Horror Without Borders. Volume 2
Hidden Realms

Editor Олег Хасанов

Compiler Олег Хасанов

© Олег Хасанов, compiler, 2025

ISBN 978-5-0064-7336-2

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

Horror Without Borders
Volume 2
Hidden Realms
A World Anthology of Dark Poetry
Edited by Oleg Hasanov

Horror Without Borders. Volume 2: Hidden Realms

The authors of the individual poems retain the copyright of the works featured in this anthology.

All rights reserved. No part of this production may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

© 2022 Oleg Hasanov

Cover Artwork © 2022 Infographics

A HORROR HAIKU FOREWORD

Do you have the time?
I’ve got a story to tell
About dead beauty.

I once believed that
Life’s a fairytale romance,
But no, I was wrong.

Life’s a ghost story,
It’s a cemetery walk
In winter. No doubt.

I remember that
Journey to Antarctica
Was like a red mist…

In a frozen ship
Is where we found these demons
By the night candles.

Unholy union
Chanting a spell for Satan
From a little black book.

Religions in ice…
A disentombed communion…
A cannibal house…

A girl was summoned,
Concubine of necrosis.
This book’s the portal…

A warm meal helped me
To regain my consciousness.
They gave me potions.

I see a raven
Through the barred window.
Landscape with a tower.

They gave me a pen
And a big stack of paper.
They want a report.

The long road to hell
Through the labyrinth of my
Memories, more like.

In the darkness of
My padded cell, all my thoughts
Go to Dorothy…

They got their report.
This diary of death is
A piece of my mind.

The revelation
In the asylum, a song
From the wailing tomb.

I want to escape.
My amygdala
Tells me I’ve got to.

If I stay any longer,
The lobotomy will be
The ultimate price.

In the waiting room
I hit the nurse with a chair.
Her brain’s a blood soup.

Here comes death. I eat.
No remorse, only hunger.
I am Nosferatu.

I grab the keys and
Open the door. I am free.
Vampire energy.

I am the ripper.
Beyond the dying stars I
Get my freedom.

I have to get home,
I’ve got to see Dorothy.
I hide in the moors.

The night in the swamp
Does me good. It covered me,
Saving from dissection.

I go through the woods
And reach a railroad station.
Red balloon floating.

Now! I slip into
The freight car and hide myself.
But I’m not alone.

Hidden behind the
Big boxes is the dark man.
He is watching me.

His hand slides into
The dark valise and comes out
With a little black book.

The black book I saw
In the demented ship.
He makes me read it…

I know everything.
What killed Aleister Crowley?
Now I know it all.

In her room at last.
My lost love under the sea.
Dorothy, save me.

The day was breaking
Outside. Footprints in
The snow… Not again!

Thought I have escaped.
The curse of the Internet!
They know where I am.

There is no escape.
I shave my beard looking in
The mirror. That’s it!

That’s it! The demons
Are acting on a par with
The government!

They’re here to harvest
Our citizens. Why am
I still pretending?

And Dorothy is
Their agent. I stop shaving
And wipe the razor.

She infected me
With thanatophobia.
Sweet dreams, Dorothy…

Better not take the
Train this time. They’re everywhere.
Don’t trust anyone.

There’ll be no escape
When the dark man comes. The Earth’s
Their inheritance.

I go to the cops.
The enemy within me
Tells me to do so.

Do you have the time?
I’ve got a story to tell
About dead beauty.

I ask for a pen
And a big stack of paper.
I’ll write a report.

They get their report.
This night has a thousand eyes.
So let them have it.

I include weird signs
And bizarre incantations
In this new story.

I write until this
Chalice is empty. It’s done!
The Black Testament.

For all I know they
Hid my little black book somewhere
In a frozen ship…

I know it by heart,
So let me be your darkness.
Feel the poet’s pain.

– Oleg Hasanov

February 13, 2022

Michelle Moroses (USA)
BLOOD SOUP

Michelle Moroses is an undergraduate student at Emerson College. She is on the management team for The Emerson Review and enjoys dogwatching and Wikipedia rabbit holes.

I’m making blood soup.
I’m letting a lot of blood out for it.
Enough to feed an army.

Here we are in the blue bathroom.
Cotton candy blue.

I will miss you when you leave me.
I’ll miss your oven mitts, your
garlic stained hands, your paring knife, the way you
separate skin from bone
the same way god must have separated man out from under his own flesh.

I will miss you even though you hurt me. This is the stupid thing, the part where the dinner guests you invited over get to clutch their full bellies and laugh. When they do, I will excuse myself to go out to the yard and beat the feeling back violently, with the biggest stick I can find.

It doesn’t work. It never works. My love is not so easily killed as my body could be. You wanted both of them, together, in a way you could consume. I’m afraid I’m not going to taste very good.

Nevertheless you want me, and I want you.
And I am fully clothed in the bathtub,
And the water has been shut off for days
yet the tub is filling up.
you’re making blood soup.

Michael Mulvihill (Ireland)
WRITER’S HEAD ON A STICK

Michael Mulvihill was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1978. He eventually, in his late teens, became a bookworm completing degrees up to the Master’s Level in Addiction Studies, Psychology, Psychoanalysis, and Social Sciences. His initial fictional work was surreal short stories of horror which have been featured numerously in Black Petals, an online horror science fiction zine. He branched out to write an apocalyptic, post-Soviet horror novel, Siberian Hellhole, which was translated and published in Georgia. His latest novel, Syriacide, features The Syrian War. He is an avid reader of history and is fascinated by world events, South Africa, the USSR, and the philosophical idea of a dystopian society. At the moment he is writing a dystopian novel. An avid martial artist and film buff, he trains constantly in Kenpo Karate and loves to also relax whilst watching films.

They used to shoot the messenger,
But this horde wanted gore,
A torture and a killing from the days of yore,
A piece were writ that had too much grit,
It told truth,
Stung a few living demons that wanted blood,
And thus was vowed there shall be blood,
Off went the writer’s hands thrown to starving dogs,
Plucked out of sockets went his pair of eyes,
Knee-capped by a shotgun as a chainsaw started on,
When all was done his body remains was fed to crocodiles in a zoo,
As this horde, this cult of death,
Raised their flag outside a mansion,
And placed the writer’s head on a stick,
A thick stick yes,
But none the less a stick,
The hurly-burly was done,
What was achieved in this?

