Final Girl TheoryThe woman screams. The screen dissolves in a mass of spinning color, and the opening credits roll.
You know what the worst part is? The opening sequence has nothing to do with the rest of the film. It is what it is; it exists purely for its own sake.
Read the full text at Curious Fictions.
Beckett Falls could’ve been sucked up by a twister for all I had in it. It wasn’t worth a full show and it made me nervous. We gave it one tent and a single twilight. Gas up, chalk a few marks and go.
Far as I ever saw, Shawna Garrett was Beckett Falls’ one breath worth breathing.
I finish cataloging his junk. It’s nothing but shareware for ancient computers, old printer drivers, and a dozen of those America Online discs. I should charge him for making me dig through this mess. ‘Sorry, kid. Even if this stuff didn’t reek, you don’t have anything worth… Hmm?’
At the bottom of the box is a jewel case with no insert. The CD inside has the words Mr. Plott’s Bad Game written in black marker.
‘All right, let’s make a deal.’ I pop open the register, and the sound finally catches his attention. ‘Five bucks for the entire thing.’
As I lifted my brush to the canvas, as I felt the paint flow thick and eager from the bristles, I could see the end, how it needed to be finished. I could see the promise that glimmered beneath the threat, the mercy inherent in destruction. My hand steadied, and worked.
Dust Bunny
by Matthew C. Dampier
‘So you have a handle on it?’
‘She won’t be dropped. You have my word.’
‘I’ll be here until tomorrow morning. You remember how to make a bottle, right?’
When she hung up, I took a bag of breast milk from the fridge and ran it under hot water. I filled a bottle and put it outside the hole in the hope that she would come to her senses for a nice hot meal. I laid the bait and prepared for a stakeout, dimming the lights and moving my chair back to where she wouldn’t be able to see it. I drank quietly and cracked each new can under a towel to muffle any noise that might startle her back into the walls.
A MOTHER OF MONSTERS
by Guy De Maupassant
The child was born in an open field, and when the weeders saw it, they fled away, screaming, and the report spread that she had given birth to a demon. From that time on, she was called ‘the Devil.’ (Continue Reading…)
The Women Who Watch
by Thomas Owen
Translated by Edward Gauvin
‘Do you know that woman?’ he asked the waiter.
‘What woman?’
‘The one in the corner just now.’
The waiter gave the man a look as if he were joking, and assured him no one had been sitting there. He seemed sincere, and gave no reason to believe he’d been in cahoots with the woman.
Of course something had to burst his bubble. At the foot of the abandoned chair, he spotted the forgotten shopping bag. Out peered the green of leeks, wrapped in newspaper.
The man didn’t insist. He was too happy to have escaped the evil spell.
The Meat Forest
by John Haggerty
Dmitri laughed in my face. ‘Who is going to stop me? I do what I want.’ He looked out into the drizzly evening. ‘I can get you out of here. Do you want to go?’
‘What? Out of the camp? How?’
‘How do you think?’ He nodded toward the gray forest that crowded the perimeter, where the electrodes got too weak to keep it out. ‘Through that.’
‘Through the forest? I thought it was impossible.’
Dmitri tilted his head up. Beneath his jaw were tattoos of two men’s heads, done with red and black ink. Their faces were contorted in an expression of horror; their eyes closed. He pointed to them. ‘Do you know what they mean?’ he asked. I shook my head. ‘I’ve gotten through it twice. The only man in New Russia. I’ll take you.’ He paused, looking me up and down. ‘It’s probably a lost cause. I don’t think you’ll make it. But if you’re interested, come to my hut tonight.’
I looked back out at the forest. It wavered in and out of focus in the rain, gray and silent. When I turned back around, Dmitri was already gone.