Archive for March, 2010

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ANNOUNCEMENTS!

Saturday, March 20th, 2010

GENERAL SUBMISSIONS!

We are always looking for more everyday submissions from authors! If you’re not familiar to the site, please check out our submissions page.  When you’re ready, give us a try.

LYCANTHROPY CONTEST EXTENDED TO APRIL 21ST, 2010

Our werewolf contest has been such a success that we have decided to extend it for one more month, until April 21st! For those of you who want to try something different, you may want to fire up your computers for the next contest.

RESURRECTION CONTEST BEGINS APRIL 22, 2010

This contest will be all about things that are dead–or undead—that come back. Ghosts, zombies, demons, vampires, or anything that you can dream of that isn’t supposed to be on this side of the ground. We love old monsters with new twists, new monsters with old sensibilities, and anything in between.

The word limit will be 1,200 words, but strive to use less. RESURRECTION will stretch its fetid limbs from April 22, 2010 to June 19, 2010.

As always, we are looking for solid writing throughout, engaging hooks, and twists that keep us on the edge. I like nothing better than to read a submission that makes me yell “oh no!” before the end.

PLEASE TYPE : RESURRECTION in the header of your email when you submit! We received a lot of LYCANTHROPY entries where the author simply forgot to tell us that the story was an entry. With the volume of stories we receive, that can get a little hairy. (Pun intended)!

*****

THE SOUTHERN HORROR WRITERS CLUB is an anthology of horror stories, all using the South as the unifying factor.  Because we have an  international audience, we are also accepting stories outside of the American South which take place in the southern region of another country.

The topics here can vary greatly. We’re looking for vivid atmosphere, scariness, a general mood of unease and a punch at the end.

THE SOUTHERN HORROR WRITERS CLUB is not a contest, but an anthology. The goal is to have it available for sale by the end of the year. Please know that this will not be a rush job. The stories that are accepted will be chosen carefully, edited well, and formatted into a book that will show appreciation for your endeavors. 

If you chose to submit, please type “SOUTHERN HORROR WRITERS CLUB”  in the header of your email.

*****

Questions? Comments? Please email me at darkloreatflashes@gmail.com  .

 

Thanks,

Lori

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THE SIREN’S SONG: By Donna Burgess

Friday, March 19th, 2010

Lush and horrible is the song rising from the child in the backseat.  A baby still, all strapped down in its plastic and cloth carrier. Curls like golden spirals from a birthday ribbon and cheeks like a doll’s. 

She sings.

She cannot talk yet, but still she sings of dark things and John’s eyes are in the rearview mirror watching those rosebud lips, as red as a wound.  He spies his own face for a moment, haunted, pale.  People he knew before would not recognize him now. 

He wants to love her, his only daughter, but he is afraid.  This child knows things.  She sings what is inside his head, those bad things that swirl like blood in the sink, running thin with water down the drain.

Nobody believes him—Cindy laughed, when he told her.  But he noticed.  She does not touch the child either.  She laughs and the sound makes him hurt.  He wishes he could make her hurt like that.

A baby bottle rolls from beneath the passenger’s seat.  Gone at the stoplight, then back once again when he accelerates.  He has some pills in the glovebox, pills to help him sleep.  He thinks about crushing them up into the bottle. Next to the pills, there is a gun.  He wonders which is easier.

He smells her dirty diaper and still she sings back there.  He can hear her inside his head.  It dissects his soul.  Those small, wet lips moving with words they are not yet designed to mouth.

A cop falls in behind the Bug and John gets nervous.  “Shut up, would you?” he says through gritted teeth to the child.  “Please shut up.”

She even sings in her sleep.  Or perhaps it is in his sleep.  In his dreams, he does bad things. To Cindy.  To baby. 

To baby.  He does not even like to call the child by name.   

Sometimes he wonders if the ideas are in his mind first, or on her tongue first.  Maybe she feeds his thoughts.

John believes she is a demon.  A child’s eyes should not be so knowing.  He is afraid of her.   He is afraid of why his mind is working this way.  Is it broken?
  
Demons aren’t real.  He knows that. 

I know that, he whispers.

Still she sings, a glint of amusement in her dark eyes.  Her voice is as sweet as a bell, thin as glass.  It cuts him on the inside.

Her words are as black as ink.  They stain the stale air inside the Bug.

The cop turns off and John drives, thinking of Cindy.  She screws the guy next door when he is at work.   That knowledge came to him in a song, as well.  He wonders if it’s true, or is it a seed from which horrible things will grow? In the back of his mind, he imagines baby singing as he strangles Cindy.  Singing as her mother’s eyeballs grow swollen and bloodshot and her lips go blue.  Singing as her father’s fingers begin to cramp and ache.

He wants to scream, but he licks his lips and, “Shhh…”

He pulls into the parking lot of a mall and it is crowded.  Dusk is falling and the streetlamps flicker to life here and there.  He parks, engine still churning along like a wheeze.  He takes the gun from the glovebox. 

He wants silence, but her words draw him.  He has to listen, has to hear.  It is a siren’s song, impossible to resist, as terrible as it is.  He tastes metal, cold as dread; and then he tastes fire.  The song is broken.  As darkness falls like a wet blanket on a flame, he knows that silence is bliss. 

But wait.  It lasts only a moment. 

Inside the Bug is awash with red.  Shortly, faces peer in, shocked, repulsed. 

The child in the backseat sings on.
     
_________________

©2010 Donna Burgess
Donna Burgess is an author of dark fiction and poetry who enjoys surfing and all facets of art, from painting to photography.  She has been married for nineteen years and has two children.  She is currently pursuing her MFA in creative writing.  Visit her on the web!  donnaburgess.com

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