Stephanie Ellis (England)
COMMUNION

Stephanie Ellis writes dark speculative prose and poetry and has been published in a variety of magazines and anthologies. Her poetry has been published in the Horror Writers Association’s Poetry Showcase Volume 6 and her latest stories include Asylum of Shadows (Demain Publishing’s Short Sharp Shocks series), and Snowbooks industrial horror anthology, Thread of the Infinite. She is co-editor and contributor at The Infernal Clock and also co-editor of Trembling With Fear, HorrorTree.com’s online magazine. She is an affiliate member of the HWA.

Website: https://stephanieellis.org

It’s important, the detail.

She sat, as I recall
Small, a doll, eyes daring
Beyond caring of the future

And?

She wore trainers, to run
Said she’d always been running
From men like me

Men like you?

Men like her father
Forever after possession
Paternal monsters, always hunting

And did you hunt her?

No, no need. She knew I would wait
I’d baited her, held the line,
Sedated her, reeled her in

And then?

I measured the length of her, the stretch of her
As communed without communion
Shrouded in scarlet

But you see her still?

Yes, she sits at my shoulder
My angel, my perfect angel
And she whispers, Daddy…

Norbert Góra (Poland)
CONCUBINE OF NECROSIS

Norbert Góra is a 29-year-old poet and writer from Poland. He is the author of more than 100 poems which have been published in poetry anthologies in the USA, the UK, India, Nigeria, Kenya, and Australia.

One-to-one trysts, which were too weird
to understand how those feelings appeared,
the light of beauty met the darkness of eyesore,
innocence tasted the filthy bitterness of gore.

In the arms of death she quickly forgets
about the sort of things that can upset,
she worships the smell of decaying meat
when the slimy tongue touches her teat.

Longing washes her body during the day,
at night she loves the carcass, to whom she obeys,
infatuated and blissful, the concubine of necrosis
submerges in the source of lifeless hypnosis.

With each grain of time her face becomes paler,
brighter than the fabric kept in the hands of a tailor,
with every sunset, such a visible difference
between them disappears, fatal severance.

Kevin J. Kennedy (Scotland)
THE CURSE OF THE INTERNET

Kevin J. Kennedy is a horror author & editor from Scotland. He is best known for his 100 Word Horrors & The Horror Collection anthology series. He is also the man behind the Collected Horror Shorts series and an editor on multiple other anthologies.

He co-authored You Only Get One Shot & Screechers and has two solo collections available called Dark Thoughts & Vampiro and Other Strange Tales of the Macabre.

His stories also appear in a wealth of anthologies from a variety of publishers.

He lives in a small town in Scotland, with his wife and his two little cats, Carlito and Ariel.

Keep up to date with new releases or contact Kevin through his website: www.kevinjkennedy.co.uk

In a world where internet is king,
We often forget it’s just a thing.
It takes over lives every day,
We had no idea it would get in the way.
It seemed like a marvel at first,
That was until the bubble burst.
Our future is grim at best,
Leaving social media and apps the real test.
No one knew it would own us,
All the info seemed like a bonus.
We are zombies in front of a screen,
No one’s internet history clean.
Mankind was destined for annihilation,
The machines an abhorrent violation.
We can never turn off and go to bed,
Not to worry. Not long till you’re dead.

Vyacheslav Kotov (Russia)
MIDNIGHT

Vyacheslav Kotov wears many hats. He is a poet, writer, translator, screenwriter, film director, animator, songwriter and singer, and also the one who you can call the most popular catchword of today, a YouTuber. Vyacheslav is an award winner of several film festivals including in particular Dollar Baby Film Festival Russia where he won second place and audience choice award. He is the author of several songs for animation series released by Riki Studio (creators of Kikoriki series. His YouTube channel was given a Silver Creator Award. Vyacheslav is also a representative of The New School of Translation and Interpretation. He has more than a thousand translated films to his credit.

Midnight. Alley. Victim. Knife.
Struggle. Stab. The dusk of life.
Thunder. Scream. “No! Oh, my God!”
A rain of tears and a rain of blood.

No one near to make a call,
Only me and him, that’s all.
It is over. Quick. Too bad.
He has left and I am dead…

Paulo Palz (Nigeria)
THE RIPPER

Paulo Palz is a B. Tech in Polymer Science and Textile Technology and is currently a 300 level student of Biochemistry who hails from the southern part of Nigeria. He has written many poems and has also been recently featured in the anthology Nightfall and Other Poems.

Do yourself a favour
When he hurts you
Do not come for a hug
My arms would be tied
When he abandons you
Do not seek refuge in me
I would have gone abroad
When he despises you
Do not come for my love
I would be short of feelings
My love has gone sour
Bled out cold and dead
My humanity’s been shut
I have gone all black and grey
My heart seems to be missing
Emotions are long gone
I have accepted grief and pain
Sadness and misery now clothe me
Love’s been sent out of my window
When he abandons you
Do not ask for clemency
Mercy is for the weak
I am ruthless now
Even the French call me
La Bête dans l’ombre
My penchant is your blood
The scent and taste of it
Rolling down my tongue
Your flesh stuck in my teeth
All I see is darkness
For I am the ripper

Linda M. Crate (USA)
YOU BAKED THIS PIE

Linda M. Crate’s poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. She has ten published chapbooks: A Mermaid Crashing Into Dawn (Fowlpox Press, June 2013), Less Than A Man (The Camel Saloon, January 2014), If Tomorrow Never Comes (Scars Publications, August 2016), My Wings Were Made to Fly (Flutter Press, September 2017), splintered with terror (Scars Publications, January 2018), More Than Bone Music (Clare Songbirds Publishing House, March 2019), the samurai (Yellow Arrowing Publishing, October 2020), Follow the Black Raven (Alien Buddha Publishing, July 2021), Unleashing the Archers (Guerilla Genesis Press, August 2021), and Hecate’s Child (Alien Buddha Publishing, November 2021) and three micro-chapbooks Heaven Instead (Origami Poems Project, May 2018), moon mother (Origami Poems Project, March 2020), and & so I believe (Origami Poems Project, April 2021). She is also the author of the novel, Phoenix Tears (Czykmate Books, June 2018).

you thought you were the
only predator,
you thought wrong;

the only thing that will be music
to my ears is the beating of your heart
and the quickening of your breath as
you run out of places to hide—

tried to give you peace,
but you wanted a war;

so i left behind the magic of me
that whispers in flowers and light to
adorn myself in the battle armor
of my wrath and rage—

here i am fangs and claws out,
i will rip you to ruin with a smile;

after all you told me i should be happier—

i hope you like the apples,
you baked this pie of misery.

