Tag Archive for: dark moments

Growing Strong

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by Kai Delmas

Sammy found the body in the woods. We didn’t believe him at first, but he led the way and showed it to us with a proud smirk.

Mushrooms were growing from its eyes and ears. Some fat and brown, others poisonous, red with white dots. We should’ve stayed clear.

But Daryl dared me to go up to it. I wasn’t afraid. The body wouldn’t do nothin’. But when he dared me to touch it, I refused.

Then he double dog dared me.

I made sure to touch him back the next day when the first ‘shrooms sprouted from my fingertips.

 

Kai Delmas

Kai Delmas loves creating worlds and magic systems and is a slush reader for Apex Magazine. He is a winner of the monthly Apex Microfiction Contest, his fiction is forthcoming in Zooscape, and can be found in Martian, Etherea, Tree and Stone, Wyldblood, and several Shacklebound anthologies. If you like his work you can support him at:patreon.com/kaidelmas and find him on Twitter.

Twitter: @KaiDelmas

It Bytes Back

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by Mary Kuna

My last line deleted itself, and words I hadn’t typed appeared on the screen:

IT’S TOO LATE TO STOP WHAT’S COMING.

“This is the strangest virus I’ve ever seen,” I muttered.

NOT AS STRANGE AS THE ONE YOU’RE GOING TO GET.

How could they hear me? Was someone controlling my computer and webcam remotely?

My arm itched and burned. I scratched it, and my skin rippled. Something was burrowed underneath it. The undulations grew larger, more frantic. A stripe down my forearm split, then burst open.

Once I saw what slithered out, my computer was the least of my problems.

 

Mary Kuna

Mary Kuna is a writer and librarian in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada. Their work has been published in The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Scribes*MICRO*Fiction, and Queer Sci Fi’s flash fiction anthologies Clarity and Innovation. They live with their librarian spouse and a rambunctious cat named Pippa.

Website: marykuna.com

52 Hours

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by David Staiger

Dr Nores emerged from the isolation lab exhausted, relieved, elated.

She’d dismissed her assistant four hours ago, ostensibly to sleep. This strain had been the most virulent they’d ever encountered. It spread rapidly, killed surely. Combating it had taken every
bit of focus and ingenuity.

But the vaccine worked. She knew that with professional—and personal—confidence. Ethics be damned. Just as well that Rebecca had not been there to witness.

52 hours.

With the guidelines issued, the world would be fine. Masks, distancing, travel bans. Surely civilisation had cherished a weekend off.

But why wasn’t anyone answering the phone?

 

David Staiger

David is an emerging fiction author, always on the lookout for new opportunities to expand his writing. His previous work has been featured in Festival of Fear from Black Ink fiction, and Year Four from Black Hare Press.

Wake

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by Ajaye Nic

Another outbreak hits the city and it’s my turn to wake with bleeding gums and no teeth. I ring the hotline, get hauled off for tests, and spend three days in Z-ward waiting for my new teeth to grow. It’s excruciating. No wonder babies do all that crying.

My new teeth are pearly white and pointed. Like a shark’s. The doctors say this is most unusual and I can choose to get them corrected, but I’m already fond of them. The doctors say there will be no ongoing side effects, but they’re wrong. I can feel it in my gills.

 

Ajaye Nic

Ajaye Nic lives in Australia and loves to write very short fiction. Her cat refuses to sit on her keyboard as she types, so Ajaye wonders if it really is a cat.

Tick Tock

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by Pauline Yates

The new virus spreading worldwide should be named after a clock. The nosebleeds begin exactly six hours after infection. At seventy-two hours, vision loss occurs. That surprised everyone. Many people died after crashing their cars or falling down stairs. They were lucky, I suppose. Brain rupture occurs bang on ninety-eight hours; a messy, drawn-out death in every case.

Though blind and bleeding, it took me less time to fashion a noose. Three hours and twenty-two minutes, to be exact. I just need a ladder. Frank next door has one. He’s not using it. He finished his noose two hours ago.

