My horror drabble In Sickness has been published in Trembling With Fear by The Horror Tree. For better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health…
I like to tell myself I never knew what my husband was doing in the basement.
My short story It’s What’s Inside That Counts has been accepted by Fantasy Magazine. It’s about a young girl who dissects a pig in science class, only to discover something unexpected inside.
I didn’t know how I’d react to the dissection. I couldn’t imagine poking around in a dead pig’s guts. I wondered how they would feel. Would they be squishy and warm, like spaghetti? Or cold and jiggly, like Jello? My stomach turned at the thought.
I was definitely gonna barf.
My cyberpunk story Set For Life has been published in the Zero Dark Thirty anthology, which collects the 30 darkest stories from the first two years of Dark Matter Magazine (2021-2022). The story is about a man’s first day on the job picking up bodies for Syntech and the disturbing secret about where they come from. It’s also the prequel to my novella Override (which appeared in Dark Matter Magazine Issues 007/008/009).
Lifting bodies wasn’t like lifting boxes. Boxes were symmetrical. Structured. You could lift properly: squat down, straighten your spine, lift with your legs. Bodies were limp. Awkward. Their limbs flopped in odd directions. He still hadn’t figured out the best way to lift one without damaging it. Or himself. Or both.
My horror story Things Are Looking Up has been published by Apocalypse Confidential in their ...LOVE issue. After a man and his wife are in a fatal car accident, the man decides he will do anything to see his wife one more time. Even if he has to dig.
I’ve been in a dark place since the accident.
My short humor piece An Open Letter to Those Who Declined My Facebook Event Invite has been accepted by The Weekly Humorist. The title should be self-explanatory, but just in case it’s not: I’m very disappointed in you.
It is with great disappointment that I write to you today, the day after our Ninth Annual Footie Pajama Game Of Thrones Bar Crawl.
My sci-fi drabble What It Feels Like to Die is now free to read in Martian: The Magazine of Science Fiction Drabbles. When you wake up in a Rejuvenator, you don’t remember anything about how you died … even if someone killed you.
“Mama?” Madelyn asked. “What does it feel like to die?”
“It’s like falling asleep. Except when you fall asleep, you wake up in the same place. When you die, you wake up in a Rejuvenator.”
My obscure cryptid horror story No Bones, Just Skin leads off the new Night Terrors Vol. 25 anthology by Scare Street. It’s about a brother and sister who have a terrifying encounter with an abúhukü, a rainforest demon known for dissolving the bones of its prey and leaving the empty skin behind.
Content warning: mild goreManuel’s older sister, Liliana, stood next to him, looking up at the body hanging high in the tree overhead. The carcass was little more than a shriveled husk of a man, a wrinkled bag of skin draped boneless and formless across the jungle’s dense lattice of vines and branches. It was almost as if the man had been turned into a garment, as if someone had slit him down the back, extracted his skeleton, then tossed him carelessly into the tree like an old bathrobe.
My techno-horror story Blame has been published in Brave New Weird: The Best New Weird Horror, Vol 1 (in print and ebook) by Tenebrous Press.
Blame is a “found footage” story consisting of emails, Slack conversations, Reddit threads, phone transcripts, and more unusual artifacts like git commits, JIRA tickets, door entry logs … even a Walmart receipt.
Like many found footage tales, the story is ultimately pieced together based on incomplete information. Multiple reads of the story should reveal new hidden details that may change your interpretation of the ending.
Content warning: misogyny, sexual assault (mentioned), suicide (mentioned)
Blame also made the preliminary ballot for the Stoker Awards, for Superior Achievement in Short Fiction. Voting closes next week, so if you’re an HWA member, please check it out and (hopefully) give it your vote!
Four of my horror drabbles have been published in Love Me, Love Me Not: Dark Tales of Love, Lust, and Lunacy by Black Hare Press.
Content warnings: Stalking, terminal illness, suicide
My microfiction horror story Before has been published in Dose of Dread by Dread Stone Press. It’s about a baby in the womb who suddenly realizes she’s not alone.
Content warning: PregnancyI don’t know where she came from, or when she appeared. I just know that I’m not alone in here anymore. There is another now. A Not-Mother. A Not-Me. A Third.
Warren Benedetto 