Three flash fictions about those darker spirits we know so well…
DOG
By Stephen Hodgkinson.
Stephen lives & works in Manchester, United Kingdom. He is working on a collection of short stories that he hopes to publish by Summer 2012.
Read by Eve Upton, who previously starred as the mushroom in “Tippler’s Bane”.
“The girl stared out of her bedroom window. Her neighbour, the little boy was playing alone in his garden. She hated him, she hated his constant happiness, and she hated the confident way he dealt with his own company.
She hated him and she was very lonely.
“You could kill him” said a tiny voice lurking somewhere in the room.”
ANNOTATIONS
by Brady Golden.
Brady lives in Oakland, California with his wife and daughter. Click the link under his name to visit his website and find him on Twitter at @bradiation.
Text read by David Michel.
Numbers read by
Melissa Bugaj. Click her name to hear her host original children’s stories at the Night Light Stories podcast.
“There are any number of books containing illustrations of the runes to be inscribed at the ritual’s onset. Some exist only in the private collections of reclusive eccentrics, while others are as close as your local library, misfiled at the ends of dimly lit aisles that smell like public toilets.”
“Annotations” uses this chime sound from Freesound.
THE DROWNER
Click his name to sample some FROZEN STORIES. Random House published his first novel, THE INFERIOR, in 2007 (2008 in North America). The translation rights have since been sold to ten different markets. A sequel called THE DESERTER will be appearing in the U.S. and Canada in March 2012. He is also the author of numerous short stories, the most recent of which is “Heartless” over at BENEATH CEASELESS SKIES (December 2011), “Fairy Gold”, due out in LORE in March 2012 or “The Dowry” in the next issue (#16) of BLACK GATE.
Read by Cian MacMahon. Click the link under his name to visit his blog.
“As they sank together, Sean continued to stare into the strange white face of the Drowner. It hadn’t decayed too badly. The hair must have kept growing after he’d been lost. Bits of twig lay tangled there and tiny fry swam in and out of it as the walls of the island’s roots kept rising away from them. The eyes were whole too and Sean fancied he saw a flicker of recognition in them as well as a slight, shy smile on the rotted lips.”
“The Drowner” uses these water and seascape sounds from Freesound.
“ELEMENTS_WATER_01_Underwater” by suonho
“Herring & Great Black backed Gulls 2 edited” by genghis attenborough
“bubblesrealslow (2)” by Rhedcerulean
“Lapping Waves and Sea Gulls 2” by digifishmusic
“Underwater (small river)” by melarancida
“Pirate Ship at Bay” by CGEffex
“01650 underwater bubbles” by Robinhood76
“03_Lanes_Island_Water_2_LowBoat_48_24” by tomtenney