Sam M. Phillips (Australia)
COVERED

Sam M. Phillips is the co-founder of Zombie Pirate Publishing, producing short story anthologies and helping emerging writers. His own work has appeared in dozens of anthologies and magazines such as Full Metal Horror, Flash Fiction Addiction, World War Four, and Dastaan World Magazine. He lives in the green valleys of northern New South Wales, Australia, and enjoys reading, walking, and playing drums in the death metal band Decryptus. You can find out more about his books and publishing at www.zombiepiratepublishing.com. He is also a prolific poet and his poetry can be read on his blog

www.bigconfusingwords.wordpress.com.

A light source,
I force
Myself up from a deep pit,
Sit on the edge of a new world,
I hate it,
Want to be hurled
Back down into the pit,
Grit my teeth
And bear it,
Bury myself beneath
The soil,
I toil
To be free,
But now I see
The light,
I fight
To be covered once more.

Maxim Kabir (Ukraine)
LANDSCAPE WITH A TOWER

Translated by Oleg Hasanov

Maxim Kabir is a Russian-language horror writer and poet based in the Ukraine. He has penned eight novels. His latest novel, Wet Worlds, was co-written with Dmitry Kostyukevich. His short stories are included in various genre anthologies. He also has eight collections of poetry under his belt. Maxim’s poetry has been published in various countries of the CIS, the USA, Georgia, Israel, and other countries.

She woke up in a casemate of a tower, which had been built at the seaside by the Venetians hundreds of years ago.

The concrete mole was ablaze with lights in the night. The ships were cuddling up to it, like the young pigs to their mother. The nets were drying. The guest flags were droopy. The fishermen had hastened home to shuffle out of their oilskins, to snuggle up to their wives, to have dreams about the sea at the speed of 5/6 knots.

The resort city was pouring neon into the water. The trattorias and bars were noisy. But here, at the anchorage, it was peace and quiet. And the moonlight was dancing on the solar panels. The moorings were creaking, the waves were lapping, and a Smart TV was broadcasting a football match. Denmark vs. Czech Republic. The yacht’s owner drew himself a glass of Chianti. He fried a tuna. He checked the weather report. He sat back and cast a casual glance at the tower.

And above it, above this monolith, a shape rose up. She came into the world; she emerged from the casemates like a two-horned moon. The yachtsman was looking stunned, as the horrible giant was walking across the sky, going down the invisible stairs to the sea. The glass fell to the deck.

Her stomping hoofs went through the motorboats and yachts, through the cutters, schooners and yawls, and in a flash she was on the ground. And the city began screaming. The stupefied yachtsman looked, as the beach was blazing and the marina was being filled with blood. The Danes lost two-one. But there was neither sense nor the viewers to appreciate the tally of the game.

The tally was a shadow over the promenade.

The tally was the victorious clatter of hoofs.

And in the morning the sun crawled from the east to stare at the dead gulf. The yachtsman sliced his wrist with a piece of glass, and on the concrete of the mole he scrawled, “She woke up in a casemate of a tower.”

Yevgeny Abramovich (Belarus)
IN HER ROOM

Translated by Oleg Hasanov

Yevgeny Abramovich was born and grew up in the city of Novopolotsk in the North of Belarus. He is a civil engineer by training. Since 2014 he has lived and worked in the city of Minsk. And since about that time he has written fiction. He works primarily in the horror and science fiction genres. His short stories and novellas have been published in the anthologies, The Scariest Book, Aelita, and magazines DARKER and RedRum. In 2018, he wrote his debut war zombie horror novel, Cutthroats.

In her room
Under zero gravity
I’m drowning in the whirlpool
In her room
Whispering biting words
Stroking her hair
In her room
Her hair
Smells so good
Of lavender
Soon it’ll smell of incense
We’ll all be there one day
And nothing at all
I want
Everything will stop
In her room
In the closets
She has her blouses
The boys are screaming
Through the fortochka
Doesn’t respond
No time for that
Life’s dissolving
In her room
Like cascades
Strewn all over
Oh, this hair
Her hair
And the ice floes
The eyes are pretending to be
With dark red
Cobwebs
Half-lidded
They do not close
The living are pretending
To be dead
And vice versa
They are pretending
The doors and fortochkas
Are closing
What used to live and grow
Is decaying
With a blue fingernail
Her little fingers
The boys are screaming
The boys are screaming
Motionless
Her little fingers
Hiding her nakedness
In the skirtalls
If you can love
Then love desperately
If you can float
Under zero gravity
In her room
In her room
Any vulgarity
And all the liberties
In her room
In her room

Oleg Hasanov (Russia)
THE DEVIL OF THE SANDS

Oleg Hasanov is a writer and translator, and also the founding editor of the international literary project, Horror Without Borders. He lives in the city of Chelyabinsk, where men are so tough that they light cigarettes off meteorites.

Don’t believe in what you see, or madness will creep into your soul
      like grains of sand, and waves of dunes will hide your tracks.
              The thirst for blood has led him to you – keep going,
              don’t look back, or you are doomed to be imprisoned,
                   to be swallowed by this ghostly world of dreams…
                    Your caravan vanished in the desert of deception,
                            taken by storms blowing for fifty days,
                          these blinding, suffocating walls of dust.
                                       And the fine sand castle,
                                          which you have built,
                                              will now become
                                                    your home
                                                       forever.

Michael Mulvihill (Ireland)
LIFE BLOOD

Michael Mulvihill was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1978. He eventually, in his late teens, became a bookworm completing degrees up to the Master’s Level in Addiction Studies, Psychology, Psychoanalysis, and Social Sciences. His initial fictional work was surreal short stories of horror which have been featured numerously in Black Petals, an online horror science fiction zine. He branched out to write an apocalyptic, post-Soviet horror novel, Siberian Hellhole, which was translated and published in Georgia. His latest novel, Syriacide, features The Syrian War. He is an avid reader of history and is fascinated by world events, South Africa, the USSR, and the philosophical idea of a dystopian society. At the moment he is writing a dystopian novel. An avid martial artist and film buff, he trains constantly in Kenpo Karate and loves to also relax whilst watching films.

In the meantime,
Take of my life blood,
Drink it whole,
It is all I got to give,
You have asked for everything,
It is there with a noose.

Laura McGlashan (England)
INHERITANCE

Laura McGlashan is a mature creative writing student, mother, and lover of written word. Laura is a poet and passionate about bringing a raw renewal of energy to creative nonfiction.

At five I am freckles and pigtails.
I inherit Marvin Gaye from my mother.
My father disappears the way cotton candy does when a tongue turns itself inside out.

At Twelve I am Donnell Jones.
I drink a fifth of Vodka and find my father between the sheets of other people’s beds.
Do you wanna love me?

