The Hunter’s Heart

December 3, 2025November 30, 2025 ~ Miriam H. Harrison ~ 3 Comments

They told tales of her heart. They said she was a wild woman, a hunter, living off of the flesh of her traps. In life, she was little more than a dark spectre moving in fleeting glimpses at the edge of village life. In death, her sightings were all the more thrilling, her tales all the more chilling.

No one quite agreed how she died. Some said it was her own traps that caught her, leaving her prey to the appetites of the wild. Some said it was a human beast that preyed upon her, a lover turned wild by her feral influence. Still others said it was her own dark dealings, dues collected on devilish debts. Yet every story told of her heart: of it beating, even now, out in the shadows of the trees.

He had heard the tales. He had scoffed, yet also wondered. And now, out among the trees and darkness, the stories came back to him. The stories, and the sound. The pulsing thump-thump that seemed to come from all around. From the shadows. From the very trees. Steady, but growing louder. He felt the fear of prey, felt the dreadful certainty of a hunter drawing near. He stood frozen, as though stillness would save him.

But when the pace quickened, he knew too well that the hunt was on.

∼ Miriam H. Harrison

Pick Me Island

November 19, 2025October 12, 2025 ~ Elaine Pascale ~ 2 Comments

When the plane had to make an emergency landing in the Bermuda triangle, twelve girls swam to the closest land mass. They had been on a school trip, heading to Puerto Rico, and engaging in “compulsory volunteer work” with Habitat for Humanity.

Eight of the girls had resigned themselves to learning basic construction. They had hoped to get tan and perhaps meet some cute local boys who would entertain them in the evenings. The other four wanted nothing to do with the group. They declared loudly and often that they were “not like other girls” and were proud of their uniqueness.

“I don’t think we will meet any boys here,” Amber said, scanning the small island.

“Unless they’re part of a rescue mission,” Beth added hopefully.

The group explored the shore, with the mission of finding drinkable water or food. They stumbled over large bones that did not look as if they belonged to fish.

“Is that predator or prey?” Callie asked one of the “not like other girls” members. This one routinely skipped the school uniform and instead wore band t-shirts featuring obscure musicians that no one else was cool enough to recognize.

The girl didn’t answer, which was her usual response.

After finding zero coconut trees, the group began to consider other means of sustenance. Darcy turned to the “not like other girls” who always wore a taxidermized squirrel pinned to her uniform sweater. “Can you catch us something to eat? Like a fish or bird or…egg or something?” she asked.

“I’m vegan,” squirrel girl replied.

Darcy raised an eyebrow. “Wearing that?” She pointed at the squirrel that was worse for the wear.

Squirrel girl shrugged. “I didn’t kill it. Besides, we came into the world alone, we exist alone, and we die alone. I suggest we split up.”

The eight “joiners” were losing patience with the “not like other girls” crew, but they did not want to split up either. They believed there was strength in numbers.

Emily suggested that they build a shelter. The eight joiners gathered fronds and sticks and attempted to craft a makeshift tent while three of the other four sat and stared at the horizon. The remaining “not like other girls” member practiced yoga poses which is what she had been doing in the aisles of the airplane before the sudden landing

Fern looked at the “not like other girls” member who was cradling the thermos she always carried. The girl proclaimed the thermos to be full of alcohol and would make a show of sipping from it during class.
“Let me have your thermos, for the fire,” Fern said.

“It’s only water,” the girl replied.

“Good, let’s reserve it,” Gina suggested. “It’s not much, but we can add to it if it rains. In fact, we should gather shells and other items to act as water containers…”

As predicted, eight girls searched for large shells and washed-up items to retain rainwater and four girls contributed nothing.

As the sun sank beneath the horizon and the island became bathed in darkness, sounds of a strange creature could be heard.

Eight girls hovered beneath their shelter, while the other four shrank into the foliage.

“That shelter is not gluten-free,” one of the four whispered, more to herself than to her companions. They listened as the grunts and snorts grew closer.

They smelled her before they saw her.

A girl-like creature lumbered toward them. She was the height of two of them put together. Her snout was long and twisted, like a caiman and her hair was alive with buzzing bees. Her skin was scaley and it glistened in the moonlight.

