It took three beers to smell the sweet grass burning in the pool room of the Pembina Motor Hotel, five to hear the murmur of Cree. One night in December a trucker from Trois-Rivières kept buying rounds. I got so shitfaced I finally saw the ghosts.
clod via Creative Commons
I looked up from my shot and a woman stood over the far pocket. She stared at me through the torn curtain of her wet hair; muddy water bubbled out of her mouth and trickled down her chin. At the table behind her, beneath the flickering Molson Canadian sign, an old man sat smoking Players Menthol. The pack lay in front of him, the foil quivering in the furnace breeze. There were no eyes in his gaping orbits. Sallow skin hung from his cheeks, stained as boarding house sheets.
“Come along with me, boy,” the trucker shouted. “You can see the world. We’ll stop in Thunder Bay. I know a whore there who can make her pussy talk: not whole sentences but words.”
Outside the traffic swept down the highway and through the dreaming suburbs. The dead woman began to sob.
“Are you man or maman? Come on!”
“I think I’ll stay,” I said.
William Squirrell is a Canadian writer living in western Pennsylvania. His work has appeared in Monkeybicycle, Blue Monday Review, AE: The Canadian Science Fiction Review and other venues. More information can be found at blindsquirrell.blogspot.com
The night decided it had grown tired of the moon and wandered over to the outer edge of the atmosphere dejectedly. The moon didn’t mind. It was used to the turbulent nature of the night. Characterised by random sparks of dying light. Beautiful in its transience.
Jonas Grimsgaard via Creative Commons
Sometimes the moon would try to cheer it up. Beaming right at it. So bright and loud it would be impossible not to hear. But other times, it would slip behind a darkened shroud. Hiding from dejection. So the night may not see its starstruck tears, flying through the dark with a burning, raging passion, before fading into black.
They always, however, seemed beautiful, to the funny people down below. They visited once or twice, but never stayed long. Those of them far enough away from their vitriolic light could bare witness to the moon and the night’s tragic waltz. Sometimes the moon would notice, and point this out to the night, and they would smile, if only for a moment in time. If only for just a moment.
Nicholas Antoniak is an 18 year old emerging Australian writer. He writes both creative fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry. In July he will commence a bachelor of arts majoring in philosophy and sociology and hopes one day to become an author/poet/philosopher.
“Sweetie, I have to.” My daughter’s fingernails left crescent moons tattooed into my skin.
“Please.”
“We’ve talked about this. Why does Mommy have to go?”
“To protect me.”
“And all the other little children.”
“Like Maggie from kindergarten?” Ice tinkled inside her sippy cup. “But not Ellen. She hogs the crayons.”
“Even Ellen, honey.”
She seemed to weigh whether my departure was worth protecting her nemesis. “Will you bring me back a teddy bear?”
“I don’t think they have teddy bears there, but I’ll find something.”
“Christmas present!”
“Let’s make it a surprise. We don’t need a holiday to give a gift sometimes.”
A horn beeped outside. Cinderella’s carriage waited. If only a prince was the prize, and not another tour overseas in a desert far, far away. I slid my feet into my boots, and swung my bag over my shoulder. How long until my hands—which had softened from washing dishes and playing teatime—hugged a rifle’s trigger with ease?
“Be nice to Daddy, okay?” I kissed her, breathing in the aroma of baby powder and freshly cut grass.
She stood with her thumb in her mouth. No smile, no hug.
The taxi drove halfway down the street before the ice inside me cracked, and the tears poured.
Jessica Walker is a writer who uses fiction to make sense of the world. She has been published in Flash Fiction Magazine, Eye Contact, and Corvus Review. Her best work happens with a cup of coffee in hand.
When I saw you I saw you with laser-beam sight as I left Empenadas by Stella still singing; I sang my girl’s name and I knew all my light was projected in open-faced stance; as one sinning, her car coat swung in; I pushed open her door; my right hand slipped smoothly along her warm waist, unspooling her laughter, my hand finding more, I could sense my wife passing, my tongue knew her taste and I thought about standing and stammering saying but she is so warm and so firm and so willing – a true son of Belleville, a Belleville worth slaying, whose gold in the palm runs unmelted and chilling – a moment a minute I feign an excuse, my tongue all a-tumble, unthreaded as Theseus now tired of treading a labyrinth life that reduced me to eyes seeing only the clew… in New York in your bed over more royal tread do I hear the train hear the train hear the train take you but trailing behind were those shining steel threads that were caught in the caught in the stairs’ endless climb; I will pin down your pines, then, Oh Minna: I’ll break you.
