Flash 10/2010, #1: Erin E. Stocks

Becoming Normal

I haven’t showered in ten days. My scalp fosters a family of bacteria, but the table of party food — chunks of chicken, weenies slathered in mystery sauce, and eyeballs — has been sitting there for two days. Its smell leaves mine in the dust.

“Nance, we’ve practiced this.” Mom yanks on her matted clumps of hair. [...] “Just remember that everybody’s watching. There can be no mistakes.” Read more: HTML

In This Issue: Jake Freivald

Slouching Toward Halloween

Halloween is almost here, so we have two stories of supernatural horror, and one that’s not supernatural but had a strong effect on me.

I couldn’t quite stay away from election day, mid-term or no, so I included a piece by Lord Dunsany called The Day of the Poll, but I had to include H.P. Lovecraft as well; this year, it’s a poem called “Despair.”

Finally, no Bruce this month, but I’ve included Lovecraft’s Notes on Writing Weird Fiction for you writers out there. Enjoy! Read more: HTML

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Flash 10/2010, #2: Shannon Connor Winward

When She’s Ready

She wakes up early. She gets her hair up, she gets her things together, and she’s out the door. If she can do that, she can do anything.

She keeps her boots in the car. She carries extra socks, band-aids, saline for her eyes. She comes prepared. Life is unpredictable.

She puts on her boots in the parking lot and pulls the laces until it hurts.... Read more: HTML

Classic Flash #42: Lord Dunsany

The Day of the Poll

In the town by the sea it was the day of the poll, and the poet regarded it sadly when he woke and saw the light of it coming in at his window between two small curtains of gauze. And the day of the poll was beautifully bright; stray bird-songs came to the poet at the window; the air was crisp and wintry, but it was the blaze of sunlight that had deceived the birds. Read more: HTML

Flash 10/2010, #3: Stephen Smith

Childhood Fears

Charles took a moment to look at the houses on his street while the last bit of sun vanished. Broken windows and kicked-in front doors stared back across overgrown brown lawns. Rusting cars slumped on driveways. Weeds pushed through cracks in the sidewalks. He ran through his checklist: backdoor secured, garage door bolted, storm windows closed, chimney capped. Read more: HTML

Classic Flash #43: H. P. Lovecraft

Despair

A poem.
O’er the midnight moorlands crying,
Thro’ the cypress forests sighing,
In the night-wind madly flying,

Hellish forms with streaming hair;
In the barren branches creaking,
By the stagnant swamp-pools speaking,
Past the shore-cliffs ever shrieking;

Damn’d daemons of despair. Read more: HTML

For Writers: H. P. Lovecraft

Notes on Writing Weird Fiction

This is an essay H.P. Lovecraft wrote in 1933, which was published in the June 1937 issue of The Amateur Correspondent.

My reason for writing stories is to give myself the satisfaction of visualising more clearly and detailedly and stably the vague, elusive, fragmentary impressions of wonder, beauty, and adventurous expectancy which are conveyed to me by certain sights (scenic, architectural, atmospheric, etc.), ideas, occurrences, and images encountered in art and literature. I choose weird stories because they suit my inclination best — one of my strongest and most persistent wishes being to achieve, momentarily, the illusion of some strange suspension or violation of the galling limitations of time, space, and natural law which for ever imprison us and frustrate our curiosity about the infinite cosmic spaces beyond the radius of our sight and analysis. Read more: HTML