Oceans

by D Kershaw

  This ceremony was necessary to join the war effort. That knowledge didn’t make it comfortable.

  The chaplain approached, sacred tablets clutched in one hand and a holy relic in the other. It was time.

  He lifted the relic, bathing it in pale moonlight before pressing it upon me. Unintelligible words followed, then he lifted my head, breaching the surface.

  I opened my mouth, took a painful breath, then re-submerged.

  It was done.

  I swam back into the depths with the others, part of the dark tide.

  JEFF SLADE resides in Salmon Cove, Newfoundland and Labrador, with his wife and two cats. He enjoys reading, writing, and making horrible puns, not necessarily in that order. You can find other short stories by him in Chillers From The Rock, Dystopia From The Rock, and Flights From The Rock, published by Engen Books.

  That Sinking Feeling

  by Steven Lord

  Nigel was holidaying when the event happened. He had spent his life as luck’s beggar, kicked in the knackers by fate at every turn. Winning a trip to the Maldives surely meant his fortunes were changing.

  That morning, after 45 minutes slathering on his factor 50, he grabbed his snorkel and sprinted out to the shoreline. He splashed out, ooh-ing at the coral, aah-ing at the bright parrotfish.

  As he swam further, the seabed plunged away like a cliff edge. Even in the warm water, he shivered as he looked down. That moment, seawater across the planet lost its buoyancy.

  STEVEN LORD is a debut author based in the south of England. He is currently attempting to cram writing in alongside a busy day job, with varying levels of success. While his long-term aspiration is to get a novel published, at present he would be pretty pleased with a drabble or two.

  Scuba

  by J.M. Meyer

  After forty-years, to see them on the cruise was shocking. Harry’s grey hair suited him. Kathy’s tanned, toned arms highlighted the rock on her ring finger.

  Henry and I were to be married, until he met Kathy. Per Harry’s style, they always arrived late to dinner. They looked through me; just an older, heavy woman dining alone.

  On the last day, I followed them onto the crowded, disorganised scuba diving boat. When everyone dived in, I remained and hid their wallets and sandals in my bag.

  Late, as usual, they weren’t missed with the returning divers and were left forever.

  J.M. MEYER is a writer, artist and small business owner living in New York, where she received her master’s degree from Teachers College, Columbia University. Jacqueline enjoys writing speculative fiction and mysteries. Her favorite author is Alice Munro and her favorite film...is...anything horror related. Jacqueline also enjoys hiking with her dog Molly and the company of her husband Bruce and daughters; Julia, Emma and Lauren. Jacqueline’s Mantra lately; there’s no such thing as failing, it’s called learning.

  Website: jmoranmeyer.net

  Amazon: www.amazon.com/author/jacquelinemoranmeyer

  Sally Stole Seashells

  by J.B. Wocoski

  Sally slaughtered Sheila Seal to steal her ship, the Seashell, by the seashore in Singapore. Sally sliced up Sheila’s six sailors when she stole the said ship.

  Sally sailed the seven seas for seven years, slicing up strangers. Soldiers spotted the Seashell, they secured and incarcerate Sally in the slammer saying, “Sunday, Sally shall swing from the scaffold seven times.”

  Sally escaped the scaffold. Stealing the ship, Insidious, to sail the seven seas. A storm sank the ship, which Sally stole as she slipped out to sea. Sally’s spectre haunts that shipwreck silently slicing up any skin divers swimming there.

  J.B. WOCOSKI is the author and narrator of the shortstorypodcast.com with three flash fiction short story books published in the last three years. He is currently working on book 4 “Short Story Podcast 2019.” He writes mostly science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories. He won the 2016 Little Tokyo Short Story Writing Contest with his short story “The Last Master of Go”

  Website: shortstorypodcast.com

  Nemo, God of the Seas

  by Joshua E. Borgmann

  Captain Nemo could not give up the sea. Free of flesh his spirit became one with the waters. Slowly, he learned to control entire oceans. And he watched humanity wage its terrible wars. Thousands of their dead rotting, forgotten, on the ocean floor. He didn’t pity them. Their spilled oil dirtied everything. Their excessive fishing and endless trash strangled life in the deep. Nemo couldn’t accept dolphins dead in abandoned nets, the radioactive wastes of Fukushima, or dead sharks floating finless. He summoned the great waves and terrible storms. He would make the world an ocean world, devoid of man.

  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 and his wife reside in a nameless rural Iowa town surrounded by terrible cornfields where he is terrorized by several felines who have taken refuge in his home.

  Join the Crew

  by Umair Mirxa

  Javier lay shivering on the deck, coughing water out of his lungs.

  Heavy footstep on the wood, followed by a dull thud. A large shadow across him. The sunlight muted, he dared open his eyes. Silently, he cursed his luck.

  Pirates!

  “Here, lad,” said the captain. “What be yer name?”

  “J-Javier, sir.”

  “Spaniard, eh? Here be yer first choice: swear fealty.”

  “I would never! What’s the second choice?”

