Frightmares: A Fistful of Flash Fiction Horror (9 page)

Vince Darcangelo
is an award-winning journalist, author and photographer. He has recently appeared in
Black Ink Horror, From Shadows and Nightmares, Dark Things
and
Bete Noire
. His work can also be found at www.vincedarcangelo.com.

AWAKE

ADAM STEHLY

The low moan of thunder in the background breaks the stillness of the night. It is followed by the distant whistle of a freight train reminding me that the world moves on and is still alive. I lie awake in bed, head swimming through a muddled, looping mess of delirium, anxiety, threat, dread and unknowing. The dog at the foot of my bed crowds me, the bristle of his fur against my skin. I turn from my wife. Glowing red numbers on the alarm clock stare at me, remind me of the finite period in which I have remaining to rest. And I wonder, what’s the point?

I hoist myself out of bed. My hip crackles as pain shoots down my leg, distorting my posture. I hobble to the bathroom, sit down to take a piss because I don’t want to turn on the light to my sensitive eyes and I don’t want to miss the toilet. I don’t flush because I don’t want to wake her up. I stand and the pain shoots through me again.

Rain begins to patter against the aluminum canopy covering the patio. It’s slow, hard and loud. Then the sky opens and rain pounds everything. Approaching thunder rumbles. Lightning hops from cloud to cloud, electrifying the sky.

I move to the sofa, turn on the TV so that it can be the voice inside my head. Carl Sagan travels through the Cosmos. I watch Voyager’s flight through the solar system as it explores the gas giants and their moons. I watch the revolving red spot of a ceaseless storm on Jupiter. How long will the storm last? Voyager moves out into space past the furthest reaches of our solar system into the void.

I fall asleep but only for a few minutes–a blank spot in my memory. I twitch awake again and know that I cannot be greater than the sum of my parts. And I know that I will die. I abandon hope of sleep. I sit up and push myself from the sofa, shuffle back to the bedroom and slink into bed. I am not cold but draw the cover over me as I rest my head. I kick at the dog and he scoots away. Next to me, she sleeps like a peaceful bundled babe. I brush my fingers over her cold, drying skin, and I pray for the day that I’m as unfeeling and dead as her.

Adam Stehly
lives in Wisconsin with his wife, two stepsons, four cats and dog. Moving up from Florida, he’s convinced himself that the winters aren’t so bad after all. He also has a penchant for brewing and drinking beer. He has a B.A. in English from Penn State and has been passionate about horror fiction, movies and comics since adolescence.

LEAVES

R. F. MARAZAS

“
Witch . . .”
He whispered under his breath. He had to return to the city, get away from this backwoods prison, away from
her
. He’d endured the long summer unable to concentrate, write, do
anything
. Her damned rituals and chantings; the eerie silences that followed . . . his nerves were rubbed raw with them, sanity fraying.

Leaves fell in profusion, raining against the cottage roof, their furtive, spidery rustling keeping him from dreams. Another night was approaching; her night of nights,
Halloween
. He wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t endure another day.

Calliope sat in her battered rocker, dressed in black, eyes turned inward. He stood before her, trembling in terror and determination.

“We’re finished, you hear me? I’m leaving. Maybe your damn fantasies will keep you warm at night.”

“Goodbye then,” she said.

He had to put down a suitcase to open the door. Frustrated now, he yanked it open. Wind gusted, flinging a single dead leaf into his face. He raged, crumbling the leaf, flinging it to the floor.

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

He laughed, striding to his car. The gloomy day was still. He crammed his luggage into the back seat and started the car. In his rear view mirror, he saw Calliope in the doorway, raising her arms as if conducting an orchestra. He laughed again, wheels spitting gravel as he screeched from the driveway.

On the rutted road leading out, the wind picked up suddenly, roaring around the car. Ground-scattered leaves rose in monstrous waves. As he gaped in astonishment, stomping the brake, they crashed down. His windshield shattered, the engine sputtering, dying. He shoved the door open. Mounds of leaves surrounded the car. He stood and stared in dumb disbelief. His tires were flat, leaves embedded in the rubber, driven into pockmarked dents on the hood and roof.

The wind waned. Leaves stirred at his ankles, lifting in the breeze to hang poised in the air. Thousands, tens of thousands, skittered along the ground from all directions, massing as they drew closer, closer . . .

He ran. The wind roared again, hurling leaves at his back. He ducked, covering his head with his hands, running faster. Through a haze of tears, he saw Calliope still standing in the doorway, arms raised, fingers dancing in the air. Then the wind found him, chaos sweeping him up, swallowing him whole. Serrated leaves slashed at him, tearing his clothes, ripping his exposed skin. He batted at them, arms pin-wheeling. His eyes . . . he couldn’t see! The cottage and Calliope were gone. He zigzagged crazily, stumbling away from the door toward the unseen ditch at the back of the property.

His foot flailed in empty air, plunging him into the ditch. Leaves rose and poured, covering him. The wind’s howl, sick and ragged like that of a starving wolf, rose in concert with the crunching leaves to stifle his screams.

Calliope lowered her arms. The wind died.

“Shouldn’t have done it.” She slammed the door.

R.F. Marazas
won first place in the Dahlonega Literary Festival 2007 Novel Contest, for his novel
Dimensions In Ego
, and has published short fiction in seven Anthologies and on-line venues.

INSTINCT

SUZIE LOCKHART

Zenia woke to sunbeams cutting through cracks in the boards nailed to the windows. The brilliant rays illuminated the dust, and, just looking at them, made her sneeze. She rubbed her eyes to clear away sleep, and rolled onto her side.

An excruciating pain shot through her left arm. In order to keep from crying out, she bit down on her bottom lip until she drew blood. The coppery flavor actually tasted good on her tongue, as she licked it across the open wound.

