Write Her Story

The Quietus
by Delphine Boswell

Who would have guessed that I would have lived long enough to see the end, but I did. It began just as predicted. The clouds turned steel grey, thunder grumbled, and the earth began to shake the little farming community.

On the dusty road before us, a woman, with a leashed jackal at her side, seemed to appear out of nowhere. The men stopped the engines to their tractors, aproned women ran out of their houses, and children let go of the strings to their kites. People rushed to hug one another out of fright, the unknown, the anticipation.

The pale-complexioned woman with raven-colored eyes, dressed in black including an ebony veil covering part of her face, spoke, “Today is the end of times. I have come to separate the wheat from the chaff. Look into your souls. Find your most glorious…

Write Her Story

Hell’s Daughter
by Veronica Magenta Nero

A girl becomes the image of her mother, a child fulfills the heritage carried in blood.

My mother used to tell me that each fizzle through the dark sky was another fallen angel coming to join us. It was not hell in those days but perhaps it is now.

I remember sitting beside her on the ragged cliffs, her knee long hair flicking around her like a dark cloak, her face hidden from me so I could never guess what she was thinking or feeling as she stared into the horizon. Lightning struck in the distance, thunder growled, she weathered a storm inside herself she would not speak of to me. I tried to pull closer to her, reaching to hold her thin claws, but her coldness was a veil I couldn’t part.

She was banished here, that much I know. And when she left she damned me to her own fate.

A Damned Take on Women in Horror Films
The Guy’s Point of View!

In honor of Women in Horror Month 2017, I asked six male horror writers for their top-five favorite horror films staring strong leading ladies and why they loved them so much. So, without further ado…

Day 20 – Lee A. Forman:

Drag Me to Hell
Leading Lady: Alison Lohman

Synopsis:

A loan officer who evicts an old woman from her home finds herself the recipient of a supernatural curse. Desperate, she turns to a seer to try and save her soul, while evil forces work to push her to a breaking point.

Lee’s opinion:

“I’ve always admired the integrity of the lead character in Drag Me to Hell (Alison Lohman). It’s shown in a clever way: through her job as a bank loan officer, and through her actions regarding the Gypsy curse placed upon her. Her career aspirations motivate…

My Watcher

My watcher gazes upon me, great despair and longing seeping through her gently fluttering lashes. She lives a life of torment, a life filled with a depth of pain and depravity that rivals my own. Closer she wishes to draw, trying – always trying, but the measure of her success is a cruel and harsh one that denies, not grants, the wants of those like us. Unable to do more, she watches.

She watches as I sink ever further into the squalor that is my self-imposed exile, my place of preciously preserved pains, the darkest recesses of my mind where even I cannot find respite from my own deranged ramblings. Gasping for a breath that will never come, hope a thing lost to a moment that can never be regained, I will forever dwell in this chasm of nowhere. Capable of infusing life into me once more, yet…

Write Her Story

Rough Night on the Job
by Bailey Hunter

Naziel poured herself a full glass of Malbec and lit a sobranie cigarette. Such pleasures never used to cross her mind, but since being assigned to Malcom Wasserman, it was all she thought about.

After two millennia as a guardian angel, she hadn’t lost a single charge to anything other than natural causes. There had been a few challenging ones, sure, and guarding a killer is always more difficult, but Malcom…

Normal assassins are quiet. Get in, get out. They’re organized so their GA only has to handle the unforeseen moments. Not Malcom. He was a tsunami of destruction and violence. His way was to create as much chaos as possible so that by the time the investigators even started to piece together what happened, Malcom would be long gone.

Tonight was another rough one. First Naziel had to…

Write Her Story

Winter Mistress
by Michelle Garza

I pierced the veil, reached out for you. I cast aside my burial garments at the calling of my name. You, a lonesome wanderer, found shelter beside my sepulcher in a storm. Your dreams were filled with visions of my body as it once was with my pale skin and dark hair. My lips are still full and red, but not with wanton. I’ve decorated them with the blood of your nag. I come to you dressed in moonlight with a kiss bearing eternal slumber, relieving warmth that only eternity can bring. Weather the gales in my arms and every tempest thereafter wrapped in the flesh of an immortal, with a heart like stone.

Fiction © Copyright Michelle Garza
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com Artist: Enrique Meseguer

More from Michelle Garza:

Mayan Blue

Xibalba, home of torture and sacrifice, is the kingdom of the lord of…

Write Her Story

My Better Half
by Rebecca R. Pierce

He sawed me in half. My job was to smile whenever he did it.

Reflecting back, I realized I let him do whatever he wanted to me. I was just some pretty thing he’d show off to the applause of all. He was the talented one. I was nothing more than the magician’s pretty assistant. I didn’t have a voice. I’d strut across the stage with long, tapered legs and wave. He made me appear or disappear at his whim. At the end of the show, I’d crawl in the box and he’d saw me in half.

I used to ask him which part of me he loved best, heads or tails. He’d smile enigmatically as we lay together in bed. He never did say. We were so cute before the magic left us.

I remembered the day we met…

A Damned Take on Women in Horror Films
The Guy’s Point of View!

In honor of Women in Horror Month 2017, I asked six male horror writers for their top-five favorite horror films staring strong leading ladies and why they loved them so much. So, without further ado…

Day 17 – Hunter Shea:

Spring
Leading Lady: Nadia Hilker

Synopsis:

A young man in a personal tailspin flees the US to Italy, where he sparks up a romance with a woman harboring a dark, primordial secret.

Hunter’s opinion:

“I’ll be honest, I absolutely fell in love with Louise (Nadia Hilker). Spring is at first an Italian romance, with an undercurrent of horror running through it. Even knowing that Louise is a near immortal shape-shifting monster, you, just like Evan, the troubled man who has been pulled into her orbit, realize that you will gladly give everything up just to be with her…

Write Her Story

How Do I Love Thee
by Mary Ann Peden-Coviello

The wine is delicious and warms my heart. I watch you while you sleep, as I sip my red, red wine. Maybe there’s no kick in Champagne, but there’s surely a glow in my Bordeaux.

You’re a lovely thing, long and lean. I do love red-haired men. Pale skin, flushing with the rush of blood.  I lean closer and listen to your breathing, deep and steady, your heartbeat strong. The pulse in your throat mesmerizes me with its rhythm.

I drain the last of the wine, set the glass on the bedside table, turn back to you. You’re stirring in your sleep, lips curving into a smile. I always like to leave a man happy. Well, at least for a while. I skim my fingers down your chest. Time to wake up.

Your eyelids flutter, and your green eyes…