The Selling of a House
NATALIA PLOS
“So, did you sell my house?” Craig asked.
“It’s not that easy to sell a haunted house,” Allen grumbled.
“Why can’t you grow some pretty flowers in the windowsill or sweep the floor? There’d be lines for a house with an automatic cleaning function.”
“Evil haunts don’t do that,” Craig shrugged. “I’m a very respectable and dangerous evil haunt.”
“Can’t you move into another house?”
“I can’t.”
“Well...” Allen said wistfully. “There’s still a chance you’ll find someone who likes you. And who will understand that talking to an evil haunt can be more pleasant than talking to most people.”
Natalia Plos is a horror writer. Her stories appeared in Stygian Lepus and Dark Myth Publications.
Regrets
LINDAANN LOSCHIAVO
Native New Yorker. Poet. Writer. Dramatist.
LindaAnn LoSchiavo’s poetry books have won multiple awards.
Run Cold
PAMELA LOVE
My feet pound across the permafrost, enraged mammoths thundering behind me. Just ahead shimmers the portal. In a swarm of snowflakes, I leap through this doorway back into my time, stumbling as I land.
The scientist throws a switch, cutting off the Ice Age from his lab. He’s saved me from the herd’s vengeance, but I am no safer with him.
“Did you get it?”
Gasping for breath, I try to warm the frosty air in my lungs. Somehow, I find the energy to nod.
He snaps his fingers, a sound I’ve learned to dread. “Well?”
“Sir, I beg you, don’t do this.” With a shudder, I clutch to my chest the package I brought back. Inside is a blood sample I risked my life to take from a woolly mammoth, one containing a disease endemic to that species. It’s a potential bioweapon, one that could kill millions of people.
“Are you defying me?” His voice is more frigid than the era I just fled.
Tears well up in my eyes. I set the package by a row of test tubes. So many people will die, all coughing up blood, which will be on my hands. My own blood runs cold at the thought.
Nevertheless, I obey the scientist. Only the heart he built that pumps within me enables my blood to run at all. He holds its remote control.
Pamela Love worked as a teacher and in marketing before turning to writing.
The Old Gods
MIKE A. RHODES
And something shifted in my perceptions then, like a clearing of mist, and I saw the lake glittering in the valley below us not as a lake but rather the awakening eye of a long sleeping giant, blinking, looking back at us.
“You people are insane!” I yelled over the keening wind.
“Please,” the man said calmly. “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. We’re trying something quite new."
There was a flash of silver in the orange-dusk and I felt something hot and then very cold. I felt weak. I looked down and saw blood pouring into pre-dug troughs in the dirt. The pattern was an intricate design that made little sense to me.
The group encircling us began a rhythmic hum. The ground rumbled as if the whole Earth joined in. As I fell to the ground, too weak to stand, vision beginning to swim, a giant tentacle seemed to reach up from beyond a hill across the valley.
“Civilisation has failed,” the man said. “We must look to the Old Gods.”
Mike A. Rhodes enjoys reading, writing, ice hockey and food.
Apotropaic PPE
GABRIELLE BLEU
“Kid,” Camelia barked at the intern. “Helmet on!"
“But it smells,” the intern grumbled, donning the metal hounskull helmet and closing the pointed visor.
“No rookie mistakes today,” Camelia chided. They entered the cave to begin the bat inoculations.
The rookie gawked at the thousands of sleeping bats above. One dropped from a stalactite, small furry body shifting into the pale, bloated corpse of a man swooping towards the intern.
Thankfully, the garlic stuffed in his visor deterred the vampire.
"What’d I tell you, kid?” Camelia called. "It’s the vampire vaccinator’s motto: ‘In a bascinet, then the bats can’t get.’”
Gabrielle Bleu writes luminous science fiction and fantasy. Find more of Bleu's work at gabriellebleu.com.
Flashbang
KARAMA NEAL
I saw the noise first. A flash of white light appeared on the inside of my eyelids and my brain registered that before the sound. Was that because light travels faster than sound? Something with neurons? No matter. I had other priorities.
The bang seemed to come from outside, so I looked out and saw a uniform was pointing their gun. There were at least three flavors of uniformed gun-toting “G-men” roaming our streets these days. None made me feel safe; that was not their intent.
Another shot. But no light since my eyes were open. It wasn’t clear who their targets were and I didn’t want to be collateral damage (or a target), so I got my pillow, covers, phone, and charger, confirmed the doors were locked, and made a makeshift bed in the den. That room only had a single, narrow window parallel to the ceiling, not facing the street. Less chance of glassbreak and resulting injuries.
The gunshots continued as I settled in on the couch and opened the app to report the government activity. Others would know to stay away and maybe someone could use the data to end this. Once that was done, I closed my eyes and tried to return to sleep. I’d decide in the morning if or how to go to work.
The shooting sounds were fainter in the den but lights still burst inside my eyelids, even more frequently. When I finally fell asleep, I dreamed of fireflies and peace.
Karama Neal writes and thrives in the Lower Mississippi River Watershed. Online at karamaneal.com.
A simple concept
BRETT ABRAHAMSEN
Everyone knows that humans are not intelligent. However, my colleagues and I believe that there is more to these little furry creatures than meets the eye. It should, of course, be noted that even the most intelligent human is undoubtedly less intelligent than even the least educated Proxima Centauri, but there is certainly evidence that suggests humans may exhibit intelligence on levels similar to the inhabitants of Castor and Polaris. To test our (admittedly fringe) theory, we took one of the apes and tried to “Centaurize” it – in other words, to teach it to become one of us.
Of course, the experiment was doomed to fail. We began by explaining to the human how quantum mechanics and relativity are reconciled, how we effortlessly created the universe and everything in it (including homo sapiens), and how something came from nothing in the process – incredibly simple concepts, really. Of course, the human parroted everything we told it, but there was some debate concerning whether the human actually understood what we were saying or whether it was a mere case of rote operant conditioning.
My colleagues and I ultimately decided on the latter. We had been naively optimistic. Our brains are light-years long, theirs are only the size of a football, and we should have known better.
We sent the human back to its home planet. We watched as the creature made a successful landing, and then we fixed our sights elsewhere.
The author has sold dozens of works to numerous publications. He resides in Saratoga Springs, NY.
The Magician
GRAEME DIXON
On the third week of the search,
a magician came forward to help find the body.
Not one of your psychic mediums --
an actual magician with a top hat and wand.
He asked the lead detective to ‘pick any card,’
and strode with the team into the woods.
They found the body after only half an hour,
lying with a playing card on its chest.
‘Is that your card?’ asked the magician,
when they had cordoned off the area.
The detective turned it over.
The three of clubs. Uncanny.
‘I wonder how that was done,’ he said
to his other detective friends.
Probably a trick of the trade, he thought.
The magician winked at him as he went past.
Graeme Dixon writes when there’s no alternative to staring out of the window.