At Sixteen I am DMX.
I am sewn back together after she’s born.
My mother’s indifference tastes a lot like the colour a fist paints itself when it unclenches.
Is you with me or what?

At Twenty I am Wu Tang Clan.
People who love me give my father’s violence back to me in mirrors.
Bring the motherfuckin ruckus.

At Thirty I am a mixtape from the 90’s.
I have cellotaped my inheritance to my collar bone.
I am 2 parts Htown, and one part sin. Isn’t sin just sagacity anyway?
Gimme some good love.
Same song, different headphones.

Artyom Maksul (Belarus)
NOSFERATU

Artyom Maksul is a translator of English and Scandinavian languages. He founded the Leo De Nord publishing house and is the creator of the music project Alhor Ern. His hobbies include music, history, Viking Age re-enactment, and martial arts.

Babe, can you recall who I am?
Do you remember who we are?
Standing inside of this burial vault,
Watching for another bleeding sunset
With ravenous, lucid emerald eyes.

Dense twilight’s creeping,
As a black wounded panther,
To the strong orphaned
And unprotected huts of men
Beyond all its nocturnal power
And we will follow it

We’re Nosferatu,
Infants of the best-forgotten,
Beasts of the howling wilds
None can’t recall where we have come from.
I know nothing, but my hunger
Of disrupted human flesh.

Can you smell their fear,
It’s awesome, like a drug,
May you perceive the taste of gore,
So delicious, so eternal?
Upon our paly iced-blue lips?

And black and arcane constellations
Always shine on our way.
Light has come from the dusty pleats
Of our moonlit cloaks.
That is a path,
Per aspera ad astra…

Would you be there,
Would you stay here with me,
When they come,
Armed to the teeth,
To wash our immortality away?

Because if they fail, we can say to them,
“Join us…”

Alexis Child (Canada)
WHAT KILLED ALEISTER CROWLEY?

Alexis Child hails from Toronto, Canada; home to dreams and nightmares. She worked at a Call Crisis Center befriending demons of the mind that roam freely amongst her writings. Alexis once lived with a Calico-cat child sleuthing all that went bump in the night and is haunted by the memory of her cat. She also had a small measure of underground success with her gothic rock and darkwave bands in the past. Besides having rare mystical experiences she hopes are not just short circuits in the brain, she continues to write dark poetry, starving in the garret with her muse. A starving child is a frightful sight. A starving vampire is even worse. Please donate non-perishable food items and B-negative blood (and make it a double!).

Alexis’ fiction has been featured in Danse Macabre, Schlock, Screams of Terror, and U.K.‘s Dark of Night Magazine.

Her poetry has been featured in numerous online and print publications, including Aphelion, Black Petals, Blood Moon Rising, The Horror Zine, ParABnormal Magazine, The Sirens Call and elsewhere. Her first collection of poetry, Devil in the Clock, a dark and sinister slice of the macabre, is available on Amazon.

Visit her website: http://www.angelfire.com/poetry/alexischild

He summoned Pan until the darkness of
chaos appeared, or a demonic counterfeit
in vague and monstrous shapes. Crouching
naked in a corner, stripped of magician’s
robes, he is haggard and wild-eyed, gibbering
in tongues; chained to the spirit of fear, a mere
reflection of his former commanding self.

He descends into the deeper emptiness of
the abyss, appearing to look upon the
sleeping ocean, waiting for it to awaken,
hoping to hear the bell of the God’s realm,
yet knows the Old Ones are locked away,
senile from neglect, dead or dying in a
labyrinth of sewers rotting beneath the city.

Still in a trance, the mystic departs to
the domain of the pagan dead, stars
looking downwards with a holy glance.

Terry Miller (USA)
UNHOLY UNION

Terry Miller lives in Portsmouth, Ohio. His work has been featured in Sanitarium Magazine, Devolution Z, Jitter, Rhysling Anthology 2017, Poetry Quarterly, Siren’s Call Ezine, The Horror Tree’s Trembling With Fear, Organic Ink Vol. I, the Dark Drabble Anthology Series from Black Hare Press, and O Unholy Night In Deathlehem.

She speaks syrupy sweet
Working a serpent tongue
Words of velvet, indiscreet,
In her unholy song are sung.

In praise of Cernunnos,
Her lust inwardly writhes.
His legend the forest knows,
Immune to the Reaper’s scythe.

His scent upon the Autumn air,
A pheromonal presence calls.
She draws near his body bare,
Submits to his immortal thrall.

Bless the night as two are one,
Otherworldly creatures praise;
For unto them’s conceived a son
Destined to set the world ablaze.

Victor Cabitchi (Moldova)
MIRROR

Victor Cabitchi is a young author from Chisinau, Moldova. He writes both adult and teen horror in Russian and English. Victor got his Bachelor’s degree from the American University in Bulgaria before deciding to come back and settle in his home city. He currently works as a project manager in a translation company.

1
At the back of the antique shop,
Covered by an inch-thick cloth,
Stands a mirror on the floor,
With a story to be told.
Splendid shapes of dark wood frame,
Surface just a little pale,
Couple o’ scratches on the side,
As a sign of years gone by.

2
It was made in the 1800s,
In a studio in London,
Its creator, a young man,
Went by name of John McPhan.
At the age of twenty-one,
All at once he fell in love.
John’s sweetheart, Susie Laurie—
Pure example of grace and glory.
Happy way over the moon,
Thoughts of marriage coming soon.
Little the young John knew
Of a trouble to ensue.
On the most important question,
Susie’s harsh words left him staring.
Disbelief, digestion, anger,
Waved through as he heard the answer.
Susie chose another man
Plenty richer than McPhan,
With his own estate in Hampton
And a title of a baron.
John himself was not a beggar,
But could not do any better
Than contributing his fair share,
To McPhan’s mirror affair.
It is worth to point out,
The affair was thriving stout,
McPhan’s mirror’s getting praised,
Well beyond the banks of the Thames.

