Short Stories

His prey was close by, crouched and trembling among a dense thicket of blackberry bushes, its breath visible in the cold night air.

The first thing my wife says to them is: “No one is coming to help you. No one will ever come. Get that out of your head. The only person who can help you is yourself.”

What I’m about to write won’t sound like your usual introduction to a collection of short stories, especially not someone’s first collection. For one thing, I’ve decided to write it myself instead of asking someone like Clive Barker, Stephen King...

The first thing Ruby could sense was the man’s breath. The scent of a clove cigarette—with Caesar salad dressing. He stood behind her, breathing heavily, as though he had walked a long distance at an anxious pace.

A sticky-sweet aroma from a new air freshener made the car’s interior seem like a low-rent nail salon, both acrid and artificial—the way an eleven-year-old girl would smell if she were given fifteen dollars and free rein at a fragrance kiosk in the mall.

Police are appealing for witnesses after the disappearance of a child in Hulsted, Lancashire. Alice Stanley has been missing from her home since approximately 6.15pm on 10th October 2023.

I had been journeying for several days when I occasioned to stay at the Château Hotel, with only my cat Artemis for companionship. Artemis, a mewling, foul-tempered feline, sat in her leather carrier under my seat as we...

Mortuary Affairs Specialist Corporal Alan Donohue knew he was dead. He felt certain as he pulled the zipper up on number 152’s cold, white face, he’d never been so certain about anything in his life.

Northwood Asylum for the Criminally Insane was a stone-faced bastion in the rugged Appalachian coal country of northern Pennsylvania. I was a trusty there, an inmate who had garnered a modicum of independence by virtue of having a record of passable behavior, and...

Maggie’s father, John Fox, summed it up: “A houseful of women is like a sack of cats.”