Horrors! 365 Scary Stories – A Full Year of Horror
02/25/2017 – 03/03/2017
The horror short-short isn’t easy to master, but more than 100 of the genre’s critically acclaimed authors & hottest up-&-comers have taken a stab at it in Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, an anthology that contains a short tale for every day of the year. Steve Rasnic Tem, Wm F. Nolan, Tom Piccirilli, Yvonne Navarro, Peter Atkins, Brian Hodge, Martin Mundt & 166 others give you short, sharp shocks.
Each day I’ll be reading one story per day with a weekly wrap-up on Fridays. If you missed the first post you can find it here.
So let’s turn down the lights, curl up with your favorite blanky and let’s get started!
Collector’s Fever – Gary Jonas
Synopsis:
A collector describes his collection of ‘friends’. When his house is full he’ll move again. And start over.
Review:
A nice, short little serial killer story.
Contract Ice – Marion Cepican
Synopsis:
Sam loves skating on the ice when it’s pure and clean. She loves the ice. And the ice loves her as well.
Review:
A very nicely written story and very creepy. I want to know if it’s the ice itself that loves her or something within the ice.
A Convenient Arrangement – Michael Marshall Smith
Synopsis:
When the lights go out at two separate parties a group of friends realizes that one of their number is a murderer. Rather than try to figure out which friend it is or lose a good friend because of their homicidal proclivities they make a most convenient party arrangement.
Review:
I loved the story and it’s practicality of how to solve their little problem. I also love that the ending doesn’t tell which friend it is.
The Cough – Steve Resnic Tem
Synopsis:
A man who is coughing out nasty chunks cannot for the life of him remember where his wife went.
Review:
Having a pretty nasty cold at the moment it rather grossed me out.
Cower Before Bobo – Tom Piccirilli
Synopsis:
A killing in a circus just might usher in a new age for the Goddess Kali.
Review:
I might be thick but I just didn’t get it at all. So, yeah, I wasn’t too crazy about it.
Crashing – Lawrence Greenberg
Synopsis:
An incident in a subway.
Review:
I honestly can’t give you more of a synopsis because I had no clue what it was about. It just seemed like a random collection of images.
Crisis Line – Del Stone Jr.
Synopsis:
A Crisis Line call to Hell.
Review:
A really good story. For some reason I’ve always liked reverse Crisis calls. Ted Bundy worked a Suicide Hotline for a while as a volunteer. It always made me wonder what he said to callers when there wasn’t anybody else in the room.
Favorite of the Week:
My favorite for his week is A Convenient Arrangement by Michael Marshall Smith. Followed very closely by Crisis Line by Del Stone Jr. I loved the playfulness of A Convenient Arrangement and the pure evil of Crisis Line.
Here we are, at the end of another month already. Since the repeat authors are getting a little numerous to link I’m going to start doing a monthly tally of the repeats with the stories they have.
Linda J. Dunn:
A Huntin’ We Will Go, Best Friends, The Collector
Steve Rasnic Tem:
After Work, The Cough
Tim Waggoner:
Along for the Ride, Catharsis
Del Stone Jr. :
And Baby Makes 13, Crisis Line
Don Webb:
And the Woman Said, The Bone Garden
Brian McNaughton:
Another Night, Business Image, Changes
David Niall Wilson:
Are You the One?, Be Careful What You Say
Don D’Ammassa:
Bad Feelings, Candid Camera, The Chindi
Lisa Lepovetsky:
The Big One, Carnival Wishing
Adam Niswander:
Billy, The Bookseller, Change of Life
Phyllis Eisenstein:
Boxes, The Cat
A geologist, his climatologist wife, two graduate students, a local newspaper reporter, an oil company representative, and a field biologist travel to one of dozens of huge holes that have mysteriously appeared in the tundra of the North Slope of Alaska. Their mission is to research these strange craters that threaten financial and environmental catastrophe should they open up under the Trans-Alaska Pipeline or any of the many oil wells and smaller pipe lines that feed it. Unfortunately, a far worse danger lurks below, one that threatens to destroy all of humanity when it finally emerges. Some will live and some will die on Hell Day and the day after as the team flees south towards Fairbanks.
Awaken Synopsis:
The Thing That Knocks Synopsis: When the human mind begins to experience a certain level of media, fiction, or other forms of prevarication, they slowly lose their ability to reason and sort through the information correctly. Such events will take place throughout a person’s life where they won’t be able to tell if something is real or not; this is thanks to our desire to consume and experience things that remove us from our everyday lives. The unworldly is an addiction, and like every addict, people build up a tolerance to said addiction, and soon, they might not be able to separate a fantasy from reality. In a rather twisted way, this story takes a look into exactly what this could mean when a young boy named Francis finds himself in his room one night after years of reading high thrilling and chilling novels, and isn’t sure what to make of a certain experience that follows only minutes after hearing three knocks on his bedroom door. – Goodreads
Experiment 26: Science Meets Madness – Meet DR Albert Strom, he enjoys long walks on the beach, deep and meaningful discussion’s, and he also likes the idea of taking an average human being and turning them into a vicious killing machine. After twenty five attempts at creating a murder machine, the good doctor decides to give it one last try and with a set of fresh subjects, he is determined to make his dream a reality. There is no such thing as madness when in pursuit of a scientific goal now, is there?-Goodreads Synopsis
Straitjacket: Detective Todd Richards is assigned to investigate the mysterious death of Father O’Malley, a priest who committed suicide in an abandoned convent. A routine investigation takes a turn for the strange, however, as Richards finds out that the convent is rumored to be “demon possessed” and a mysterious nun appears whenever the detective comes into the decrepit old building. Richards is a skeptic of the supernatural and denies all of the strange goings on in the convent but he soon realizes that the devil is not mocked in his horror thriller.Goodreads Synopsis