She glanced around to be certain everyone else was asleep. They were spread out all over the wood floor, but no one else was awake. Yet.

Slowly, she rolled up her sleeve to check the scratch. Green ooze seeped from it. She grabbed a strip of cloth from her backpack and wrapped it tightly around her arm, and then slid her sleeve back down to conceal the wound.

Her survival instinct was already kicking in. She knew she should wake Carson up and ask him to shoot her, while she still could be easily killed. But she knew she wouldn’t.

She leaned against the cold brick wall, trying to think, but her ability to reason was quickly abandoning her. She looked around at the dozen or so people who had become her family during their fight for survival. What would happen to them, if she didn’t get the hell out of here?

For some, it would be the same thing that was happening to her right now.

For others . . .

Her gut clenched, the revolting, burning need already settling in the pit of her stomach. The air even smelled different, savory, evoking childhood memories of roasting hot dogs over a campfire, with her parents.

That was before the world had changed. Before the biological weapon, developed overseas, had accidentally been let loose. Before it had spread at an unbelievable rate, changing people into monsters that fed off of everyone.

And they were not easily killed once the transformation was complete.

Zenia felt saliva escape through her lips, and she coughed.

“Are you okay?” Tina, her sister, murmured.

Zenia kept her voice low. “Just go. It’s daylight now. Get to a safe place before dark.” Her emotions were quickly dissolving.

Tina–the only thing she had left.

Zenia clung desperately to her last shred of humanity.

Her sister looked into her red-rimmed eyes and let out a bloodcurdling scream. Everyone woke up, and the room exploded into mass mayhem.

Unable to fight it any longer, Zenia snatched one of the men with her newfound strength. She sank her teeth into his flesh, feeling a distant satisfaction as she watched Tina run out into the daylight.

Then, her humanity disappeared forever.

Suzie Lockhart
is a 45-year-old, who aspires to write books for young adults with her 19-year-old son, Bruce. They are currently collaborating on their debut novel. She married her college sweetheart, and they reside in Pennsylvania with their four children. Her hobbies include art and jewelry design.

EVERY FIBER

PEGGY MCFARLAND

John tapped the bedroom door. After months of pursuit, Penelope had finally invited him to her chambers. He wiped his sweaty palms against his thighs before responding to her husky
come in
.

A gossamer sheet hinted at propriety; bare arms and legs glowed in candlelight. Lust propelled him to the bed. “I’ve waited so long.”

The perspiration sheen belied Penelope’s coquettish smile. He kissed her forehead, marveled at her translucent skin, her fluttering eyelashes, her shallow breaths.

Her nipples hardened under his gliding hand. Soft lips brushed his earlobe as her fingers unbuttoned his shirt, traced the line of hair from his chest to his navel.

“A seam,” she whispered, “holding you together.”

She scratched his sternum. He yelped, sure she drew blood, but her probing tongue distracted him. His cry shifted to a moan.

Hungry for what his fingers already sampled, John tugged at the fabric shrouding her body. He wanted to touch skin to skin, but she gripped the sheet’s edge. Her body trembled.

“Tell me how much you want me.” She licked his chest.

John couldn’t concentrate. He stammered, “You . . . don’t . . . know.”

“Tell me.”

“I want you—what should I say?”

“With every fiber of your being?”

“With every fiber of my being.”

She tightened her hug. “I need you.”

“I’m yours.”

She shifted. John found himself flipped, Penelope on top, her thighs like vice-grips immobilizing his hips. Her gaze mesmerized him. Lethargy seeped into his body. Her hair snapped the air, a thousand whips cracking before each lashed John, securing his ankles, his wrists, his body immobile.

She extended one sharp fingernail, punctured the hollow of his throat. He gasped, screamed at the next tugging sensation. Something jerked free from deep in his gut.

“The first fiber of your being,” she said, showing John a long, iridescent string. Blood droplets spattered his face as the end dangled and danced. She deftly wound it into a neat coil, laid it by his side.

“You complete me,” she whispered.

John wrenched his gaze from her stare. The sheet molded against her form, even though both her hands were busy looping long, glowing strands. What he thought was a gossamer covering he now saw as tattered. Candlelight flickered through threadbare fabric.

He saw no torso. No breasts, no stomach, no hips. No tissue, no organs. No heart. Air shimmered between the legs straddling his body and her hovering shoulders. He screamed, but heard nothing. She’d taken his vocal cords.

She touched a fiber end to where her non-existent crotch rested on John’s pubic bone. Her fingers flew, connecting long filaments from the top of her thighs to her shoulders, manipulating a vertical warp. A fingernail sliced the hair-seam from his sternum to his pubic bone. John’s screams echoed in his mind as Penelope tugged more fibers from his body, weaving the extracted strands into the horizontal weft.

Her body emerged, pale iridescent skin filling her blank spaces. John felt himself unravel. As sensation ceased, Penelope appeared radiant and whole.

Peggy McFarland
writes mostly speculative fiction. Her stories have appeared at
Shroud Magazine, Golden Visions Magazine, Silverthought, Trembles, Cannoli Pie
and the forthcoming
Dead Calm: Crime Stories by New England Writers
, available Winter 2011. When not writing, she manages a restaurant, and sometimes gets to see her family.

WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD

LORI MICHELLE

Alice looked around nervously as she clutched her keys in her hand. This neighborhood had always been a little seedy and lately there had been a lot of disappearances. She looked at her car; it was about a block away. There were a considerable number of parked cars for such a vacated area. She heard footsteps and glanced over her shoulder; nothing more than a few leaves scuttling in the wind. A chill went through her, causing her to pull her coat tightly around her, resolutely putting one step in front of the other.