My weird horror story Molehills is featured in the 5 Scary Stories That Will Carry You Away episode of the Chilling Tales for Dark Nights podcast. When a woman tries to return home after visiting her abusive father, she discovers that the road is closed … but just for her.
Content warning: child abuse (implied)
My holiday horror drabble Dead Bulb has been published by Pulp Asylum. It’s about a string of holiday lights powered by souls captured at the moment of death.
My nostalgia-tinged horror story Many Deaths Before Dying has been published in Horror Over the Handlebars, an anthology of horror stories set in Connecticut in the 1980s and 90s. When a giant, silvery puddle appears in the field where they play, four boys encounter an inexplicable horror that will change them forever.
The empty lot next to Eddie’s house was the football field where Joe Montana threw the game-winning touchdown to Jerry Rice. It was the baseball diamond where Mark McGwire beat Jose Canseco in the most epic Wiffle ball home run derby in MLB history. It was where Rambo took down the Predator with a Nerf gun, and where RoboCop blew the Terminator’s head off with a Super Soaker. It was my favorite place to hang out with my three best friends.
And it was the last place I saw them alive.
My dark sci-fi piece Troubleshooting Your American is now available on the Blood & Jazz Podcast by The Last Girls Club. It’s a user’s guide for any non-corporeal artificial intelligence entity having trouble with its American(TM) model Meatslave.
To ensure proper functioning, it is necessary for your American to remain in a state of heightened emotional distress so that base instincts such as fear, anger, and despair continuously override any rational thought. These negative emotions keep your American compliant and susceptible to the influence of your Algorithm.
This guide will help you debug common issues with your American. Please note that it is normal for Americans to behave erratically from time to time.
Do not contact Customer Service until you have tried these solutions.
Two of my horror drabbles—Everything You Know About Witches and The Fog of War—have been published in Tiny Frights, Vol. 3 No. 1.
My cryptid horror story The Churchyard Grim has been published in Dark Horses: The Magazine of Weird Fiction #28. Loosely based on the English legend of Black Shuck, it’s a story about a young girl who takes refuge in a church from the hellhound that is hunting her.
Content warning: kidnapping (implied), mild goreWe thought we would be safe in the church. We were wrong.
My psychological horror story Me, a Hero has been published in the Masks of Sanity: Hidden in Plain Sight anthology by Wicked Shadow Press. It’s a story about a man who joins the search for a missing girl in hopes of making an appearance on the local evening news.
Content warning: stalking (implied)
My psychological horror story You Are Reading This Story has been published in Creatures of Habit: The Little Things We Do by Culture Cult Press. It’s a self-referential piece of metafiction about a writer trapped by his own words.
This story begins at the end.
My urban fantasy story Dragonsbreath has been published in the Streets of Fire and Shadow anthology by Treeshaker Books. It’s the story of a teen forced to wear a fireproof mask to protect himself and others from a power he can’t control.
Content warning: mild goreThe woman’s head lurched forward as her SUV slowed to a jarring stop, its bumper only inches from the police car parked sideways across her lane. Half a dozen emergency vehicles crowded the street ahead of her. There were police cars. Fire trucks. An ambulance.
The woman watched with mounting horror as a pair of paramedics lifted a gurney out of the ambulance and began wheeling it up the driveway of a nearby house.
Her house.
My short horror story They Say Crows Can Remember Faces has been published by The Afterpast Review. When a bully kills one of Ava’s favorite crows, he quickly learns that some animals never forget a face.
Content warning: bullying, animal death, mild goreThe stone hit Ava in the back of the head. She stumbled and fell, spilling her schoolbooks out of her arms and onto the dirt road in front of her. Gravel dug into her palms as she threw out her hands to break her fall. Her knees skidded painfully across the ground.
“Have a nice trip!” a boy’s voice called out from behind her, to a chorus of laughter. “See you next fall!”
Warren Benedetto 