Short Fiction

Without hope to cling to, all seems lost...

Sometimes we have a lot of explaining to do for the young. And sometimes the things you have to say in the explanation are hard to say, painful to remember...

The dream: to get to some place you want to be, and do what you love to do best. The plan: make as much money as you can to reach your dream. The reality?...

Alyssa Murphy is currently based in Cincinnati. Her work has most recently appeared in Red Fez, Dual Coast Magazine, Downstate Story, and Spadina Literary Review. Sometimes she tries to blog at thelittlestlioness.wordpress.com.

The darkness of the woods, the darkness of the night -- but nothing swallows the light like the darkness of evil souls...

Each wave is different, and when each one retreats into the sea, you can't get any of them back...

When the quality of the product goes isn't what you think it should be, do you just throw it out?

They draw you in with their innocent antics -- and just when you thought you were safe...

Bonnie E. Carlson is a retired professor of social work who lives in Scottsdale, AZ with her husband, dog and too many cats. She has published several short stories in magazines such as Down in the Dirt, Foliate Oak, Praxis and Fewer Than 500. She is completing a novel.

More predators than one are without remorse...

Well, he said she'd never have to work...maybe he was really honest?

Ever have a dream that you didn't want to leave...but then you awaken fully, and can't remember what the dream was?

Call it prescience, call it foreknowledge -- sometimes you just know it's a sure thing...

You only wish it was far-fetched...

"Change is good," they say, and "Time marches on." And there we are, listening to them...

Would a suit of armor help?

"It was humid like it was going out of style, the way it had always been when I was growing up..."

Even a vampire has to watch what she eats. A careless snack lands Vickie in one of Kenyon's less inviting playrooms, where she learns a lesson that possibly even Kenyon doesn't know.

Oh, Summer. Sometimes it's not so much the heat as the proximity...

Not that Cassandra liked her cousin much anyway, but Greg's van has been found -- without Greg. Bad news for at least one vampire.

An old world, a different world, a new world, the same world...

Are you ever ready for something like this?

Cassandra's New Year Resolution may have been to stir things up by thinning the human herd a little bit, but before she can get on to the real business, there is the small matter of Greg. A vampire can wait a long time to exact revenge.

No, really, there is this thing ... in Virginia City, Sparks, and Reno, Nevada, the first week in August...

Well, you have to have a sense of humor about it...

The problem with an unnatural life span is that after a while, there's nothing new under the sun -- or in the darkness. And there no better recipe for trouble than a jaded vampire.

You think it could never happen -- but ask yourself, did you foresee children forcibly separated from their parents? Oh, wait, that's happened in the Sixties Scoop, and at Auschwitz, long ago. How many ways can humans leave true humanity behind?

The holidays have a way of bringing out the most aggravating part of family togetherness. But a spur of the moment decision to stop by the Dark Whispers nightclub is just the thing Lilac needs to brave through Christmas dinner with her family and to admit that, in the end, her mother really does have impeccable taste. Part two of two.

We all wear masks. It's not always painful to wear one, but what happens when you forget what you look like without one?