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Crawling
"The swinging glow of the light bulb stuttered and failed as more worms tumbled down. They fell like glossy snow, making soft little thunks when they hit the carpet."
When the wheelworms appeared, Zoe tried her best to ignore them. She coped like the rest of the world did—by catching the tiny, pale-bodied parasites in soil traps and going about her life in a state of mild denial. The worms were gross but harmless. Until the night they weren't. Trapped in her apartment with an increasingly erratic roommate and a neighbour who only came for the Friday night beer, Zoe is forced to acknowledge that the worms have turned, and they're hungry for human flesh.
Wormbound was published in Crawling from Hear Us Scream Press in 2023.
The Screaming Harpies
"Tempest bared her teeth in the Gallows’ direction as it approached. She would have preferred to avoid Ginny Gentle and her goblin crew altogether, but the Screaming Harpy was not a ship that could sneak into port undetected. If her immense size and hull painted with howling mouths full of bloody teeth didn’t attract attention, the crew certainly would. The last infestation of lice had swept their ranks ten years ago but the Harpies still kept their heads shaved, many covering their shorn skulls with thick black tattoos. They made an arresting sight when they swept into combat, each crewmember screaming into the wind astride their blood-red ship, smooth heads shining before the raging battle-torches."
The Screaming Harpies is published in In the Wake of the Kraken: Pirates of the Multiverse, the third volume of Tales from the Year Between from Skullgate Media—an anthology series that brings together writers from around the globe to invent an original world from scratch.
A Trip to the Shops
"We’d begged him to take it off once and because he was drunk, he let us. Mags did it, sitting on his lap and lifting the metal plate from his face with the tenderness of a lover. It was raw beneath, pale and scarred where the mask had rubbed against his skin. The rest was all dark. A blank, cavernous hole, mouth stretched from cheekbone to cheekbone. The teeth were scattered inside, haphazard and rotten as sunken headstones.
Mags replaced the mask quietly and slid from his lap to pour herself another drink. I didn’t think his face looked too bad. I’d seen worse."
Featuring the finalists of STORGY Magazine’s Annihilation Radiation Short Story Competition, the Annihilation Radiation anthology contains 18 short stories by an array of talented apocalyptic authors.
Includes my first-prize-winning story, "A Trip to the Shops" (so proud of this one!)
Night Shift at the Triple Crow
"Tattie turned to the mound of dark earth and shook her head as the mushrooms began emitting a thin whine.
'Hush up, will you? I’m trying to help.'
Careful not to waste a drop, Tattie spooned the shining green liquid onto each of the mushrooms, dousing each fleshy head like a priest anointing a baby. She poured the remaining liquid over the earth mound and watched it sink into the bitter soil.
'That feels better, doesn’t it?'
Tattie didn't expect a reply. She had sprinkled the elixir with good dreams and pleasant visions and now the body beneath the earth could settle, soothed for a blessed few hours before Caggotty forced it to rise in the morning."
Endless Pictures is a collection of the 20 highest-rated flash fiction pieces from the first TL;DR Press flash fiction competition.
The Dream Weaver of Wolfsbane Lane
"'You shouldn’t talk like that,' she whispered. 'Anybody could be listening.'
'Really? In this hole-in-the-wall shop, at the cold end of a dark lane in one dusty corner of this vast city?'
Tulissa felt she should be offended somehow.
'Nobody is listening to us,' the woman continued. 'I am a witch. Obviously. A salt witch, if you want to be precise.'
'Which means you draw your magick from the sea?'
'Very good. I become weak when I am not near the ocean. So, no inland holidays for me.'
Tulissa looked at the woman with fresh eyes, a little in awe and a fraction excited. She had never met a witch before."
The Dream Weaver of Wolfsbane Lane was published in Kyanite Press's High Fantasy Issue in Autumn 2019.