The eight girls in the shelter were in awe of the being. They stayed still and watched as she turned her attention to the four who were screaming from the foliage.

An impressive blood bath ensued, and as the creature pulled a large bone from her mouth, Hattie exclaimed, “She really isn’t like other girls.”

∼ Elaine Pascale

The Stray

November 5, 2025October 12, 2025 ~ Lee Andrew Forman ~ 3 Comments

The scent of rot permeated the air; I knew I was close. I could almost taste the stench. I took each step with care—silence was essential. My eyes searched the darkness between the trees, looked for any sign of its bodily form. I tried to keep my imaginings to nil, as I didn’t want to spoil my initial reaction when my eyes finally witnessed its flesh. I wanted to see the dream for what it was, not for what it could be.

Movement in the brush ahead halted my breath. I listened to the silence that followed with fierce intent. The musky air thickened. But I heard no steps approach.

My heart pounded with a concoction of fear and excitement. I’d been hunting this legend since I was a boy. Those tales told around a fire, or with a few drinks—they stuck with me. They unraveled my focus on all other things. This was what I lived for. To find out what it really was.

Local lore said it might have once been human, an orphan raised by the wilderness. Others said it might be nature herself, risen from the earth to take vengeance upon anyone it could. No matter its origin, the stories said it traveled on all fours, and its nature was vicious and feral. If you think it’s close, it’s already too late. That’s how the stories always ended.

A release of breath shattered the silent night. It was hot against the back of my neck. I slowly turned to see what I yearned so badly for. My eyes went wide and took in all the moonlight had to offer. She towered above me, bare-breasted and malformed beyond description—an amalgam of evolutionary paths borrowed from a dozen species. But aside from her eyes and nose, her face was close to human.

She stared down at me as she reared up on her hind legs and let out an animalistic vocalization of aggression. I put my palms up and backed away a step to show I wasn’t a threat. She returned to four legs on the ground, her face now level with mine.

She approached, seemingly curious, and sniffed about my shirt collar. Her smell was so awful I could barely breathe. But I was content in that moment. I finally found what I was looking for. A smile spread across my lips as she ran her tongue along my neck.

Then the pain of her teeth sunk in. I heard the rending of my flesh in her mouth as it was torn from my neck. Agony, shock, disbelief, all surged through me in crashing waves. Her front leg pinned me to the ground. My ribs audibly broke beneath the weight.

Gasping for breath and drowning in my own blood, I struggled to gaze upon her one last time before she feasted on my body.

∼ Lee Andrew Forman

The 6,666th Circle Rotation

October 29, 2025August 30, 2025 ~ TheDamned ~ 3 Comments

They still scream. Even after centuries, they never stop. The flesh rots, grows back, rots again. Their throats tear anew. It’s almost musical now, like a choir stripped of harmony. All bound to one shrill note of agony.

I should be tired of it. But, honestly? The pain stains me awake.

Today I was assigned three new arrivals. All of them preachers in life, they swore their souls were flameproof. I enjoyed peeling that arrogance like parchment off of wet bone. Their tongues, once full of sermon, hung in silence from my molten iron. I keep them in the ash pits where the smoke claws the lungs until coughing turns to bleeding.

One tried to beg for mercy. I reminded him of every unanswered prayer, every molested child that never saw justice. I showed him those memories while I shoved his face into the coals and watched his face melt, again and again. Mercy tastes like ash here.

What unnerves me, what I do not record lightly, is the sound I hear when my duties are done. When the halls are quiet and only the cinders whisper, I hear…laughter. Not the shrieks of the damned, but something deeper, older. A sinister chuckle that vibrates through the stone.

We are supposed to be the tormentors, not the tormented. Yet when the laughter rises, even I feel the itch under my skin, like claws testing the limits of my sanity. Perhaps it is Hell itself, amused at us all, kings, demons and sinners alike. I end the entry here…the laughter grows closer.