3
Time has passed, the wounds healed,
Or at least so John believed.
After Susie left him hopeless,
Work became his only focus.
Shredded pieces of his heart,
Like a mirror broken hard,
Just could not be glued together,
To forget and live, no matter.
Once, on a sunny Tuesday morning,
Servant walked into the building,
Handing John a sealed letter.
Stunned young man has smelled lavender.
Letter was from Mrs. Leister.
(“Who the hell is Mrs. Leister?”)
Took some time to realize,
Susie’s tidy writing style.
She was hoping he’s alright
And does not hold any grudge.
As a token of their friendship,
Susie asked for his attention.
She would like to get a mirror,
Modern, with the use of silver,
And a frame made out of oak,
To be put on the bedroom floor.
Knowing of his skills and passion,
Of the family reputation,
Susie simply couldn’t figure,
Who else could assist her better.
He also found a ten-pound note
Attached to the back of the envelope.
Twisting money in his hands,
John did not know what to say.
Little thought, one of a kind,
Crossed his mind time after time.
Susie didn’t even come in person,
Instead sending out her lofty servant.
Strange enough, this hurt the worst,
And reverted the outburst.
Feelings all came back to life,
Flames in his soul were burning bright.
He squeezed the letter real tight,
Thought to throw it outside.
Then take the servant by his sleeves,
And kick him out on the street.
But John managed to calm down,
As something else came to his mind.
Cryptic smile, brightened cheeks.
He requested time: two weeks.

4
After a few days, the mirror was ready,
But a small thing was making John edgy.
For this task he needed a full moon,
The suitable night was going to come soon.
The clock has finally struck midnight.
The room was illuminated with candle light.
John pulled out a leather-bound book,
Opened it carefully, taking a look.
He already knew the procedure by heart.
Old pages were almost falling apart.
He barely noticed, doing his part.
The ritual was about to start.
Procedure was simple: a few special words,
Then adding some blood of his afterwards.
Blood drops were dripping onto the silver,
As John held his hand over the mirror.

5
Susie loved the mirror all along,
Though she couldn’t enjoy it for long,
Quarrels and arguments with her husband,
Soon filled Mrs. Leister’s life in abundance.
Half a year later an evening newspaper
Reported a tragedy in the Leister estate,
Daniel Leister lost his mind
And brutally murdered his beloved wife.
It happened as she was preparing for dinner,
The door slowly opened to let in a figure.
The last thing Susie saw in the mirror,
Was the steel axe in the hands of her killer.
Blood sprayed all over the silvery surface,
It drained from the walls and the velvet curtains.
But the drops that landed onto the mirror.
A few seconds later mysteriously disappeared.
This was the start of a long wicked journey,
Resulting from the revenge getting thorny.
Incidentally John created a pure evil,
A monster that would later affect many people.

Accidents, murders, unfortunate cases,
Followed the mirror and its sinister traces.
With different men falling prey,
To the object with blood in its DNA.

6
Many years have since gone by,
To get us to this point in time,
As we’re back to the antique shop,
With a mirror draped in cloth.
The mirror waits, and waits, and waits
To reveal its darkest traits,
Dusty, innocent and humble,
Not a sign of any trouble.
Suddenly the doorbell rings,
A young couple’s walking in.
“Welcome to the store of mine.”
Salesman greets them with a smile.
Man and woman look around,
They’re curious, all smiles.
“Honey, look at these fantastic dolls!”
“Better check out the old-fashioned bowls…”
Slowly they’re moving forward
And approaching the corner.
“What’s out there, I humbly wonder?”
The man points to the cover.
“Vintage mirror? Must be cool,
Any chance to have a look?”
Cloth is falling as it’s twisted.
The mirror meets its newest victims.
Both just stare in admiration,
For the old-school art creation.
“Chris, it’s fabulous,” she mutters.
“Likely costs a ton of money…”
“Excuse me, sir, how much is that?
A hundred bucks? That’s not too bad…”
And so the mirror found a home,
In the house of Chris and Jane Bown.

7
The hallway seems like a nice place,
Lots of darkness to embrace.
The Bowns’ house is not as big
As some mansions where the mirror’s been.

The elation of new owners,
Can’t be hidden any longer.
Though not so much over the mirror,
As it is over each other.
Chris grabs Jane’s waist and pulls her close,
She kisses him on tiptoe.
Caress, fondness, true affection,
Their young eyes are filled with passion.
Nothing new for the old mirror,
If they knew it, they would shiver.
Their feelings will soon change,
To make Chris get rid of Jane.
They’re not alone, by the way,
There’s one more actor in this play,
Grumbling somewhere on the floor,
It was Marty, the pug dog.
Marty isn’t too excited,
Furthermore, he’s looking frightened.
As the mirror got unpacked,
The pug was barking in attack.
“Come on, Marty, don’t be jealous!”
Chris taps him lightly on the withers.
“You’re still our favorite, remember?
Be a good boy, cool your temper.”

8
In the middle of that night,
The moonlight made the hallway bright,
As Marty timidly appeared,
To examine the weird mirror.
It looked so ordinarily normal,
That Marty thought his feelings wronged him.
But then the surface’s gotten smeared
And the reflection disappeared.
Instead the mirror started showing,
The scenes of horror that were going
To happen soon in their house.
The pug was trembling like a mouse.
At one point Marty’s had enough,
He couldn’t even dare to bark.
At the monster in the mirror.
He ran away and softly whined in fear.

9
Early next morning there was a quarrel,
Something not particularly normal,
In the family of the Bowns.
Marty witnessed it – and frowned.
The quarrel kicked off out of nothing.
Silly reasons to start fighting
Chris said something, Jane fought back,
Payback followed by payback.
It happened in front of the mirror, of course,
When Chris was hectically preparing for work.
Tying his tie, straightening sleeves.
“More will be coming,” Marty perceived.

10
The following weeks things got much worse,
Family atmosphere becoming adverse.
The Bowns have now started sleeping apart,
And barely talking, with ice-cold hearts.
Poor Marty, disturbed and confused,
Had no idea what he could do.
Meanwhile he tried not to go to the hallway,
Scared of what he could see in his pathway.
Marty loved his masters deeply,
He wasn’t going to concede so easily.
One day a thought creeped into his mind,
He hoped it’d help leave it all behind.