  The captain chuckled, and his crew fell to raucous laughter.

  “Aye, brave lad. Now, we shall keelhaul ye, and you’ll walk the plank. Once yer dead, why, then you’ll join the crew.”

  UMAIR MIRXA lives and writes in Karachi, Pakistan. His first published story, ‘Awareness’, appeared on Spillwords Press. He has since had stories accepted for publication in anthologies from Zombie Pirate Publishing, Blood Song Books, Black Hare Press, Iron Faerie Publishing, Clarendon House Publications, Fantasia Divinity Magazine & Publishing, and The ReAnimated Writers Press. He is a massive J.R.R. Tolkien fan, loves everything to do with mythology, fantasy, and history, and wishes with all his heart that dragons were real. When he’s not writing, he enjoys reading novels and comic books, playing video games, listening to music, and watching movies, TV shows, and football as an Arsenal FC fan.

  Website: umairmirxa.com

  The Consequences of Climate Change for the Merpeople

  by Heather Ewings

  The whole school of bright coloured fish darted out of reach.

  They were deeper than they ought’ve been, harder to catch, sent into cooler waters by warming coastal currents.

  Ineska had fed from the generosity of other merfolk until they threatened her with starvation if she didn’t pull her own weight.

  Colour stood out in the gloom, and Ineska launched her net. It caught, snagged.

  Pulling it loose, her finger sliced along a sharp rock.

  She’d never seen her own blood.

  Her catch spilled free, a shadow loomed, and she remembered, too late, the danger in this patch of sea.

  HEATHER EWINGS is an Australian author of speculative fiction. Her work has appeared at Asymmetry Fiction, Lite Lit One, and Flash in a Flash.

  Website: www.heatherewings.com

  The Right Bait

  by Andrew Kurtz

  Joseph’s motto was: “You can catch any fish with the right bait.”

  One day he saw a suitcase filled with money floating in the deep water at the beach. Heart pounding, he rapidly swam to retrieve it. To his surprise, it was attached to a tremendous tentacle.

  Suddenly a monstrous tentacled creature rose
out of the water.

  One of the tentacles punctured Joseph’s neck and decapitated him, another ripped his chest open, allowing his internal organs to spill out.

  As the creature was returning to the deep, it said to itself, “You can catch any human with the right bait.”

  ANDREW KURTZ is an emerging writer of horror, influenced by Stephen King, H.P. Lovecraft and Wells. He has stories published by Black Hare Press, Eleanor Merry, Renaimted Writers’ and R.J. Roles.

  Unbroken Wave

  by Peter J. Foote

  Water horses pranced within the waves as the tide turned, manes of white cap brushing against the shore, hooves crashing against rocks.

  The beach was their domain until one foolhardy human arrived and thought he could tame wild waves with a surfboard.

  They played with the fragile human, letting it believe that it was master of the waves as he rode through their watery manes. Eventually, they tired of the game and dashed his body against the rocks; bones and board broken to wash up on the beach as the water horses go back to their prancing within the waves.

  PETER J. FOOTE is a bestselling speculative fiction writer from Nova Scotia. Outside of writing, he runs a used bookstore specialising in fantasy & sci-fi, cosplays, and alternates between red wine and coffee as the mood demands. His short stories can be found in both print and in ebook form, with his story “Sea Monkeys” winning the inaugural “Engen Books/Kit Sora, Flash Fiction/Flash Photography” contest in March of 2018. As the founder of the group “Genre Writers of Atlantic Canada”, Peter believes that the writing community is stronger when it works together.

  Twitter: @PeterJFoote1

  Website: peterjfooteauthor.wordpress.com

  The Dinner Call

  by Patricia Elliott

  He’s here—the great white. I’m in a cave on the ocean floor, twisted like a pretzel to fit. He’s hungry. The bleeding cut on my knee beckons him. My heart pounds erratically. Body shaking. Oxygen depleting. Five minutes left. An image of Mara, my baby daughter, pops in my head. Blond hair. Blue eyes. My chest tightens. I have to survive.

  “Rachel, my wife,” I whisper. “It can’t end here.”

  The shark’s shadow disappears. I race out of the cave, swimming hard. My head breaches the surface. His fin follows, and then comes pain. Death calls my name.

  Joshua.

  PATRICIA ELLIOTT lives in beautiful British Columbia with her family. Now that her lovely kids are all teenagers, she has decided to actively pursue her passion for the written word.

  When she was a youngster, she spent the majority of her time writing fan-fiction and poetry to avoid the harsh reality of bullying. Writing allowed her to escape into another world, even if temporarily; a world in which she could be anyone or anything, even a mermaid. Dreams really can come true. If you believe it, you can achieve it!

  Website: patriciaelliottromance.com

  Red Calling

  by Shelly Jarvis

  When the island formed from thin air, everyone thought it was weird. When it kept getting bigger, crazy theories about aliens, Illuminati, and Atlantis started cropping up. But when we received the S.O.S., they called me.

