Hey there Mister, are you alright?

I heard you screamin’ in your sleep last night.

‘Round three past thirty after three.

What was it you said in last night’s keep?

“I’m going to the slaughter along with the sheep,

a wolf wrapped in wool has just as much meat.”

Virginia laid out the last pieces of her fine china and stepped back to critique the table setting. The wildflower centerpiece of yellow bells, Black-eyed Susans, yellow gold Lantanas, baby’s breath and day lilies caught the dappled sunlight streaming through a large pine oak next door and seemed to glow. Virginia reused the baby’s breath and day lilies from an arrangement she made in the spring. They were desiccated but still held their color. The rest were fresh, collected only moments ago. Her placemats were squared: forks on the left, knives on the right, dessert fork and spoon at the top, butter knife across the side plate, teacup handles to the right. Everything was perfect, just like the tea parties she attended when Eldon was stationed in London during the war. Her grandmother’s tablecloth hid the wrought iron patio table well enough, and the thin gold lacing stitched throughout accented the centerpiece wonderfully. Eat your heart out Martha! (more…)

Greetings Ghoul Destroyers,

Reviews are nearing completion, but be ready for an avalanche of stories over the next 48 hours. With Halloween fast approaching, it seems only right to inundate you with undead-related fiction. And to start things off, here is a treat from the video files.

-ed.

The sunlight woke him.  The tiny cabin was already warming up and his body was sticky with sweat from the night’s sleep.  It couldn’t be more than late April, he thought, perhaps early may.  “I’ll have to start sleeping up top soon” he muttered to himself as he glanced out the small window and took in the wide blue vista.  “No choice about it, too hot to sleep down here.  Can’t sleep, can’t think.  Can’t think, then I start making mistakes… It’s no good”.  He knew he wouldn’t get much sleep on the deck either though.  At least in the cabin he felt protected, not naked under the stars, his body exposed and vulnerable.  Just irrational fear he told himself; ‘Nightmares or not, it would soon be high summer and there would be no choice.’ (more…)

To the writers and readers of TOWWZ,

By now you may be aware of the ‘Oxford Incident’. It has been reported on the BBC, Daily Mail, and Guardian websites as having been a group of disaffected students “going postal” in the Summertown area of Oxford after a night of mephedrone and cheap supermarket alcohol. (more…)

He walked through the door to Joe’s Beverly Bar and Grill just as the delicate morning mist began to dissipate and the waking sun sent curling rays of dust to sift and shift in the gloom of the empty bar. Without breaking his stride Daniel Murphy shrugged off his gray overcoat and hat, set them on the coat rack beside the door, shifted his pistol to his hip, and moved towards the long oak counter.

“Morning, Joe. How’s business?” (more…)

“This is the last one.”

Matt Baker glanced up from taking the safety off his gun to the one-level ranch house his partner was pointing at. A large picture window was shattered in the front–glass jutted up from the sill like broken teeth. Blood stained the driveway in streaks and splatters that trailed onto the immaculate lawn. A single red hand print was smeared across the aluminum mailbox, which now hung at a sad, abused slant. (more…)

Sunrise.

Lou Raines, Gunnery Sergeant, USMC (retired),  scanned the crimson landscape below him through his binoculars from his vantage point on a high peak overlooking the eastern Ohio countryside.

Thick, white mist still clung in the gentle valleys. It enshrouded the small towns in a thick blanket, with only the tops of similar peaks to the one he was currently standing on visible through the otherwise clear morning air. (more…)

Miriam’s Journal

They flock- no, they don’t flock, that would signify some sort of protective group instinct – they gather, they congregate, they brood. They stand crushed by their rearmost fellows against the reinforced ornamental gates and stare silently into the grounds of the Light Station. Whether their eyesight allows them to see as far as the Lighthouse or not, I just don’t know, but their very existence gives me the heebie jeebies. Their distant faces are absorbed in contemplating me. It’s like I’m their magnetic north. I’m a nervous wreck. They never leave. They never wander off. They just stand there quietly, almost politely; patiently. (more…)

Growing up, I remember thinking the worst thing in the world would be to be alone.  To have no human contact.  Now it seems that the only way I can survive is by cutting out all the human weaknesses I once feared; pain, sadness, fear, and love.

Apocalypse Z is what they called it, before they got the plugs pulled.  They: the government, the media, the people deemed “intelligent” enough to inform the rest of the population about what the hell was actually going on. But once the panic really hit, the first thing to go was the media. So the media died, and people freaked out.  The fact that I’m still alive today has less to do with my hunting skills than it does with my location.  Normally a downtown urban area would be a feeding ground for the Zs, but the only access to the apartment is through a gated elevator with a heavy locking fence.  I keep it shut and locked at all times. When we bought this place we were gonna live like real artists.  A loft, no walls, no blinds, no rules.  Let the world around us be our muse.  Us: Max and me. (more…)

“Over sixty years after the Romero Revolution, and some of you still want to split hairs about the definition of life?  We’re way past that, ladies and gentlemen.”  Roscoe was thankful for the microphone on the podium in front of him.  He was plenty pissed off, full of that righteous anger that had gotten him elected in the first place, but he knew that, at his age, if he started yelling, his vocal cords would just shred, tear loose, and slide down his throat.

He paused before speaking again, his eyes sweeping the room.  Unbidden, an image of the shop down in his basement came to mind.  He quickly cast it away, steeling himself against the loss of focus.  The speech was going very well.  He could tell; he could feel it.  He had them.  “I think some of you might even want to go outside and wave those signs and shamble back and forth like idiots.  I’ll tell you what: you’ll never see the great senator James P. Roscoe holding one of those ‘Humans Are People Too’ signs.  That’s just ridiculous.  Humans are food.  And except for that rare, viable two percent that have the potential to become people, that’s all they’ll ever be.” (more…)