Crybaby

by P.R. Dean

The lights came up abruptly. Audience members shifted in their seats and whispered in shocked voices. No one laughed. After a moment someone stood up, and then one by one people rose to their feet, adopted a neutral expression, and waited patiently for those in front of them to move. 

Leon felt oppressed by the harsh fluorescent light. The world of the film, with its deep shadows and French vowels, still clung to his sensibilities. 

He hunched down in the seat and shaded his eyes against the glare. His hand was shaking.

He’d wanted to leave the moment the credits began to roll but Hayley had glared at him as though he was transgressing some long-standing film festival behavior code. What did it matter? Dozens had walked out during the screening. 

Part of him wanted to curl up into a ball and not think about anything, the other part just wanted to get out of the cinema and go somewhere else. He was being ridiculous. He knew that. Overreacting. Just tired, probably. His eyes felt gritty. He’d been out five nights in a row, he had to work in the morning, and he had an overdue assignment. Had he even had a shower this morning? He couldn’t remember. (Continue Reading…)

The Giant Wistaria

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

“Meddle not with my new vine, child! See! Thou hast already broken the tender shoot! Never needle or distaff for thee, and yet thou wilt not be quiet!” 

The nervous fingers wavered, clutched at a small carnelian cross that hung from her neck, then fell despairingly. 

“Give me my child, mother, and then I will be quiet!” 

“Hush! hush! thou fool–some one might be near! See–there is thy father coming, even now! Get in quickly!” 

She raised her eyes to her mother’s face, weary eyes that yet had a flickering, uncertain blaze in their shaded depths. 

“Art thou a mother and hast no pity on me, a mother? Give me my child!” 

Her voice rose in a strange, low cry, broken by her father’s hand upon her mouth. 

“Shameless!” said he, with set teeth. “Get to thy chamber, and be not seen again to-night, or I will have thee bound!”  (Continue Reading…)

Vertep

by Daniel Watt

The jack-in-the-box is a simple toy. It is a wooden box. The wooden box has a handle. The handle, when turned, operates a mechanism. The mechanism powers a music box. The music box plays a little tune. The little tune, as if by magic, calls (from his hidey hole) the ‘jack’—a clown, or other children’s toy. Things follow a very simple pattern in the world of the jack-in-the-box—but, despite their simplicity, they always guarantee a surprise. 

I collect jack-in-the-boxes. I repair them; sometimes I even trade in them—when money is tight. I collect other things too—don’t we all! I’m a hoarder more than anything; old records, postcards, books and magazines, but mostly records—and jack-in-the-boxes. These things—and the gathering of them—are my hobbies. It passes the time. (Continue Reading…)

Resilience

by Christi Nogle

Jason gets home while I’m at the sink. He comes up behind me, holds me around the waist, and tickles the side of my face with his soft new beard. We watch the young squirrels shake a tree branch, listen to them chatter through the open window. They zoom across the front yard and across the street. 

“How was it with Dr. Emory?” asks Jason. He already realizes his slip. “Watson, sorry.”

“Watson-Newcamp, actually. She’s wonderful, just as promised,” I say.

As soon as I say it, I wonder if I mean it. The new doctor, just thirty or thirty-five, struck me as someone I might do yoga or lunch with, but she spoke just as slowly and gently as Dr. Emory. Her round eyes were so dark you almost couldn’t make out the pupils. 

“I’m glad he left you in good hands,” says Jason. I think he might stay and talk, but he has chores too. He takes the garbage and recycling bins out the back door, then our son Simon comes rumbling down the stairs. That’s all I see of either of them until dinner.  (Continue Reading…)

Dream House

By Orrin Grey

It was the last night of the Festival, and we were all sitting around one of the long tables out behind the Moon and Sixpence. It was cold enough that my feet were freezing and my hands were shoved into the pockets of my jacket when not gesturing or picking up a drink. Above us, a suitably gibbous moon dipped in-and-out behind clouds that would’ve otherwise been invisible.

There were still a couple of movies playing, so the back patio wasn’t too crowded yet, but I’d talked Simon out of watching Curse of the Crimson Altar on account of it being five minutes of awesome and an hour-and-change of people walking around in dark houses, so we were staking out the table ’til the Festival ended and the last movies let out. Simon was telling me about some French movie he’d seen this year that came off as a poor man’s John Carpenter, one that seemed to get worse every time he mentioned it.

As the table gradually filled up, the conversation twisted and turned—as conversations like that, in places like those, always do—and somehow or other we got on the subject of Lovecraft in old TV shows. Maybe there was a panel on it, or someone was suggesting one for next year. They’d showed the Stuart Gordon “Dreams in the Witch House” that year, and Nick mentioned that “Pickman’s Model” episode of Night Gallery, which I’d always loved. I told him it was my favorite adaptation of the story, and someone else—probably Ross—agreed. Sooner or later, of course, somebody brought up Dream House.  (Continue Reading…)

Hop-Frog

by Edgar Allan Poe

I never knew anyone so keenly alive to a joke as the king was. He seemed to live only for joking. To tell a good story of the joke kind, and to tell it well, was the surest road to his favour. Thus it happened that his seven ministers were all noted for their accomplishments as jokers. They all took after the king, too, in being large, corpulent, oily men, as well as inimitable jokers. Whether people grow fat by joking, or whether there is something in fat itself which predisposes to a joke, I have never been quite able to determine; but certain it is that a lean joker is a rara avis in terris.

About the refinements, or, as he called them, the ‘ghost’ of wit, the king troubled himself very little. He had an especial admiration for breadth in a jest, and would often put up with length, for the sake of it. Over-niceties wearied him. He would have preferred Rabelais’ ‘Gargantua’ to the ‘Zadig’ of Voltaire: and, upon the whole, practical jokes suited his taste far better than verbal ones.

(Continue Reading…)