocked on the surrounding paneling and then on the wall in front of them. The sound from the wall they stood in front of echoed in a deep hollow moan. There was indeed something beyond it. The two pushed and the wall became a door, swinging open to confess its secret. There, before them, was the mouth of a cavern that descended into darkness.
By Alder Strauss5 years ago in Horror
The House Upon the Sea
The new day had brought back with it the thickness of the fog they had first encountered not two days before. What perplexed them more than the reappearance of fog was the absence of the sounds of waves lapping upon the rocks where they rested. They looked down. Through the thickness of fog they saw the indistinct resemblance of land. They were near shore. Excited, they jumped down and embraced the flats on which they landed. Porous land, composed of mud and grit provided a spongy substitute for soil and stone. The three ambled on with a confident gaunt in their step. They were alive and had found their sanctuary from a torturous fate of drifting at sea forever. They now cared not for their bounty and vessel lost to a sea that almost claimed their lives as well. They only wanted to return home. The three continued onwards towards the shore and it wasn’t long before they came upon something hidden in the fog.
By Alder Strauss5 years ago in Horror
The House Upon the Sea
The night wore on slowly. The three were no doubt excited. Their eyes and ears were portside where the nets prodded beneath the ocean waves like fingers reaching for some unseen treasure. And it was in their moment of relaxation that they reached it.
By Alder Strauss5 years ago in Horror
Wizard's Oak
Night came yet the rain did not subside. Surprisingly, the forest or the place where they held refuge did not flood. The moss seemed to hold in the water like a sponge. So, the four took out the sandwiches they had made, ate, and then huddled together to sleep. Sometime during the night Laura was awoken by something strange; an unsettling noise that had found its way to her ears and stirred her from her slumber.
By Alder Strauss5 years ago in Horror
The House Upon the Sea
Three fishermen set out one day to a cape far from their homes in search of a bounty only the sea could provide. Limited by only their imaginations and what their schooner could carry, they embarked on a mission fed by fantasy but satiated by adventure. They were headed to the mysterious Cape Chessa in hopes to bring back an even more mysterious cargo; the elusive fish called Perrin. But few fishermen of their native land had seen them, and even fewer, of any cape or inlet seafaring village, had caught one.
By Alder Strauss5 years ago in Horror
The Ravine
The next several days came and went. The mornings brought new pain and the nights took old hope. The animal crackers were now gone and every inch of the box licked clean of crumbs. Their sweating, too, had stopped and the lack of water had left Carol’s wounds untreated, causing them to worsen.
By Alder Strauss5 years ago in Horror
The Ravine
Night came quick like before, bringing the end to another sweltering day and the start of an icy night. The two were surviving on two-to-three animal crackers a day and what little water they had left was gone. Carol and Jameson both slept. A lot: A solution that both kept Carol’s mind off her famished condition and her aching, drying body. She awoke from a hearty shiver to the sound of one of the monsters sniffing and licking. Carol could hear it in its step. It was the big one. The instigator. The alpha. She looked down at Jameson, who was sleeping soundly in her lap, curled into a ball. She had taken off her sweatshirt and wrapped it around him and, though she was shivering, his body warmth was steady enough to keep her a bit warmer and him without much exposure to the night’s chill. Her concern for him, however, was great. His skin had dried and his lips were starting to bleed a bit between chapped cracks, when he moved them in any significant fashion. The rash had gotten worse, too.
By Alder Strauss5 years ago in Horror