∼ Kathleen McCluskey

No Madonna

October 15, 2025August 27, 2025 ~ Marge Simon ~ 4 Comments

At sunset she serves herself with a candle on an oaken tray, a glass of wine, a plate of fruit. As she eats, she flips through an album. It contains her trials, loves and tribulations in photographs. There is the damask tablecloth from Surrey, embroidered towels, silver spoons; that certain green silk dress, a size too small she wore for King Henry ll’s ball … Melmac dishes from the sixties, the kind a gypsy could afford, they never broke when thrown … the dark-haired boy with smoky eyes, (she made him happy for a time, until her needs got in the way) … a shredded ticket to Belize with Sven, who never understood a word but never did that matter, at the time. One last sleigh ride in snowy Switzerland. Green yarn from a knitted hat. That sad faced man with the cowboy hat, and the older gentleman, the one she wed, both cattlemen and rich, back in the day. A columbine, pressed in wax paper. The lady smiles, having rekindled memories of her many passions. She blots her lips, wipes her fangs with a clean blue napkin.

∼ Marge Simon

Natural Inhumation

September 24, 2025September 20, 2025 ~ Lee Andrew Forman ~ 4 Comments

The rolling landscape extended beyond sight in all directions. The emptiness engulfed me in insignificance. This dead world I found myself on was as lonely as I. The howl of the constant wind was my only companion, and this planet was accompanied by a dying star that would one day stop sharing its warmth.

Tumultuous rumbles shook the ground. My compass pinned it south, so I headed north, away from whatever force caused the terrifying shakes. My footprints were swiftly erased by the constant gusts of sandy air. I mentally weighed how I might find my way back to the ship if I went too far, but disregarded those thoughts when I remembered there would be no reason to go back. It was irreparably damaged. I was stranded with no hope of rescue.

I knew this place was where my journey ended. Somewhere on this barren world my corpse would lay with no one to bury it. The distress call would eventually reach home, but by the time it did, it wouldn’t matter—the flesh will have rotted from my bones.

I almost wished for a crack in my visor, a tear in my suit, then at least the scythe would greet me with haste. But I had plenty of oxygen, I’d waste away before I suffocated.

I looked behind me every time the ground quaked. Despite my walking in the opposite direction, the vibration grew stronger. I could feel a violent power in the distance, something I didn’t want to be near. I supposed it didn’t matter, I’d meet my end here one way or another. But fear is the great motivator, it pushes one to survive even when there is no hope to be had. So I walked on.

Soon, daylight receded and the vast abyss of unreachable stars yawned above. I’d never felt so desolate and alone, never so meaningless and fleeting. Madness crept into my skull and began wrapping its fingers around my fading mind. Logic and training would soon fail me, I’d watch them fall with relief. They served me no more, not in this cursed place.

The next quake hit with ferocious tremors, its origin no longer beyond sight. The ground opened in front of me, sand poured in as the hole grew larger. Terror struck and slunk behind by back like the coward I was, fear wouldn’t even allow me to run.

As the sand began to move beneath my feet, I welcomed the swifter ending it would bring. This world would consume me. At least my miserable corpse would be buried after all.

∼ Lee Andrew Forman

The Call of Possibility

September 17, 2025September 13, 2025 ~ Miriam H. Harrison ~ 4 Comments

She had heard it at the strangest times. When she was young, she had heard it one day while digging beneath the playground slide. It was there, in the cool darkness of the sand, deeper than her plastic shovel could go. Almost a song, more of a whisper. She never could dig deep enough to find it. Then, when she was older, she heard it again in the empty hallways of her high school. An uncanny sound, eerie and beckoning. Somewhere just around another corner, always in a deeper shadow than she could reach. There were other times, too. Times when possibilities stretched beyond her knowing. And those possibilities would sing, whisper, beckon.

Yet she had almost forgotten its call. In the years since, amid the certainty and structure of adulthood, there were few softly singing possibilities. But now, again, she heard it. Despite the beeping of machines, the droning of equipment, it was there. Echoing along the hospital corridors, singing from the labyrinth of passages. It beckoned, and though she could not lift herself from her bed, she could feel herself drawn to it. She could hear it becoming clearer. Drawing nearer. Closing her eyes, she gave way to the call of possibility.

