This year’s Fiction Vortex Horror Contest has some of the best short fiction horror we’ve ever seen. Entries ran the gamut from personal to apocalyptic. Filled with strangeness and terror, madness and fear, these stories are a tour to the dark places of the imagination. FICTION VORTEX: Founded in the 277th year of the Takolatchni Dynasty, Fiction Vortex set out to encourage people to write and publish great speculative fiction. It sprang fully formed...

Toronto in the twenty-first century: At night, a beacon on a lonely ancient lake, a drainage pond from the last ice age. In the daytime, a bulwark of glass, glinting in the radiant sun. Joe, Mary, and her cat, Sam, sit in a lakeside condo, trapped by a crazed, mysterious sniper. What has become of their lives? What has become of their city? What has become of their century? As the situation begins to unravel, Mary finds herself wondering, “What would Margaret Atwood do?”

Imagine driving home alone at night. You roll your window down, stop at a red light, and fiddle with the radio.Then you die.That's just the beginning of award-winning writer Annie Reed's story THEY LIE, the harrowing tale of one young woman's savage death and rebirth as a vampire."The appearance of a new Annie Reed story is a treat. Try one and you'll be hooked." -- Dave Hendrickson, author of CRACKING THE ICE, forthcoming from WestSide Press"A friend recomm...

There are some nightmares from which you can never wake.Dread: A Head Full of Bad Dreams, from the Bram Stoker Award-nominated editoral team of Anthony Rivera and Sharon Lawson, is Volume One in the Best of Grey Matter Press series. Selected by readers and horror fans, the twenty short stories contained within the pages of Dread include some of the darkest hallucinatory revelations from the minds of the most accomplished award-winning authors of our time.T...

Nightwatchman at a cemetery is not the most romantic of occupations but you'd think it would be an easy one. It's not as if the residents are going to be any trouble.Not until the night they start demanding room service.

Post-Apocalyptic TP Blues is the tale of a not particularly likeable fellow named Norman Joyner. A doomcryer from birth- Norman gets his wish when 94% of the population dies of the flu. When the dust clears- Norman has a plan to rule what remains of America- one little white square of TP at a time.

This is how the world ends.This is how the world ends.This is how the world ends.Not in a bang, but in a book.58 flash fiction stories of the final hours. Passion, pain and horror of the end of days, all in short vignettes.Featuring stories from:Christine Morga, Essel Pratt, Cameron Suey, T. Fox Dunham, Guy Anthony De Marco, Mandy DeGeit, Jessica McHugh, Kristopher Kelly, E. Catherine Tobler, Jamie Lackey, George Cotronis, William R.D. Wood, Lee...

When are you too old to believe in monsters?

When the monster who killed his wife returns to destroy his home, Apollo, a simple island fisherman, must flee with his daughter to the open sea.But can they outrun the Beast?Luke J. Morris, author of Twisted Shorts: The Kill and Other Stories, Cthulhu 4 Kids, and Tales from the Teeth, pens a nail-biting tale of adventure that will make you think twice before going swimming.

In this world, Grezans are prized as exotic captives, on display in households of the wealthy.And the cruel.Tulano was saved by his Master, saved from a life of arena fighting, slavery, or worse. He's trained to be a warrior now, acting as bodyguard to his benefactor. But when his Master has to court his constituents, how far will Tulano have to go appease his Master and the wealthy who fund his campaigns?

Prophetic skulls, crocheting krakens, murderous plants. These are but some of the strange tales to be found in this book.Mad Scientist Journal: August 2016 collects thirteen tales from the fictional worlds of mad science. For the discerning mad scientist reader, there are also pieces of fiction from Judith Field, Dusty Wallace, and Richard Zwicker. Readers will also find other resources for the budding mad scientist, including an advice column, horoscopes, and other brief messages ...

Richard Booth suspects something amiss just beyond his hotel room door. Waking to the memory of a scream in the wind blown New Hampshire night, does he dare to explore the hallway? Was it just the remnants of a dream? How do you know when your imagination is getting the better of you, and when there really is something out there?"Patrick Greene's Into the Small Hours stood out to me in particular. It's not every writer than can take the mundane, something like spending the night in...