This story appeared in Lily Lit Review in April 2006. There’s a tradition of bankers, doctors, and insurance executives being secret poets (think T.S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, and Robert Lowell, respectively)…
Tag: short story
Among the Moabites
This is kind of a nasty little story. It floated around in the slush pile of several literary and horror publications who rejected it as just a bit too dark before it…
After Ice Cream
This little story was, I think, my first publication of the 21st century, appearing Eyeshot in 2004. Do you remember Eyeshot, webzines, and the Internet when it was weird and fun and…
Famine
I’m digging into my scattered archives and polishing up some old stories, some previously published and some not. I don’t actually recall if this one was ever published; I loaded it to…
“Blodsuger” by John Langan
All of the stories in Ellen Datlow’s anthology “Screams From the Dark” are great – she is far and away the best collector of horror, science fiction, and fantasy stories working today…
“Ravissante” by Robert Aickman
A story within a story – a man inherits the papers of a painter of fantastical scenes, and finds a memoir of the painter’s visit with the widow of another painter of…
“The Game of Rat and Dragon” by Cordwainer Smith
Humans and cats form a psychic bond to fight against monsters lurking in the deep space between stars. This is a subtle and intriguing story of interspecies communication that manages to give…
“The Stains” by Robert Aickman
A widower visiting his vicar brother in the country encounters a strange young woman on the moors and moves into an abandoned house with her, where they are pursued by the girl’s…
“Apate’s Children” by Brendan Vidito
A man’s guilty conscious and his wife’s refusal to forgive him create a monstrous creature and its evil children that torment his dreams.
“Mother’s Mark” by Brendan Vidito
A woman seeks to create a perfectly un-man-like man through black magic but is unable to exorcise its worst traits.