∼ Miriam H. Harrison

Reindeer Antlers

September 3, 2025October 12, 2025 ~ Elaine Pascale ~ 5 Comments

“Myrna, wait!”

The old woman heard a familiar voice behind her, yet she continued to weave her way through the crowded parking lot to her car.

“You forgot your lemon.” Cheryl sounded much closer than she had before. Myrna silently cursed her frail legs and the fact that she had to move slowly to avoid falls. Her doctors warned her that at her age falls could be deadly. She believed that at her age most everything was deadly.

Myrna knew she could no longer ignore Cheryl. “I have no need for that or for you,” she spat. Literally. Droplets of saliva shot from her dentures which sat awkwardly in her mouth. She had lost weight recently, despite having a healthy appetite and, at 85, weight loss did not herald the joy it had in her 30s.

Cheryl stepped in front of Myrna, crossing her arms and examining her in a way that Myrna hated. All younger women gave her the same expression now: a sour look mixed with sympathy. “Did I do something to offend you? I try to be helpful to everyone in the neighborhood.” Cheryl smiled around her perfect teeth and straightened her hair beside her wrinkle-free brow. “My grandparents taught me that ‘we rise by lifting others’ and I have always lived by that.”

Cheryl’s smugness infuriated Myrna. Cheryl’s smugness and all that she represented—women who felt they were better than Myrna because they had careers and educations and advantages that came from being young in a time period which allowed for such things. “You humiliated me!”

“Humiliated?” Cheryl looked confused. “When? How?”

Myrna felt her cheeks burn. She thought back to the day when she had been walking with a friend and they had passed Cheryl’s house. Cheryl had been in her yard, seemingly watering plants, even though her hose was not turned on. “You…you…you made reindeer antlers at me!”

The confusion remained on Cheryl’s face. “Reindeer antlers?”

“Yes.” Myrna placed one of her thumbs against her temple and raised her second and last fingers. “Like this.”

Cheryl tilted her head, looking at Myrna quizzically. “My hands were just like yours? At the temple like that?”

“Yes, exactly like that.”

“Show me again, where were they?”

“Here!” Myrna put her hand at the side of her head.

“You’re sure?”

“Absolutely!”

“They weren’t…here?” Cheryl’s hand moved quickly. Myrna felt a lightning bolt of pain shoot across her forehead. Then she felt nothing at all.

***

We rise by lifting others…we rise by lifting others…we lift others to you, oh ancient one…

Myrna could hear voices chanting. Were they talking to her? She tried to rub her forehead but found that her arms were bound. The voices continued to talk about lifting and she felt the air move around her. Her stomach dropped as it had when she had ridden the old wooden roller coaster at the beach.

Myrna opened her eyes to discover that she was tied, crucifix style, to upright wooden pallets. She had no idea where she was. All she knew was that she was in a cavernous concrete room, like a warehouse.

We rise by lifting others…accept the sacrifice at our hands, oh ancient one…

Myrna turned her head to see an old man beside her. She recognized him; he was often at the pharmacy when she was picking up her medication. They had exchanged complaints seasoned with humor about the plethora of pills they needed to wake up each morning. They had compared aches and pains and laughed at how old age had snuck up on them. No complaints or pleasantries would come from this man’s mouth again, as his throat had been slit and blood poured from it as if from a garden hose.

Garden hose…Myrna remembered that she had been talking to Cheryl in the parking lot. As her vision cleared, she could perceive the chanting people. They wore robes that covered their faces and bodies, only their hands were exposed. They caught the old man’s blood in chalices and then poured the blood into a golden tub in front of Cheryl. It was clear they had been addressing Cheryl; she was the ancient one.

Myrna watched as Cheryl rubbed the old man’s blood into her skin. With each application, her skin appeared younger and more vibrant.

“Better than Botox,” Cheryl said, smiling with her wrinkle-free lips.

Myrna gasped, which garnered Cheryl’s attention. “My old friend…but still younger than me,” Cheryl laughed.

