A treat to hold you over while reviews are progressing:

The current contest announcement will be delayed until October 20th – our apologies for the wait. TotZW has received an unprecedented number of submissions over the last few months, and we want to be sure to review 100% of them before making a decision.

Thank you for your patience,
-Ed.

Gunner and I ran like hell through the dark streets. We could still hear the screams. Air tore in and out of my stubborn lungs, but not fast enough to keep my sides from throbbing. That didn’t stop me. We ran until the road forked, then slowed to a walk. Gunner—at least that’s how he introduced himself, after I bought him a beer—thumbed toward a branch of the fork. I assumed his house was that way. He didn’t speak—too busy sucking down air, chest heaving. When he leaned back, I saw that blood had speckled one half of his body, from his face down to his waist. Screams came sporadically, now. One final one, cut off abruptly. Then silence. “Holy shit,” Gunner said, the blood on his face looking like chicken pox. “Holy fucking shit.” (more…)

Our editor’s guest blog at Reelz Channel is now available on their site.

-ed.

Just a quick note that our editor was featured in a recent interview piece about the upcoming World War Z movie on the film fan site Reelz Channel. A follow-up guest blog entry is forthcoming.

-ed.

The flowers looked hungry.  The blossoms turned their stem-necks towards the family as they walked by.  Filaments rippled and gnashed together like teeth as ovules vibrated with pangs of starvation.

A red grevillea reached toward Brie.  Straining at its roots, tiny red petals, barbed at the end, reached out for flesh.  Grandma brought down her machete chopping the head off the flower.  It fell to the ground with a tiny squeal and rolled down an embankment into a swarming mass of tangled weeds. (more…)

She rises early to scrub her flesh in brimstone

and ashes, waxes her board to surf the waves

of undead coming through the gate, their shoulders

bent at just the right angles. Her skin glows sulfur, (more…)

The four figures sat in their large plush leather chairs watching the old, bulky television on the far side of the large room. A fire burned in the fireplace off to one side, the flames casting the only other illumination in the room. The walls were lined with pictures of famous people, all now long dead. Einstein, Mozart and Hitler to name a few. Trophies covered the entire mantle piece and filled glass cabinets, ranging from sword fighting to horse riding to `slimmer of the year`. All of them were for first place. Cigar smoke drifted slowly around the ceiling.

Each of the seated figures was as different to the others as they could be. The first figure was huge, and not due to fat but pure muscle. Every inch of him was a bulging mass of rippling muscle with think veins like worms crawling across his exposed skin. His neck was easily the size of a normal man’s waist. He wore tight red vest top and denim shorts, with a red baseball cap sat backwards on his head. A large cigar, twice the size of a mans finger, was gripped between his teeth. (more…)

It doesn’t seem so long ago I hated that dog with all my heart.

I was just back from the war, about two months, still feeling like I was cleaning sand out of my private parts, if you know what I mean. I also had the bum ear and the bum leg from the war. So all in all I was feeling pretty useless to my family. We were in a tight spot, with Dad long gone, my brother Jorge deep into the meth, my sisters married off and living back in Mexico, and with a tiny sheep ranch that pretty much had no sheep. Well, there we had the two left. Ma tried to hold our family together. She kept saying the Sun always had to shine again sometime. But I could see in her eyes that things looked bad even to her. (more…)

“Look at that psychotic monkey.”

I glanced up from where I sat, sprawled across the top of a mossy flat boulder that was once a temple pillar, and looked in the direction Roy was turned. I moved with languid care; there was a viper coiled in a patch of warm Cambodian sunlight next to my steel-toed boot, and since I didn’t know what sort of snake he was, I thought it would be better not to offend him. There were things in the jungle much scarier than a basking snake, but a snakebite thousands of miles from MTV-watching civilization would be no picnic, either. (more…)

Alex Scott hiked up from the cabin through the snow, taking care not to get too far from the path. The snow got deep and got deep quick and if he wasn’t careful, he’d end up to his waist in snow.

It was stupid to leave the cabin in the first place. Erin and Carolyn would be up by tonight, tomorrow morning at the latest and he should be getting the place prepared. Couldn’t afford to get lost with the world bein’ the way it was. They all needed to stick together. (more…)