11
As the darkness slowly covered,
Like a blanket of black colour,
Every corner of the building.
In the hall there stood the villain.
Things were going just as planned,
The mirror had the upper hand.
It could smell frustration brewing,
Soon their life will turn to ruins.
Suddenly a silhouette appeared
In the hallway by the mirror.
The pug entered the moonshine.
Didn’t he have enough last time?
The surface started to get murky,
But Marty acted fast and quirky.
He walked past it without a whine,
Then barked and snuck right in behind.
The pug looked up, let out a grump,
He barked again, and then he jumped.
The mirror shook, leaned slowly forward,
Then it smashed against the floor boldly.
Bits of debris scattered over,
As the blood of former owners,
Leaked and drowned all in between,
Made it look like a crime scene.
Anxious whispers filled the hall.
A hand reached out for the wall,
Flipped the light switch. “Oh my, whoa…”
“Oh my goodness, Marty. No!”
“So much blood…” exhaled Chris,
“I’m afraid there’s no chance…”
Jane gazed at the dreadful trace,
Tears running down her face.
Chris pulled her close and tightly pressed,
Jane buried her face in his broad chest.
In this moment full of sorrow,
They felt how much they needed each other.
Both couldn’t say another word,
As something smallish, brisk and blurred,
Jumped at them from the right side,
And the tears quickly dried.
“Marty, buddy, you alright?”
Chris excitingly blurted out,
As both were patting the dog gladly,
The pug itself looked more than happy.
Jane examined Marty gently,
“There’s nothing on his belly,
Not a single cut or wound…”
Chris raised his head and looked around.
“Then where did all this blood come from?
Nothing bar the mirror broke.
It couldn’t come from there, right?
Looks like a boxing ring after a fight…”
Jane took her husband by the elbow,
“Let’s clean it up, then let it go,
Marty is fine, that’s all that matters,
Who cares what really happened?”
Chris nodded in agreement.
There was no point in finding reasons.
Chris didn’t know, nor did his wife,
How bravely Marty saved their lives.
Bits of the mirror ended up in a trash can,
Soon the floor was clean again.
The Bowns couldn’t help but give a hug
To their lovely naughty pug.
The pug who managed to conclude,
The story of a long-term feud,
That had spanned for over a hundred years,
Full of deadly, cruel affairs.

Gary Hascal (USA)
I ONCE BELIEVED

Gary Hascal is retired and living in California. He was born in Ohio and lived the majority of his life in Texas. Became a pastry chef specializing in French pastry and switched to mainframe computer operations, programming and Oracle Database Management.

I once bought the story was a trusting fool
Believed right prevailed and my generation was cool
Fell into the trap of being controlled
Believed the world could be made whole.

Born after the War and worldwide depression
Government propaganda made an impression
Spiritually seeking on the interior
Moon landing made us feel superior.

Music expressed our deepest yearning
A new world full of youthful churning
Believed we were special big changes coming
Long hair, miniskirts and guitars strumming.

Drugs to relax some to find God
Woodstock ideals girls with hot bods
Love grass helped us keep it together
Braving the storm through all types of weather.

Lost our way preferred seeking riches
Abandoned enlightenment for profitable niches
Beatles and Hendrix morphed into Rap
Music became twerking repetitive crap.

Telephones became mobile and video recorders
Camera, Internet and Siri to place orders
Life’s essential device all in one place
Everything we do became simple to trace.

Climate propaganda kids think life will cease
United Nations manipulated tyranny increased
Life to be made unlivable and worse
Divide and conquer to destroy us on purpose.

Blacks and Whites cannot live together
Both forgetting that they are brothers
Hatred of Whites and festering vengeance
A future together of this there’s no chance.

Young take delight tearing down history
Soon they’ll forget what made us free
Brain damaged purposely by government
Kids grow up to become compliant.

The goal is one government for entire world
People will be forced to do as they’re told
No possessions or countries like Lennon said
Most of the world’s people will soon be dead.

Remaining slobs will play Hunger Games
Future generations by genetic gains
Humans join AI become the Cyborg
Through Hive Mind fetus umbilical cord.

Privacy and joy will be eliminated
Prescription drugs to keep all sated
Truth will become the first casualty
People will be told “there’s nothing to see”.

My hope is that humans will wake up
Take back their freedom with any luck
Powerful people want total control
They’ll stop at nothing to take your soul.

Stephanie Ellis (England)
DO YOU HAVE THE TIME?

Stephanie Ellis writes dark speculative prose and poetry and has been published in a variety of magazines and anthologies. Her poetry has been published in the Horror Writers Association’s Poetry Showcase Volume 6 and her latest stories include Asylum of Shadows (Demain Publishing’s Short Sharp Shocks series), and Snowbooks industrial horror anthology, Thread of the Infinite. She is co-editor and contributor at The Infernal Clock and also co-editor of Trembling With Fear, HorrorTree.com’s online magazine. She is an affiliate member of the HWA.

Website: https://stephanieellis.org

Excuse me, do you have the time?
You asked, in such a timid way
Yes, I said
And you looked, you gave me a look
Which I took and fashioned it for my own
To be sewn into a mask
Reflecting back at you

Oh, you want the numbers
Digital or analogue, GMT or PST
Or even PTSD perhaps
Minutes, seconds, hours
Ticking away like a bomb about to blow
Take one, Take two
And… action

Oops, sorry, you didn’t like that
My little joke I see
Stoked the fear in your eyes
Until the bell tolled the hour
And you smiled at the thought
Of a church nearby and safety
…and escape

You don’t have the time, I said
Snapping the trap shut
Listen, God has given you a clue
Let’s count together
And decide together
How long I shall take…

Namiq Sadiyev (Azerbaijan)
THE DAY WAS BREAKING OUTSIDE

Translated by Oleg Hasanov

Namiq Sadiyev was born in 1997 in Azerbaijan. He graduated from a technical institute and works as an engineer. He has been writing dark fiction and poetry since his school years.

The day was breaking outside
Why does everything happen so soon?
I’m looking at my hands and I see
The red glimmer of our blood

Your body was nearby
But you weren’t beside me
Hang on, wait, and I’ll be there
Here in body, and there in spirit

We’re lying in the sea of blood
It’s a pity you’re dead, and I’m still alive
You can’t see any of this, but you wait
I’ll come to you to say how beautiful you are in this wide sea

Our beginning was so beautiful
And so beautifully it all came to an end
This lovely beginning
Of our sad end…

Fiona Cameron (Wales)
ME AND LINDOW MAN

Fiona Cameron works as a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Bangor University, where she convenes modules in poetry, transformative writing and children’s fiction. Her first full length collection of poetry, Bendigo, came out from Knives, Forks and Spoons Press in 2016. Her second collection, She May Be Radon (also with Knives, Forks and Spoons Press) came out in May 2021. Her research interests include: eco-poetry, the domestic, and children’s fiction.

not really now not any more

you’re still here

I’ve learned to accept you
I suppose

as a fragmentary friend moving in sheets of time

you weren’t such a great friend back in ’87 when you wouldn’t let me sleep
pushed your way into the stories I wrote at school
pushed your way into my dreams

or any time in the early 90s
when I wanted to dance or write or sing

without you

or your dumb head in
my peripheral vision

’84 was your big year
they unburied you

the news – not your preferred medium
I know
I know
I know
too grabby too fast
they gave you a stupid name
I get it
It was demeaning
the timing was all off

you were are all over the place

but oh! that coverage!
made up for lost time right?

