Minotaur

by John Xero


His bovine huffs and snorts are carried through the labyrinth on fickle drafts, echoing my own laboured breathing. I pause, testing the humid air for his scent. It is there, but it is everywhere, like my own.

Then I see him, lit in shifting orange by the guttering, sputtering torches. His muscular body is tense, poised, and he lowers his horned, craggy, bull’s head to charge. My guts churn with hatred, fear, and boundless anger at the sight of my twin.

I, too, charge, bellowing.

Our father’s revulsion weighs grievously on my mind, heavier than the island over our heads.

Author bio: John Xero definitely doesn't have a twin locked away in an underground labyrinth who is fed stray children and urban foxes in exchange for 101 word stories. You can't prove anything.

Twitter | Blog

Sacrifice

by Ray Paterson


I’d wanted a rearrangement for weeks. Better access to computers. With the air conditioning down, I wanted everything nearer the window. Better ventilation and light.

‘A change is as good as a rest,’ they say.

I had unexpected help...

Three removal men, grey of face and boiler suits. Silent. Pulling out cables, cabinets, and bookcases. Smashed computers dumped outside the window.

They re-arranged desks… then left. Two returned, expressionless, supporting a battered soldier who leaked blood over my executive blue shag pile.

Well, I thought. May as well go home. We all have to make sacrifices in time of war.



Author bio: @oldhack55 on twitter. Unpublished but a trier. Write for the love of it.

Rewrite

by John Xero


Saint Araxis (XI) is dead, headless.

He lies slumped across the tactical map desk in the war room of his battle barge. Little wooden ships, tanks and soldiers have been scattered to countries far removed from the current conflict. This redeployment has been recorded by sensors built into the oak desk and corresponding orders have been issued.

Quizzical transmissions are coming back from the front lines; the battlefield commanders are understandably concerned.

The assassin has been subdued, however, and the overwritual has been initiated; his memories are being overwritten by Araxis’ last backup.

Long live the immortal Saint Araxis (XII).

Author bio: John Xero's battle barge is his sofa, his orders are issued via Twitter. No one has ever tried to assassinate him.
He sometimes blogs, and he once did a book.

Silence

by Michelle Ann King


People. Everywhere. Swarming, like insects. Like bugs. They got in his way, tripped him up, blocked his path, breathed up all his air and left him bruised and gasping.

So many people. Too many. Unnecessary. Obscene. So many flailing, gross bodies everywhere, filling up all the clean spaces and making him ill, making his head hurt. Too much noise, all those heartbeats, all those pointless, meaningless sounds flapping out of their disgusting wet mouths. No stillness left, anywhere.

It had to stop. He had to find a way. Guns, gas, fire. Purification. And after the screaming, there would be silence.




Author bio: Michelle Ann King writes speculative fiction and horror, and loves the discipline of the drabble.  Links to her published stories can be found at: http://michelle-ann-king.blogspot.co.uk/p/stories.html

Crone

by John Xero


When I think about what I did for this country...

Of course, they don’t like to talk about magic, officially. The things we did in the wars, in secret. We saved this world from the worst of Nazi death magic and what has it come to?

These tacky little skinheads trying to steal my pension, with their filthy mouths and switchblade bravado.

I’ll teach them how to curse for real. I’ll bewitch those blades right up their backsides.

And when they’re done bleeding out, I’ll re-animate their corpses. I'm getting old, I could do with a hand on the allotment.

Author bio: John Xero is John Xero.

Presence

by Erin Cole

Malevolence looms. It’s not the weight of the dead, the pull of unseen eyes, but more like a coiling snake - dangerous and ready to strike. 

I’ve searched through collectables in the store. Breathlessness near paralyzes me as I dwell upon its source. The stray dog, Red, stays close to me, seemingly distraught. A bone-framed mirror in the back unnerves me. Stepping closer, my reflection is no longer visible. 

But what must be behind me, for it’s not in front of me, is Red mutating into a dark, wraith-like form. Initially, I think mirror trick. What I learn next… terrifies.




Author bio: Erin Cole is a writer of dark, strange fiction.  She has work published and forthcoming in Shotgun Honey, Fiction365, Aoife's Kiss, and Every Day Fiction.

Alibi

by John Xero

They found Charlotte Mills on Sunday, but a dead body is never the beginning.

Today is Monday and jackbooted insistence splinters Julian’s front door. They yell at him, wave their guns, cuff him. But he is not a murderer. Not yet.

Harry Mills killed Charlotte last Friday, not the first notch on his knife, but the closest to his heart. He framed Julian, the quiet neighbour.

On Friday Julian was building the Final Bomb.

What God created in days Julian will destroy in hours.

The countdown has begun. There will be no more murders. No more Mondays. No more anything.

Author bio: John Xero has an alibi. He was writing when it happened. Or, at least, he should have been... In reality he was probably on Twitter.

Möbius

opens the door without really thinking and the man standing before him is himself or rather someone exactly his height (he is shorter than average but not by much) wearing his clothes (lumberjack shirt black jeans no shoes) hair color (hue somewhere between ash and dirty blond) and build (lanky really) but where the face should be there is but a canvas of blank skin stretched taut over the skull so he sees his own face reflected in the other like on the surface of  deceptive waters and not until then does he remove his thumb from the bell and



by Alex Nyström

Author bio: Occasional fiction writer. A book of short stories was published in 2009 (in Swedish). Twitters @kilotrop.

Homesick

by John Xero

Areius tossed the stripped chicken wing aside and fumbled for another in the bucket. He was slumped in a threadbare armchair, feet up on the table, takeaway balanced on his mountainous belly, grease dripping from his fingers and chin.

He wiped his hands on his filthy vest.

