The Music of Erich Zann

by Howard Phillips Lovecraft

I have examined maps of the city with the greatest care, yet have never again found the Rue d’Auseil. These maps have not been modern maps alone, for I know that names change. I have, on the contrary, delved deeply into all the antiquities of the place; and have personally explored every region, of whatever name, which could possibly answer to the street I knew as the Rue d’Auseil. But despite all I have done it remains an humiliating fact that I cannot find the house, the street, or even the locality, where, during the last months of my impoverished life as a student of metaphysics at the university, I heard the music of Erich Zann.

That my memory is broken, I do not wonder; for my health, physical and mental, was gravely disturbed throughout the period of my residence in the Rue d’Auseil, and I recall that I took none of my few acquaintances there. But that I cannot find the place again is both singular and perplexing; for it was within a half-hour’s walk of the university and was distinguished by peculiarities which could hardly be forgotten by anyone who had been there. I have never met a person who has seen the Rue d’Auseil.

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Photo Finish

by Adam La Rusic

A painful kick to my shin woke me. Squinting against the harsh fluorescents in the office, I bleared up to see Kim holding out my hat and coat.

“Come on, Gerry. It’s show time. Let’s ride,” she said.

The police scanner sputtered with the kind of staccato dialogue that indicated something big was happening. I leaned forward and cranked the volume, bowling over a collection of styrofoam coffee cups in the process.

“10-47. We’re going to need more units,” the scanner blurted. Hostage! Cruisers headed to the area like swarming wasps. Every other news beat in town monitored the police bandwidth and I bet they’d be clamoring at the bit for this one. We had to get there fast.

“What’s going on?” I asked, accepting the hat and coat, forcing myself awake.

“In the car,” she said.

“Hang on,” I said, but she didn’t. Grabbing my camera bag and checking my battery supply, I took off after her.

Among the Moabites

by Michael Hartford

The first time Wilson saw them was when he opened the medicine cabinet one groggy morning in search of aspirin and his toothbrush. Between the familiar can of shaving cream and the plastic tumbler that held his toothbrush, lying on his crushed and twisted tube of toothpaste as if it were a luxurious pillow, were two tiny people. They were no bigger than his thumb, and a little pinker, lounging in a tangle of spindly limbs. One of them lifted its head from the toothpaste and he slammed the door shut.

Mrs. Branson Calling

by Johnny Compton

He checked the slip of paper in his pocket yet again. Kayla: 555-6213. She had drawn a smiley face encircled by small hearts after the last digit. She was young, a few weeks past her twenty-first birthday if she had been honest with him, and chances were it would not develop into anything serious, but she seemed nice and Shaun was a hopeless sucker for a nice girl. Maybe it was the alcohol applying a rosy tint to his immediate memories of her. Then again, maybe he genuinely was enamored with her, and she with him. Hell, she must have seen something she liked in him; she had even bought him few drinks. A small gesture, but he had been out before with girls who were undoubtedly interested in him but hadn’t bothered to pay for their own drinks, much less buy him one. So maybe…