Anne Elizabeth Weisgerber has fiction in SmokeLong Quarterly, New South, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Shotgun Honey, and she is a Best Small Fictions 2016 Finalist. She reads for Pithead Chapel, reviews for Change Seven Magazine, and is writing her first novel. Follow her @AEWeisgerber, or visit anneweisgerber.com
The first week, my classmates brought their parents in to tell us about their jobs themselves. One girl’s mom is a cop who catches moms like mine wandering the streets in teetering heels and jewelry around their wrists and necks that clatters like teeth in cold. Ms. Shaeffer decorated with balloons and streamer paper that tasted like stale salt.
The second week was for the kids whose parents couldn’t come. Like me. We had to tell our peers about what are parents did to keep us fed. The red and blue and green streamers are still up, though they’re drooping like frowns, and the balloons are heavy looking. Ms. Shaeffer doesn’t understand why I don’t want to share and moves a bouquet of tired green and purple balloons next to me at the front of the room, smiling like my grandma before she forces a spoon of cod liver oil into my mouth every morning at breakfast.
In front of the class, I gag just like that, but as silently as I can. We have to talk for seven minutes. The only thing I can think to say is how my dad splits stones and digs ditches by the roads and how my mom loves any man who needs it.
m.nicole.r.wildhood is a Colorado native who has been living in Seattle—and missing the sun—since 2006. She has been a saxophone player and registered scuba diver for over half her life.  In addition to blogging at http://megan.thewildhoods.com, she writes poetry, fiction and short nonfiction, which have appeared in The Atlantic, xoJane, The Atticus Review, Five and elsewhere. She currently writes for Seattle’s street newspaper Real Change and is at work on a novel, two chapbooks (one in Spanish) and two full-length poetry volumes.
When the moon arched its highest, the house lay dark. An hour later clouds drifted across the bone-white crescent in the sky, plunging the yard into the deepest of shadows. Only then did it climbed free and prowl across the side yard.
In the back, just over the air conditioning unit, the creature sank claws into the outer wall. It scuttled like a lizard, the only sound the tiny crinkling squeaks of the aluminum siding rending beneath its nails. Small, agile digits scratched and worried at the window until with a shudder the unlocked glass slid up. The screen peeled away like a stubborn cobweb.
With a spider’s artful silence it slid through the window, avoiding toys on the floor as it settled into a crouch. The creature unfolded and crept to the bed.
It peeled back the covers and slinked inside.
Until the sky began to lighten in the east the creature lay curled around its teddy bear, surrounded by the toys it had once knew and the memories growing harder to hold each night.
Howard loves horror. When not writing spine-tingling tales, he sits as an Associate Editor for EMP Publishing. Aside from wringing words of wicked wrath, he writes fantasy under another name.
Chuck glared at the gaggle of girls waiting to order pumpkin spice lattes. They had been coming every day, wearing their Ugg boots and taking selfies with their cups, since August. In Texas.
They don’t care about the most important part of fall—Halloween. Chuck had tried making conversation with the girls as he swept floors or tidied up the milk and sugar counter. They would pretend to be interested in his descriptions of horror movies, then giggle together when his manager would scold him.
Michael Allen Smith via Creative Commons
But today was Halloween, which meant that tomorrow, those stupid girls would be ordering peppermint mochas and wearing Santa hats, posting their stupid faces to Instagram.
Today, he would give them a Halloween scare they’d never forget.
Chuck ducked into the back and slipped a hockey mask over his face, the tiny eye slits making it difficult to find the chainsaw he hid under a towel.
He busted through the door, started the chainsaw, then ran screaming into the girls waiting to order, loving the looks of terror on their faces.
It was when the spurting blood blinded him and he was hit by flying limbs that he realized he should have removed the chain.
Sheri White lives in Maryland with her family. She has had a love of horror since she was two years old and watched The Wizard of Oz for the first time. She is a mom to three girls, ages 27, 21, and 18, and has instilled a love of all things scary in them as well. Her one-year-old granddaughter will be gently introduced to the genre as she gets older. Her husband Chris is very understanding.
In addition to reading and writing horror, Sheri also proofreads, edits, and reviews for many horror sites both online and in print. She is also the editor of Morpheus Tales magazine.
She has had fiction published in many small press magazines and anthologies since 2001.
Runner Up
The Tryst
by Dimple Shah
Each day had been interminably long, that first year after his death.
No matter. She would seize the opportunity long awaited and prepare to see him again at the hungry ghost festival. A yearly tryst would make bearable the other endless days.