The house’s owners scrabbled on the floor, naked, mewling. They gnawed at his meagre leftovers.

“Bored!”

He slouched further back. Immortality was such a drag. He’d explored every facet of foul humanity, every whim, sin, desire and degradation. Maybe Lucifer would take him back soon, at least it was always warm down there.

Author bio: This is John Xero's home away from home. He normally resides at the Xeroverse. For throwaway, takeaway wisdom try his twitter.

Forge

by Sandra Davies


Caged by guilt and shadowed bars of branding irons, breasts and belly besmirched by centuries of soot from the roof-supporting pillar he had lashed me to, I remained defiant.

“My face? Do you want the world to know?”

His eyes were anthracite-implacable.

“I mean to guarantee you’ll not lie down for another man. Fire is cleansing, only the letter negotiable. Before I gag you, do you choose A or W?”

“'Adulteress' more accurate, I do not charge.”

He had ever admired my honesty, my spirit, but I’d failed to think it through.

He smiled, acknowledging. “But 'whore' the shortest word.”




Author bio: Writer, printmaker, east-coast orientated.
http://sandra-linesofcommunication.blogspot.co.uk

Retaliation

by John Xero


Things have been washing up on the shores of alien seas. Wretched, dying things, with brains of pulp.

Thousands of red crabs, smaller than a fist, scuttle over the almost dead, stripping flesh. The frothing salt water is stained with blood, but not for long. Soon there is nothing but sand and bones.

Our soldiers. Our bio-weapon. Turned on each other and scattered through a hundred star systems.

The humans think us defeated, but they are wrong. We have played this game a thousand times before.

As our ships slip into orbit around Earth, I spread my wings and howl.

Author bio: When the invasion comes John Xero will be safely holed up with a big stack of books. He will live tweet the fall of civilisation.

Fallen

by Jack Holt

They fall in twos.

Synchronised pairs of descending death. Crimson and winged creatures, brothers and sisters each.

One pair for every insignificant soul on this planet. Liars, cheaters, schemers, killers: all afforded the same choice.

They fall and then you decide. They'll trick you, manipulate you, twist your feeble minds into choosing them. The decision will be hard, but it will be yours.

And that's why you'll fall.

When you chose, only one can stand. One creature will devour the other, and then you if it remains hungry.

They're always hungry.

They fall in twos. Then you fall in droves.

Author bio: John Xero's number one fan. For more fiction go to jackkholt.wordpress.com. For mundane tweets go to @jackkholt.

... it seems flattery will get you places... - Xero

Gravedigger

by John Xero

Mass immortality had become the bane of Samuel’s life. Science was to blame. No disease, no old age, no natural death.

What work for a gravedigger when nobody dies?

Sam had a god-given gift. There were so many pretenders who thought any hole would do, so few who understood the nature of the abyss. There was a hole left when a person died, and a hole to be made, and the two were not entirely unrelated.

He took up his shovel; it was a fine tool and it would serve him twofold now. Not an elegant solution, but needs must.

Author bio: John Xero knows that not any hole will do. And that even the same hole will fit different people in different ways. Twitter hole. Blog hole.

Whispers

by Nick Roberts


We watch the gate. That is our purpose. For a thousand millennia we have been the guardians of the Night Gate. But there is a disease in our ranks, a slow moving malaise that affects an unknown number of my brothers. Questions are asked by the Dark Inquisitors to try and root out these free thinkers, these renegades. But they are clever, my fellow brothers, they hide in the shadows and whisper in the quiet of the All Night. Sometimes I hear their whispers and unbidden thoughts race through my mind and I also start to wonder about the light.




Author bio: After many years being locked away I have finally given into the voice in my head and unleashed my inner geek. Find me at nicks-review-blog.blogspot.com and on Twitter @nickroberts101.

Redemption

by John Xero


Purgatory ain’t a place, it’s a job description, and it don’t pay too good. All wages go to the ledger, and the ledger, by definition, runs deep in the red.

Me, I got more red than most to wipe clean, and now I got a gun belt and a badge, go figure.

Consider us the bounty hunters of the afterlife. You die and do a runner, you get us psychos on your tail.

Lotta folks run when they see where they’re headed, when they realise heaven and hell ain’t so different. Only us Purged get to go free, in time.

Author bio: John Xero is the sheriff in this town. He done put out a collection of words on one o' them newfangled ereading gadgets. He shoots his mouth off here.

Recyclical

by Kymm Coveney


Posed on the left pant leg of your old jeans that I wear gardening at the weekends, you held your wings stiffly at attention, high above the dark fuzz of your Monarch body. I stood, hose in hand, watering the newly blooming cherry tree. Old echoes of a sigh, a whisper, any sound that might resemble your voice, made me close my eyes against the constant blue sky and purse my lips. I heard only the tunneling of worms deep in the ground as you traced your butterfly kiss across my eyelids, and then wrapped me up in your cocoon.




Author Bio: Ex-pat from Boston living in Barcelona, raising polyglot kids and fooling with written languages.
www.betterlies.blogspot.com
@KymmInBarcelona
http://kymminbarcelona.tumblr.com/

Victim

by John Xero


His footsteps follow me through moonlit backstreets, ever gaining, into the woods.

He shoves me against an old oak, tearing at my pretty dress, exposing the swirling, black tattoos beneath. Then the ink crawls and he halts, confused. He yelps as the black writhes up his arms, flowing from my flesh to his.

Later, when he is nothing but pulp and bone, the twitching tendrils slink back beneath my skin. They burn incessantly, day and night.

I take no pleasure, watching that show of slow laceration. I am grateful only that I am allowed to live, while I remain useful.

Author bio: John Xero lives here. And here. And here.