 

Pauline Yates

Pauline Yates, author of horror and science fiction, writes dark stories and loves bright sunrises. 

Website: paulineyates.com

The Last Patient

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by Kristin Lennox

Dr Shepherd gently covered the body, the sheet blossoming red over the eyes and mouth. Exhausted, he spoke into a hand-held recorder.

“Patient 47 entered end-stage I-GRID after experiencing continued seizure activity throughout the night. Death was rapid following complete organ failure.”

“This concludes the Thymenozine trials, as Patient 47 was our last viable participant.” The doctor slumped over the table, defeated.

A single tear slid down his cheek and splashed on the shroud, leaving a crimson stain. He touched it, then pressed record again:

“Patient 48 is a white male, 54 years of age, presenting with mid-stage I-GRID symptoms…”

 

Kristin Lennox

Kristin is delighted to have had several drabbles published by Black Hare Press. She’s also a voice actor, and when she’s not talking to herself in her padded room (home studio), she tries to get the voices out of her head and onto the page.

Munch

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by Liam Hogan

It was easy to catch and we willingly caught it. A disease that consumed fat, leaving us pounds, stones, lighter. Spread by saliva, spread by touch; tables of finger food which the infected browsed before everyone else tucked in. Epidemiologists threw up their hands in horror at these super-spread parties, but weren’t they looking slimmer too? Hypocrites, warning of the unknown, of the need to lay down reserves for times of scarcity, times of famine.

They were right about that. Once it ate through our fat, where was its next meal coming from?

Spread by bites, spread by ravenous munchers…

 

Liam Hogan

Liam Hogan is an award-winning, London based, short story writer.

Website: happyendingnotguaranteed.blogspot.co.uk

Breed

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by Louisa King

Lena couldn’t bring herself to swallow any more of them, despite their sugary coating. Even scorched black and long dead, the thought of them scuttling down her throat persisted. But four years of post-flood crop blight and stem rot disease had left little choice in the supermarkets.

She stroked her nascent bump, picturing his tiny growing heart and limbs. It’s protein, she reminded herself. That night, relieved to feel the first gentle fluttering kicks, she finally fell asleep. She didn’t notice those movements inside becoming stronger, or the papery crackling noise of wings unfurling and the frantic clicking of legs.

 

Louisa King

Louisa King lives in Scotland and loves to write tiny stories. Her work has appeared in Flash Fiction Magazine, Retreat West, Reflex Fiction, and Friday Flash Fiction.

Devoured

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by Katherine Sankey

The winter was the harshest the village had seen. Drifts choked the houses. Blizzards blew. Each home was isolated and fearful of the howling at night. Desperate to feed his wife and child, Bram dared to go out and hunt. He returned late that night with a large wolf, which he had shot near the forge.

Hungrily, they roasted it, devoured it.

Only when dawn touched the corpse did the meat reveal its true form. The fur dissolved and burnt bones shrank, as the blood coated body parts shifted back into the hands, feet, and head of Jed the blacksmith.

 

Katherine Sankey

Katherine Sankey is a Comparative Literature student and freelance writer from the East Midlands. Her work has appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Flash Point Science Fiction, Every Day Fiction and in a previous Black Hare Press anthology.

Wildwood Eternal

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by Fred W. Barlowe

Dennis stood on the hilltop and surveyed the endless forest. Stars flickered through the darkening twilight. To his left he heard panting and turned to find a man stumbling towards him.

“Do you know…how to get out of…this hell?”

“Hell? This beautiful land?”

“Every night there’s a full moon…” The man quivered. “Wolves attack me… and tear me apart. The next morning, I awake… restored like Prometheus, only to again be thrashed and devoured at night…”

“It may be your hell…” Dennis turned towards the man, eyes glowing yellow, his smile revealing fangs “…but this is my heaven.”

 

Fred W. Barlowe

Fred W. Barlowe’s short stories have appeared in Werewolf Magazine Reborn. He is also a playwright whose work has been seen in Divine Madness, a skit comedy show regularly featured at Necronomicon, Tampa Florida’s Science Fiction convention, now in its fourth decade.