That makes no sense, Myrna thought, as she tested the ropes that bound her arms. Even if she were still a young woman, she would not have been able to fight her way free from the pallet.

Cheryl pointed a manicured finger at Myrna. “These wrinkles appeared in the short time I spent talking to her.” Cheryl rolled her eyes. “Normally one sacrifice would be enough, but because she rambled on and on, I have to make it two.”

“Yes, exalted one,” the robe wearers chanted.

Rambled on? “But you, you did something to me!” Myrna tried to remember what happened in the parking lot. Instead her mind went back to the day she had encountered Cheryl on her walk. She realized that she walked by Cheryl’s house often. She realized she had walked by Cheryl’s house for years, maybe twenty years, yet the woman looked no older than when they had met. “You…you made those reindeer antlers,” Myrna spat, not knowing what else to say. Fear had overtaken her. She did not want to meet the same conclusion as the man from the pharmacy.

“’We rise by lifting others’,” the devotees chanted. They lifted Myrna higher, tilting the pallet so that she was bent over a large bucket.

“Antlers?” Cheryl laughed. “Those aren’t antlers, they’re horns. As in devil horns.”

One acolyte produced a large knife and Myrna screamed.

Cheryl tsked. “That’s the problem with this younger generation, they never know when to be quiet.” She rubbed blood into her décolletage. “And when to keep their copious complaints to themselves.” Her smile grew wide. “As I said, ‘I try to be helpful to everyone in the neighborhood.’ I was just returning your lemon. If you had simply taken it then…we wouldn’t be here.”

∼ Elaine Pascale

Hollow

August 27, 2025August 23, 2025 ~ Charles Gramlich ~ 8 Comments

In the time of the hallowed moon, in the season where the chill lingers, the world grows still, and waits. Alone at campfire, I sit, wanting to burn. The firelight draws a sorcerer’s protective sphere around me; I dare not turn my head to see what lies outside. The darkness squirms.

Behind me, the forest exhales. Ashes in the fire swirl into embers, ghost upward into a vampire sky that sucks them gray again. The embers are a surrogate for my soul, fragmented, blackened, lit only by a semblance of heat that leaches quickly away.

I look to the stars. Perhaps they will comfort. Their light cannot be consumed by any earthly hunger. They care not for the concerns of carbon. But their icicle twinkling reminds me too much of cruel laughter. Shrinking, I coil in upon myself.

Nearer laughter swells. It howls in the trees. It cackles in the shadows. The night puts on a cloak of thorns. I close my eyes but my ears are open and stung. A visitor is coming, stalking on tenebrous limbs. I feel the weight of his presence, the surge of air that he pushes before him.

My heart hammers a heavy rhythm; my mouth tastes of venom and brass. Blood drums like the hooves of horses beneath my skin. Sweat crawls like freshly birthed roaches. Stench overwhelms—mold and fungi, toads and spittle-bugs, spider webs painted with tincture of silver.

And now he whispers at my shoulder. Gooseflesh arises as he cajoles me to spurn the light, to gaze upon him, to own his words. He promises a balm for sad fear—if I join him. Perhaps I will accept. Why cling to fire-glow when black-shine offers honeyed freedom from all concerns? Of course, the visitor is lying. Nothing sweet gilts the freedom that he offers.

I’m not sure that matters.

∼ Charles Gramlich

Fire Down Under

July 30, 2025July 13, 2025 ~ Marge Simon ~ 3 Comments

He pulls the curtains open, can’t see the sky for the dry weeds. He’s been thinking of his wife.

Cancer took her before the drought. He’d grumbled about their cat, but his wife knew his heart.

When a starving dingo killed it, he’d cried like a little kid. He leaves the fridge open for the cool, but today it chugs to a final stop. He lays out three lines of what his buddy C.J. calls Indigo Moon, but it’s all the same to him.
When darkness falls, he checks the cabinet. There it is, the bottle of Bundy Rum with all the little marks on it he’s made on it, an inch or so at a time, to make it last. Screw this, he fills a glass to the brim, lights a cig, opens the window to let in some cooler air. Horizon’s lit up like Christmas, the smell of smoke, a rising wind.

∼ Marge Simon