She prepared his favorite dishes and burnt joss sticks from dawn to dusk. Paper replicas of his most precious belongings—car, house, wads of money, went up in smoke. All this she did, to ensure that when the gates of hell opened that year to let out the spirits, him among them, all their desires would be sated.
There were things she ought not to do. Dress in red, sleep facing a mirror, open an umbrella indoors.
These too she did. Repeatedly.
Annie Roi via Creative Commons
Fourteen days she waited. Nothing materialized. No one came.
As the festival ended, she went through the useless motions of lighting floating lanterns and setting them adrift in the river. She did not turn back to see if they extinguished themselves, signaling the return of the spirits to the netherworld.
She woke up to smoke and flames. As the conflagration consumed everything around her, she finally understood.
It was not him who was meant to come and visit her.
Dimple Shah moved from India to Hong Kong 8 years ago and promptly decided to forego continuing with a lucrative career in banking for the unquantifiable joys of writing. An avid lover of words her whole life, she has only recently officially donned the mantle of spinner of yarns.
Runner Up
Halloween: An Unlove Story
by Alexandra Renwick
FunGi_ (Trading) via Creative Commons
“Remember what I did, remember what I was, back on Halloween?” – The Dead Kennedys
You were so punkrock I was shitting myself for a piece of you. Liberty spikes, kilt over thrashed jeans, and enough steel chain swinging from your studded belt to haul commercial timber up a goddamn cliff. You were the Sid Vicious I’d been looking for and all sixteen years and ten-inch fin of me wanted so bad to be your Nancy I was practically drooling. It was the kind of love story I could get behind: drunken brawls, misdirected nihilism, and all the social dysfunction my teenage heart could bear.
The party was glorious, plastic skeletons and cheap vodka, black candles in the graveyard and sex on the tombstones till sunrise. Then came school on Monday like usual and surprise! you’re the substitute teacher.
Who makes teachers so fine, so young? Whoever that is should be shot.
Gone were your shredded jeans. No trace of ‘spikes, no ghost-clank chains, no smeared black kohl. Shiny and scrubbed, you wore pleated khakis with penny loafers. I was young but decided then and there I deserved a love story that wasn’t fatal, and would occur with more regularity than one day each year.
Alexandra Renwick’s stories appear in spooky places like the Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery magazines, Mslexia Magazine‘s special Monsters issue, and The Exile Book of New Canadian Noir. Born in L.A. and raised in Austin, she now haunts a crumbling urban castle in Ottawa. More at alexcrenwick.com or @AlexCRenwick.
Honorable Mention
It’s My Party and I’ll Scry if I Want To
by Christina Dalcher
Judy’s been my best friend for fifteen years, so wishing she would drown in the apple-bobbing bucket might not seem nice, but you weren’t there.
“Johnny, hold my hair back.” “Oh, Johnny, the water’s so cold!” “Look, Johnny, I got my shirt all wet.”
David DeSandro via Creative Commons
Goddamned Judy.
I grab my chef’s knife and pluck one of the apples out of that cold, shirt-soaking water before locking myself in the bathroom.
For the record, I’m not into superstition. Or Victoriana. But a girl needs to know where her future’s headed, who her Mr. Darcy is, whether to keep fishing or cut the bait line. I slice the apple into nine even pieces, an auspicious—if logistically challenging—number, saving the last wedge for the friendly spirits.
On Halloween inside this glass…
Someone knocks when I’m five words into my mantra.
“I’m scrying here!”
…my future spouse’s face will pass.
Talk about lame.
More footsteps on the stairs. Judy’s voice this time.
Fuck it.
I open the door and let her inside. “What?”
“Someone said you were crying.” Judy wraps me in a bear hug, pops the ninth piece of apple into her mouth, says she loves me.
Before we leave the bathroom, I catch her reflection in the mirror.
Christina Dalcher is a linguist, novelist, and flash fiction addict from The Land of Styron. She is currently matriculating at the Read Every Word Stephen King Wrote MFA program, which she invented. Find her at ChristinaDalcher.com or @CVDalcher. Or hiding in a cupboard above the stairs. Or read her short work in Zetetic, Pidgeonholes, and Syntax & Salt, among other corners of the literary ether.
Honorable Mention
Four Swings
by Tasha Teets
Thunk
I had found the green ribbon by chance; stuffed between two hay bales in the back of the barn. I was searching for our spare whetstone, when I noticed the gap between the bales. It wasn’t mine; the last thing my husband gave me was his mother’s wedding ring.
