Showing results for "first" in Anthologies & Short Stories

A depressed young orphan discovers a room that changes every time someone enters. A repair store owner who seems to be able to fix everything. A dangerous imaginary friend who might not be entirely imaginary.

They say lightning never strikes twice, but in No Sleep sensation Michael Squid’s electrifying new collection, terror strikes again and again. A technician discovers a box of unlabeled VHS tapes containing impossible horrors and ancient secrets. A routine night shift becomes a fight for survival when a long-lost cosmonaut appears in the mini-mart. A grieving widow creates a disturbing effigy of her lost husband.

At first blush, Widdershins is a conventional haunted house story involving an unsuccessful writer who moves into an empty house in hope that isolation will help his failing creativity. His sensitivity and imagination are enhanced by his seclusion, but his art, his only friend, and his sanity are all destroyed in the process. It can be interpreted as narrating the gradual possession of the protagonist by a mysterious, possessive feminine spirit, or as a realistic description of a psychotic outbreak culminating in catatonia and murder, told from the psychotic subject’s view.

Twenty-four pieces of short fiction, inspired by pieces of digital photography taken with varying phone cameras. The subject matter covers everything from the undead and what they want from you to the latest in neural viruses and cleansing.

A sentient cloud whose arrogance leads to its own demise. A rich uncle who discovers a possible solution to climate change, but is not who he appears to be. A phantom killer who uses other people (and their cars) to commit murder. Balloons that predict the future. Paranormal investigators at the beach. Wolfmen who hunt bears for sport. A Cinderella story at a retirement home. Celebrities forced to make movies for eternity in a simulated world. A girlfriend who believes we reside in the mind of God.

Little did he know his lovely misty city Saturday morning, was about to become a nightmare.... The young man dashed to the hall leading out to 42nd street, then cut a sharp right and jogged down and up the ramp past the Oyster Bar...the mist swirled after him, going over the bridge overpass, misting walkers in its path, those who had umbrellas opened them...it followed him as he pushed through the heaver doors to gain access to the marble stairs up to the offices on floors above. The thing swirled up the stairs after him like an amorphous polar bear...

This collection of macabre tales of the black arts treads the dangerous landscape between this world and that populated by angels and demons, gods and devils, ghosts and spirits, and the legendary creatures of our darkest imaginings. First Born is the beginning of the journey into the Liber Monstrorum, the chronicles of those occult detectives who are the last line of defense against those preternatural forces that threaten to destroy a world that refuses to believe that such things exist...

The Foster family is stuck in their home with a strange young girl...but when a mad man shows up looking for her she's not where they left her. He just wants his victim and they just want him gone.