Lorna

by Alasdair Stuart

She leaned closer to him, conspiratorially. Somewhere at the back of his mind, he noticed her breath didn’t smell of alcohol. “You know how most people have a job?”

“Yeah?”

“I have a calling.”

He looked at her, his face carefully neutral. “And that is?”

“I’m what Guardian Angels dream of being. I protect one person from harm for their entire life, until their time has come.”

Psycho. Make your excuses. “I think I should be going.”

Flat Diane

by Daniel Abraham

In the picture, Flat Diane has been taped around a wide pillar, her arms and legs bending back out of sight. A long black cloth wraps across where the eyes might be, had Ian drawn them in; a blindfold.

The man who Ian doesn’t know, has never met, is caressing a drawn-in breast. His tongue protrudes from his viciously grinning mouth, its tip flickering distance from the silhouette’s thigh. He looks not like Satan, but like someone who wishes that he were, someone trying very hard to be.

The writing on the back of the photograph is block letters, written in blue felt-tip.

It reads: Flat Diane has gone astray.

A new photograph comes every week. Some might be amusing to another person; most make him want to retch.

The best trick Hell has to play against its inmates is to whisper to them that this — this now — is the bottom. Nothing can be worse than this. And then to pull the floor away.

Honest Ghosts

by Stephen Dedman

“I thought that having the name would be enough – I remember you saying that we remember the Ripper and the Boston Strangler and Zodiac because they had cool names, while almost nobody remembers John Haigh or George Smith or Jerry Brudos. I wrote to the police and the papers, but I don’t think they’ve taken me seriously… but if you were to write a letter, it’d be different. You’re a writer, you know how it should be done, what it should say.”

Fetal Position

by Joel Arnold

And now Rudy opened the box?s lid, his fingers responding to the familiarity of his name carved carefully into the top. He lifted the dried cord from it and placed it carefully in the water. It reacted to its new environment, expanding and uncoiling in the water?s warm comfort. He took a small penknife from his pant?s pocket and jabbed his middle finger. Small droplets of blood welled from the wound and he let them fall into the warm tap water. A few drops were all it needed.

The thing in the sink squirmed and writhed. He took off his shirt. Took a deep breath. Looked at himself in the mirror. Funny, the little surprises life tosses you, he thought.