Thunk
Petras Gagilas via Creative Commons
I placed the ribbon back between the hay and decided to put the whole thing out of my mind. The truth, that my husband was unfaithful, was too shameful to bear. Lost in thought, I found the whetstone resting atop an old saddle and headed back toward the wood pile. I never saw my Husband watching me from the top of the attic stairs.
Thunk
One final swipe and the ax’s blade glinted red, reflecting the light from the setting sun. A sudden blow striking my temple brought me to my knees, the ax falling from limp fingers. Dazed, I turned to my attacker and caught a glimpse of my Husband’s face before he kicked me to the ground. He raised the ax and swung it down upon my neck.
Crack
Beheading is a slow, intimate process, but my Husband was resolved to see it through. One secret gift found. Two flinches of hesitation. Three pleas for mercy. Four swings and I was dead.
Tasha Teets is the Customer Service Representative for Gerber Collision. She also assists with managerial duties to run day to day operations. Over the past 3 years, she has worked with various Maryland locations to improve productivity and sales. Tasha Teets has taken classes at Anne Arundel Community College and plans to transfer to Bowie State University. She resides in Bowie, Maryland with her family and one spoiled rotten dog.
Honorable Mention
The Dolls
by Grey Harlowe
Hayley Bouchard via Creative Commons
When they started to arrive on Cross Street doorsteps, it was without explanation. Mrs. Blanchard, Sunday School teacher, got one with a pin stuck through its head, then succumbed to crippling migraines. Mrs. Thomas, crossing guard, turned up one on a rose branch, right before she fell smack on her garden rake. It was an ordeal for their neighborhood of neat fences and good jobs.
Mrs. Eckhart kept Edgar and Mary indoors. They were too young to hear the gossip, plus a widow’s life was hard enough.  She hoped, they all did, the dolls would just stop. Then she discovered one inside their mailbox, a string around its ankle.
The next day, Mary tripped and almost fell off the porch. If Mrs. Eckhart hadn’t grabbed her arm, she could have broken her neck. Alarmed, she’d made the pair stay home that week. Things seemed to have settled down until she noticed her sewing scissors missing. And that Edgar had been conspicuously absent all morning.
She found him behind his bed, holding a doll with a blue apron at its waist.
“I had to, Mama. You helped Mary. After you’re both gone, they’ll be no one to get in my way.”
Grey Harlowe is a writer living in the Pacific Northwest. Her work has previously been featured by Every Writers Resource, SpeckLit, Cheapjack Pulp, HorrorAddicts.net, Microhorror.com, and The Last Line. She has work forthcoming in The First Line, and Quantum Fairy Tales.
Honorable Mention
Next Year
by Shenoa Carroll-Bradd
The last trick-or-treater has come and gone. You turn off the lights, eyeing the last candy bar in the bowl. Peanuts and chocolate. Your favorite. As your foot lands on the first stair, there comes a loud, slow knock at the door. You stop, and look regretfully at the treat in your hand. You can always buy more tomorrow, but for the costumed kids, Halloween is sacred. With a good-natured sigh, you answer the door.
The shape filling your dark porch is too large to be a child, too broad. “Trick-or-treat.”
Fingers trembling, you flick on the porchlight.
The slump-shouldered man at your door wears a mask that looks exactly like you, except for the deep bruising beneath the cut-out eyes. The parted lips are split and bleeding.
You stare, unable to speak.
The man looks down to where your numb fingers still grasp the candy bar. He takes it from you. “My favorite,” he rasps, raising a gnarled finger to tap the mask’s pale, bruised cheek. He touches your face in the corresponding spot.
The contact breaks the spell and jolts you backward. You slam the door on that gruesome latex caricature.
As you lock the door and sprint up the stairs, he calls to you.
“Next year, trick.”
Shenoa lives in southern California and writes whatever catches her fancy, from horror to fantasy and erotica. Check out her fan page at facebook.com/sbcbfiction, say hello on twitter @ShenoaSays, or keep up with her latest projects at sbcbfiction.net.
David Douglas, local spot light correspondent, pulls out his pad of paper and writes the headline “Local Woman Carves Hyper-realistic Pumpkins”.
“Mommy they look so real!” a little girl says as she drops a piece of candy into her orange bucket and skips down the porch.
David bends down to get a better look at the pumpkins.
 “With a face like that you’re no trick-or-treater,” says a woman stepping through the squeaky screen door.
“No ma’am, just a reporter. You know if I didn’t come here knowing they were pumpkins, I wouldn’t have believed it.”
“Thank you, it’s a long process. I’m always happy when people appreciate my work.”
“Did you use papier-mache to give them that texture? I’d love to know your secret.”