  I’m not saying I’m the best for the job, but, well, I am. Or at least I thought I was. But now that I’m here, I don’t know what to think.

  The land is ordinary all the way across, except for the strange bloody hole in the centre. I haven’t seen a living creature, but I hear their whispers. Tomorrow I’ll follow the blood.

  SHELLY JARVIS is a speculative fiction author from West Virginia, US. She found a life-long love of sci-fi and fantasy in the 3rd grade when she found Madeleine L’Engle’s “A Wrinkle in Time.” Shelly is an avid reader, a Whovian, the ideal viewer of dog rescue videos, and undoubtedly Ravenclaw. She currently has three YA sci-fi books available for purchase on Amazon.

  Website: www.ShellyJarvis.com

  Maybe Not Such a Bargain?

  by Nikki DeKeuster

  Three hundred nautical miles from civilization, the Milky Way is a stairway to heaven in the pitch of night. Night the way it’s meant to be, looming and silent.

  Perfect.

  I’m an empath, and I don’t just feel everyone’s emotions, I drown in them. Anger, fear, anxiety, lust, all as fathomless as the ocean and equally unpredictable.

  So I traded people for sheepshead. Not a bad bargain.

  Except now, as malice so thick it chokes me rises from the depths, encircling my sailboat.

  Ladder rungs clang.

  An unyielding hand silences my scream.

  And I’m three hundred nautical miles from civilization.

  NIKKI DEKEUSTER devours souls. She spits them onto her glowing screen and toys with their lives for your amusement. Reading this story makes you an accomplice to their suffering. You’re welcome. A storyteller with decades of experience crafting tales with her friends, she’s bound some of them to bring into the wider world. The stories, not her friends. She enjoys throwing stones into Lake Michigan with her daughter and keeping her husband up past his bedtime with her ramblings. The first novel in her horror series will claw its way out of the earth in 2020.

  Website: NJDeKeuster.com

  Ancient Desires

  by K.R. Nox

  The virgin sacrifice was strung from the cliff overhanging the ocean; her flimsy, diaphanous gown billowed in the turbulent coastal breeze. She was going to die. It was her destiny to appease the gods of the deep—her death would ensure her small fishing village a bountiful winter.

  She watched in awe-struck terror as tentacles rose up from the crashing waves. They slithered up her thighs, encircled her waist, and explored her tender flesh. She shivered against their touch, and the old god was pleased.

  Breaking her bonds, he drew the beauty below.

  He was not hungry...he had other desires.

  K.R. NOX is a Western Australian poet and short story writer. Being a consummate lover of ancient myths and legends, the occult, and all things dark and erotic, means there is always something deliciously creative brewing on the horizon...

  Website: www.krnox.com

  Lost City

  by A.R. Johnston

  This wasn’t how it had always been. Once they had lived above the ocean where the skies were blue as the seas. Oh, how she longed for it.

  She tilted her head back to look at the dome above, watching all the creatures of the depths gliding past it. Some creatures that people thought were extinct. There was a megalodon staring down at her right now.

  It hadn’t been an accident or a great tsunami that had taken this place. They had chosen to leave the world above behind. She missed it. But this was her home.

  This was Atlantis.

  A.R. JOHNSTON is a small-town girl from Nova Scotia, Canada. She is known to write mostly urban fantasy, though she goes where the muses lead her and you never know where that may be. She is a lover of coffee, good tv shows, horror flicks, and a reader of good books. She pretends to be a writer when real life doesn’t get in the way. Pesky full-time job and adulting!

  Facebook: arjohnstonauthor

  Website: arjohnstonauthor.wordpress.com

  The Pinata

  by J.B. Wocoski

  The research vessel’s sea crane lowered three oceanographers in their yellow diving bell into the deep-sea trench. Its captain reported, “Surface, we are making oceanographic history. This is incredible. We have never seen a giant squid this size before. Will you look at the size of that eye?”

  The young giant squid slowly approached the small yellow sphere covered with bright lights. The creature’s eye stared through the sphere’s glass porthole, spotting treats moving inside. With an enormous tentacle, the squid playfully slapped the sphere like a pinata. The sphere burst open, spilling yummy treats for the squid to eat.

  J.B. WOCOSKI is the author and narrator of the shortstorypodcast.com with three flash fiction short story books published in the last three years. He is currently working on boo
k 4 “Short Story Podcast 2019.” He writes mostly science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories. He won the 2016 Little Tokyo Short Story Writing Contest with his short story “The Last Master of Go”

  Website: shortstorypodcast.com

  Trapped

  by Carole de Monclin

  Salt and screaming have made my throat raw. My hands must be bleeding from the frantic banging.

  I was sipping wine on a sunset cruise when chaos erupted, and obscurity swallowed me.

  Will my air pocket last long enough for rescue to come?

  The normal world lies beyond the upturned hull. So close, yet it could be a different universe.

  My hopes dissolve in the frigid water.

  I should dive to try to find my way out, but the boat’s unfamiliar. What if, in the darkness, I go the wrong way?

  I whimper when I feel the water creep higher.