but really
I know that drama is your natural home
that’s where we found each other
when we came face to face in ’87
a rain slashed school afternoon trees fighting the charged air
beyond bleak windows
educational school TV wheeled in on a trolley
countdown clock to

your head

it appeared in the dark garden of a TV child at teatime
a child like me
your bent form rose off TV marshland
turning then sloping toward the TV house
the TV windows and
up close on the glass
and black now black

you reared up in my imagination
did you have any idea what you were doing?

those terrible fragments lodging
here there and everywhere

your brown leather crease face
shiny and worn
your propensity for surprise
for slime
a love of black peat and your sticky tar heart
beating soft
and low

I know you followed me home in my
green raincoat and willies
I saw you in the storm strewn park
you came to Brownies on cold pastel nights

you followed me
followed me into relationships
reminded me I was untethered from the whole

what whole I’d ask?

why couldn’t you show me the big picture?

today you’re often in the break room at work – you sit behind the door
you like to remind me that this 60s build has a certain type of root structure
a foot in earth
that’s absolutely nothing to do with concrete and steel foundations
but I’m too tired

and

you’re out there in the audience
more often than I’m comfortable with

and yes

you’ve walked beside me on other continents
teeth chattering
trying to join in with the now
you’re excitable but I know you prefer home turf

and
you’ll pop-up on Twitter tomorrow
you’re nothing if not adaptable

and
next week: back home in the England that was Wales
LlŷnDdu / Lindow / Black Lake

oh!

you uncover the night at midday

too many unexpected revivals
celebratory unburials

you’re turning somewhere in unseen versions of now
in some sort of syncopation of limbs

urgh!

you’re a broken time sequence!

and
you’ll pop-up twice on Twitter tomorrow
I know it

or
in a book about the low gradient circular walks of Cheshire

or

in the corner of my mind as I fall asleep

you’re parting the chaos of the reeds

and watching

Til Kumari Sharma (Nepal)
LOST LOVE

Til Kumari Sharma was born in Hile. She is from West Nepal. She got her MA in English Literature from University Kirtipur Kathmandu. She published her first book, Glossary of English Literary Terms, in 2006. She has published over 6,000 poems and other literary works.

Everybody has lost love
That isn’t genuine and pure.

Lost love should be forgotten.
Lost love is hidden and unidentified.

True love is identified and glory.
One is devoted, the other one is doing love to another.

That isn’t true love and that is fake love.
Lost love isn’t genuine love.

It is fake and showy love.
Lost love isn’t love at all.

To remember it is bitter and it’s a torture to all.
Lost love is nothing but death.

Paulo Palz (Nigeria)
DARKNESS

Paulo Palz is a B. Tech in Polymer Science and Textile Technology and is currently a 300 level student of Biochemistry who hails from the southern part of Nigeria. He has written many poems and has also been recently featured in the anthology Nightfall and Other Poems.

There is in me a darkness
Fighting through my veins
A wilderness that once blossomed
A dark flowered garden
Its beauty is inseparable from pain
Hatred so deep in my heart
For all who left a scar

There is in me a darkness
A dark nameless place
Of recessions beyond
Evil so deep in my heart
I was once lost in time
Now torn into pieces
A deep mystery to be explored
Not just a mere hole to be filled

Maxim Tsupkin (Russia)
DESCENDING INTO FLAMES

Maxim Tsupkin’s interest in extreme vocal sounds led him as a result to become a part of an underground metal band. But after its subsequent breakup, he didn’t start looking for other bands, but switched to making audiobooks instead, and his vocal manner left its imprint on his style of narration he uses in his audiobooks.

That’s why, though his vocalism is stuck on the enthusiast level, Maxim comes up from time to time with songs with his own lyrics and music, or he sets other authors’ lines to Creative Commons music.

For many years I’ve stood between the dark and light
For many years I’ve tried so hard to reach thy sun
Today I taste the demon’s blood and hear the angel’s cry
Today I take my final step towards the burning night

Descending into flames where I can find serenity
Descending into flames with no regret, no fear
Descending into flames, no hatred in my heart
Descending into flames, so bid farewell to me

For many years I’ve tried to be like you, oh like the rest
For many years I’ve fallen short, no spark of hope for me
Today I realize that I can’t find a path to Heaven’s Lord
Today I clearly see my road straight down to Hell’s Gate

Descending into flames in search for peace of mind
Descending into flames with no regret, no doubt
Descending into flames, no hatred in my heart
Descending into flames, erase me from your memory

This is the only choice left
For the soul already burnt
This is the only choice left
For the soul burnt to the core

Sayani Mukherjee (India)
GIFTS OF DOMESTICITY

Sayani Mukherjee is a budding writer and an ardent lover of literature hailing from Chandannagar, a former French colony in West Bengal. Currently, she is pursuing her Master’s in English literature from Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. Recently her writing has been published in the literary magazine of her current alma mater, and an international journal namely Fiction Niche. In her free time she likes to engage herself in the world of cinema, art and cooking.

Perhaps it’s hard to take a vow with the hands,
That once burnt in the squeaky gas fire.
Tea pots rusted with bitter clouds of seeping,
Once a gypsy visioned there a living hell fire.
Twitching eyes unfolded of fluttering black moths.
Roasted lips redden with brute-blades of smooches,
Her back now an exquisite cherry orchard,
buried with suppressed shrieks of happy conjugal.
All comes with gifts of domesticity, they say:
“Merely her figment of poppy dreams or
Signs of acute malady of witchcraft!”
resounded chatters thumped and stumped
Over barren wombs of nauseating petit deaths.
Yesterday onerous drops came with her gusty punch in which floated sanctity of rings.
Undone knobs, stranded curtains, cracked tubs,
Now pinned on a long traumatic gyre.

Andrew Kurtz (USA)
THE PORTAL

One of Andrew Kurtz’s greatest passions is horror. He enjoys watching movies, reading literature, and now writing stories.

He is a very new author and has three published works as of now: Dark Valentine Holiday Horror Collection: A Flash Fiction Anthology by Eleanor Merry, Books of Horror Community Anthology Volume 1 by R.J. Roles, and Scary Snippets: Valentine’s Edition.

His favorite authors are Stephen King, Clive Barker, H.P. Lovecraft, H.G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Richard Matheson.

https://www.amazon.com/author/splatter

I have a new invention,
It is opening dimensions.
I want to allow the monstrosities from out there,
To come to our world to destroy without any care.
Are they beings with many arms,
Or do they resemble animals found on farms?
Do they have more than one head,
Or eyes that are different shades of red?
Do they want to be worshiped as Gods,
And arrive here in life pods?
What language will they speak,
And will they appear very weak?
Will they be twenty feet tall,
Or the size of a ping pong ball?
Will they eat us as a meal,
Or make us slaves to turn a wheel?
What colors will they be,
And are they colors humans can see?
The portal is open and I await,
To see what emerges from this interdimensional gate.