“Blood, sweat, and tears go into them,” she says casually looking for anyone passing by. “So what paper do you work with?” she asks.
“I’m freelance. I don’t like to have deadlines bogging me down.”
“Well then, how about I pour you a drink and show you how it’s done.”
The reporter didn’t know which alarmed him the most; the makeshift leather works, the surgically skinned human skulls, or the dizziness he felt after finishing his drink.
Will Gilmer is a writer and poet with a penchant (attention span) for short form and abstract styles. He lives in Michigan with his lovingly acquired family, obligatory cat, and odd curios.
The funny thing is, for him trust isn’t easy at all. He always has to be the one in charge, the one keeping the blindfold wrapped around my eyes, the one arranging my hair so that it falls in rough choking silk across my mouth and nose. If I ever offered to do it the other way around—to blindfold him, to hold him steady for the unforgiving gaze of the camera—he’d panic. He wouldn’t protest, but his eyes would go wide and desperate and his knuckles would clench white around the steady base of the tripod.
So I don’t offer. Instead I stare blindly, through layers of hair and crêpe, as he soothes me like I need it. His slow, patronizing voice is perhaps the very opposite of soothing. It sets off itches beneath my skin, shuddering waves of goose pimples, and my stomach clenches. Far more soothing is the anger, dark and hot, which pulses through me like a second heartbeat. This he cannot control, no matter how much he wants to.
Sophie Hammond is sixteen years old and a senior in high school. Her writing has been recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards and her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Moledro Magazine and the 2016 Navigating the Maze teen poetry anthology. She is an alumna of the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio and has read on a teen writers’ panel at the Bay Area Book Festival. You can find her on Twitter @SophieCHammond.
I sighed… hoping it would attract some sort of attention, but he was fixated on eating. I thought that dining al fresco tonight would spark interesting conversation, yet we ate our meal in silence.
I remembered how I used to be insatiable for our intoxicating exchanges. However, tonight I didn’t have much of an appetite.
He looked up and burped. “You ready?” he asked.
I nodded. I wondered if he realized I hadn’t even said one word during the entire meal.
During the walk home, I came to the conclusion that all relationships must have a life cycle. The beginning part was very exciting, but the end part was actually quite annoying.
Lucy Marti via Creative Commons
It was finally time to go to sleep. He lifted the lid for me.
“Good morning,” he said as he helped me climb in.
“You have some flesh in your teeth, dear,” I said, folding my hands across my chest.
He closed my lid with one hand as the other picked his teeth.
I listened to the sound of him opening and closing his own lid.
Before I drifted off to sleep, I thought, “I must talk to Wrenfeeld about moving my coffin to a different part of the abbey.”
Amanda Bergloff is a science fiction/fantasy writer who has had stories published by Darkhouse Books (Stories from the World of Tomorrow) and World Weaver Press (Frozen Fairy Tales.)Â She is also a surrealist artist who loves all things pop-culture, and the interior of her mind looks like 1950s sci fi pulp art.Â
Jessica Walker is a writer who uses fiction to make sense of the world. She has been published in 
m.nicole.r.wildhood is a Colorado native who has been living in Seattle—and missing the sun—since 2006. She has been a saxophone player and registered scuba diver for over half her life.  In addition to blogging at 
Sheri White lives in Maryland with her family. She has had a love of horror since she was two years old and watched The Wizard of Oz for the first time. She is a mom to three girls, ages 27, 21, and 18, and has instilled a love of all things scary in them as well. Her one-year-old granddaughter will be gently introduced to the genre as she gets older. Her husband Chris is very understanding.
Dimple Shah moved from India to Hong Kong 8 years ago and promptly decided to forego continuing with a lucrative career in banking for the unquantifiable joys of writing. An avid lover of words her whole life, she has only recently officially donned the mantle of spinner of yarns.
Alexandra Renwick’s stories appear in spooky places like the Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery magazines, Mslexia Magazine‘s special Monsters issue, and The Exile Book of New Canadian Noir. Born in L.A. and raised in Austin, she now haunts a crumbling urban castle in Ottawa. More at 
Christina Dalcher is a linguist, novelist, and flash fiction addict from The Land of Styron. She is currently matriculating at the Read Every Word Stephen King Wrote MFA program, which she invented. Find her at 
Amanda Bergloff is a science fiction/fantasy writer who has had stories published by Darkhouse Books (Stories from the World of Tomorrow) and World Weaver Press (Frozen Fairy Tales.)Â She is also a surrealist artist who loves all things pop-culture, and the interior of her mind looks like 1950s sci fi pulp art.Â