Alan Dunnett (England)
BETTER NOT TAKE THE TRAIN

Alan Dunnett has worked as a theatre director, and as an acting tutor at several drama schools. He wrote/voiced Interrogation, Best Experimental Film at the Verona International Film Festival 2019. “Shot in the Head”, informed by Narratives from Columbians Displaced by Violence, is in The Very Edge, Flying Ketchup Press, 2020. Other poems have appeared in The Crank, Ink Sweat & Tears, The New European, Skylight 47, Stand, The Recusant, The Rialto. A collection, A Third Colour, was published by Culture Matters in 2018.

It is during the last days that I sit
in the darkness of a train carriage
underground. Everyone is quiet
except for a baby. The monster’s blood

is dripping down the door like octopus
ink. The roof creaks as its viscous weight sprawled
above shifts. A woman breathes in quickly.
Are you lost, little boy, said the nice lady

a long time ago. I am smelling toast
on bent fingers. The veins of a big eye
press against the windows. It is hot here
in the damp stillness of bodies waiting.

You are grappling with strangers in the night,
crying unintelligibly for help.

Nerisha Kemraj (South Africa)
RED

Short-fiction author, and poet, Nerisha Kemraj, hails from Durban, South Africa. She is the mother of procrastination, and two beautiful girls.

She fell in love,
the colour red
suddenly appealing
like the light red blush
on her glowing face
A little red dress for a memorable date

Red roses
on a red table cloth
Red wine and fine dining
on the mountain-top
Kisses stained his lips red
Red petals on a red bed-spread
Love-making – her red spread

Months pass
Red heat
of the Summer sun ends
Leaves turn red
marking the beginning of Fall
And soon she finds
he’s not taking her call

Red eyes burn
from fallen tears
No word from him
She faces her fears

Red watermelon
and red cherry pie
She sat watching
the red sunset sky
feeding the seed
he planted within

Mind locked shut
She wished she was dead
Laws forcing her to have
the baby he left

The smell of iron
permeates the air
A baby’s cry—
red everywhere
Congratulatory flowers,
Carnations of red

A hopeless situation
The red stop sign—
a signal telling her no
but she had no other option
with nowhere to go
A disgrace to her family
The blade cut in deep
she was tired of the red now
with the baby asleep—
she closed her eyes,
red turning black—
her final sleep

Norbert Góra (Poland)
IS IT ME OR JUST A MACHINE?

Norbert Góra is a 29-year-old poet and writer from Poland. He is the author of more than 100 poems which have been published in poetry anthologies in the USA, the UK, India, Nigeria, Kenya, and Australia.

The pair is about to
suffocate the whistle,
the clatter of the transmission
on a par with the heartbeat,
I pull it off the conveyor belt
and put it on again,
there is a voice behind my back,
“Faster, cut it short!”
Gears grind in the background,
life becomes too mechanical,
my hands are like steel,
I can hardly feel them anymore,
these standards are not for a man,
so I’m asking constantly,
“Is it me or just a machine?”,
I discover that I doubt my humanity.

Natalia Kuznetsova (Russia)
RAVEN

Natalia Kuznetsova is from Shchekino, Tula Region, the homeland of the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy. Natalia doesn’t know if this fact has influenced her somehow but it is an interesting detail to mention anyway. She writes in English, Russian, and now also French. She takes interest in fantasy, science fiction, Slavic and Celtic mythology, and adventure fiction. Besides writing, she is also into acting, traveling, and photography.

Some of her favorite writers are Robert E. Howard, Rafael Sabatini, P.G. Wodehouse, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, and Terry Pratchett.

Natalia wrote her very first poem when she was only four years old. Of course, it was just a simple quatrain. At the age of nine, two of her poems were chosen to be recited during an Autumn School Festival. Nowadays she takes writing more seriously, and she is currently working on short stories and novels, but that is another story.

Ravens are circling above the tombstone,
Rattling sabers still gleam from afar,
Routinely Veles is spinning his wheel,
Reuniting forever fathers and sons
Ask yourself in what you believe,
Abandon the life that was never yours,
A couple of birds soar high in the sky,
Awaited by Vyriy to share its warmth
Vagrant and lost in havoc of days,
Venomous snakes entwined for your road,
Vowed to wait till the end of all times,
Valiant echoes to lighten your sorrow
Eternal winter came close to your home
Erasing the last piece of hope and mind,
Exchanged your soul for a couple of wings,
Evoking powers to disguise our flight
Nav realm’s always open for all its birds,
Neverending summer like dreams we saw
Naive drops of rain to dilute our tears
Nourishing lives brought by Mother Earth.

Joshua E. Borgmann (USA)
NEVER LOVE, FOREVER LUST

Joshua E. Borgmann holds degrees from Drake University, Iowa State University, and the University of South Carolina. He grew up on horror and science fiction and had long intended to become a great master of the art form before he was sucked into the bottomless pit of academia. He toils away his days as an English instructor at a small community college and dreams of being able to escape into a world of fantasy and terror where there are no student papers to grade. He resides in a nameless rural Iowa town surrounded by terrible cornfields.

Living absurd day time dreams
filled with vodka induced ecstasy,
and somber longings for things forgotten,
he waits in grim repose
upon his self-made throne of black
for the lady who feeds him the colors,
his vampire slut, his darling Poppy.
He sees her filtered
through some supernatural opium daze,
an image from some dark album cover:
“Bloody Kisses” or “Dusk…
And Her Embrace”.
From the first time he saw
the daisies woven in her hair
and felt her cold touch,
he knew she was wrong,
something not for his time,
more suited to Byron, Shelly, or Poe,
but he’d wanted a devil’s plaything,
an eternal whore of Satanic beauty
and in that first frozen
kiss he was imprisoned in joy,
in pleasure, in the rapture of colors.
Oh, the price seemed so little:
a little pain, a little emptiness, a little
death; he’d never thought
it was cumulative. But lightheaded
and empty he awaits her evening caress
yet again.

Rich Rurshell (England)
LIFE TO DEATH, DEATH TO LIFE

Rich Rurshell is a short story writer from Suffolk, England. Rich writes horror, science fiction, and fantasy, and his stories can be found in various short story anthologies and magazines.

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