The writing of Fran Friel exemplifies this concept, and her flash piece “Close Shave,” originally published in Insidious Reflections (2006), accomplishes—in less than 300 words—a gut response few writers could match.
—Jonathan H. Roberts
One of my favorite short stories is “Stillborn” by Nina Kiriki Hoffman, which appeared in Borderlands, edited by Thomas E. Monteleone. In it, a boy forms a bond with his mummified little brother against the horribleness of the outside world. Nina’s concise, effective prose style ratchets up that disturbing premise to a mind-bending denouement. Using only a thousand words, she reaches off the page, grabs the reader by the throat, and doesn’t let go.
—Lee Forsythe
The horror story I’d like to recommend is “Gestella” by Susan Palwick. It is a haunting story of a rapidly-aging female werewolf and the marriage that deteriorates as quickly as she ages. Tragic and moving, I read this story more than five years ago, but it’s one of the few short stories that has lingered in my memory for that long. Fiction usually doesn’t make me cry, but this one made me bawl. This is the level of effect I would love to have on my readers. It was originally published in Starlight 3 by Tor, edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden.
—David Steffen
Sarah Orne Jewett is a must-read for anyone who appreciates a woman’s touch with tales of the supernatural. Her “The Foreigner,” first published in The Atlantic Monthly (vol. 86, issue 514, August 1900), is a masterpiece of moodiness, both subtly strange and achingly sad, and it lingers in the memory like a ghost. I discovered her in an American literature class, and through studying Jewett I learned how to write supernatural tales of my own. Jewett influenced H.P. Lovecraft, and through him, every horror author since her lifetime.
—Molly Moss
The most riveting horror short story I have ever encountered was “The Unremembered” by Chesya Burke. I first read the story in Burke’s anthology Let’s Play White, published by Apex Publications. As the African-American mother of a special needs child, the story of Nosipha and her special angel Jeli, brought tears to my eyes. I understand what it is to be in Nosipha’s shoes, as the world views your child to be just a brown body, not capable of many feelings, accomplishments, or worth. The thought of watching your baby die, no matter how much relief you know it will bring to her tormented flesh, is truly horrifying. Burke turned a heart wrenching situation into a blessed one, by giving Jeli and her uncooperative body a larger purpose in life, her race and the entire universe.
—Rhonda Jackson Joseph
Tanith Lee was the queen of horror-fairytale mash-ups long before they were trendy. With her short stories and novels alike, all of her fantasy has an air of darkness, and all her horror at least a hint of the mythic. Her work is rife with sensuous demons, terrible monsters, sinister villains and elements of the macabre. I fell in love with her murky writings as a teenager, adoring collections of her twisted fables as The Gorgon and Other Beastly Tales. I read each story several times over—“Anna Medea” being one of my favourites. She had a definite influence on my own writing, an influence that shows itself every time my stories delve into darkness.
—Chantal Boudreau
I am a fan of stories where the horror is off page and the isolated town becomes more than a setting. Although towns like Dunwich, Dunnett Landing, or Oxrun Station are better known, I return to Tiverton and Sudleigh, rural villages created by regionalist Alice Brown (1856-1948). Even in her own lifetime, Brown was underappreciated. Her short story “Old Lemuel’s Journey” is a ghost story, with time travel and philosophical implications, that first appeared in Atlantic Monthly, June 1920. Miserly Lemuel Wood is dying, but he’s so cheap that he refuses to pay for any further house calls by the doctor, since it would be a waste of money. He slips into a brief coma, and when he reawakens, the worst has passed and he is healthy with a changed outlook. He claims he saw his future, begging the question: Can a man be haunted by his own future self?
—David Goudsward
One of the most frightening stories I have ever read is “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” by Joyce Carol Oates. While many academics may resist the urge to call Oates a horror writer, the terror and tension she creates on the page and the horrors she hints at that are surely coming just after the story is over are certainly frightening. Heavily anthologized, this gem was collected in The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories, edited by Tobias Wolff. When you’re done reading this literary darkness, you will certainly pull your children closer, and make sure the front door is securely locked.
—Richard Thomas
Mary Lavin’s brilliant use of dialectic niceties in “The Green Grave and the Black Grave,” published in the Atlantic Monthly, 1940, had me entranced from the first paragraph. The cadence, syntax, and calculated repetition of the peculiar maritime narrative sets her work apart and affords it a timeless quality missing from many contemporary pieces.
Lavin’s story is featured in Great Irish Stories of the Supernatural (Pan Books, 1993)—a book I purchased second-hand for a few dollars when the title stopped me dead in my tracks. I simply had to have it. As a lover of speculative fiction, for me, Lavin’s particular brand of horror finds its success not in what is shown, but rather in what remains unseen. The poetic banter of Lavin’s father-son fishers—and the grisly, yet unsentimental, subject matter—strikes a chord with my macabre desire to guess at what truths the black grave really holds.
—Carmen Tudor
“Brazo de Dios” by Elizabeth Massie, published in Borderlands 3 and edited by Thomas F. Monteleone, has stuck with me since I first stumbled upon it in junior high. Weaned on a steady diet of supernatural-based horror in my formative years, Massie’s tale rooted in real life terror wasn’t the sort of horror I was accustomed to—but I loved it just as much as stories about demonic clowns and French Quarter vampires. In “Brazo de Dios,” a young, Christian missionary is abducted by a South American military regime. As the young woman awaits her fate in a dank cell, listening to others being tortured, she contemplates her life and the mysterious man who presides over her capture. Massie’s writing and amplification of the human element and all its grey areas pulled me in. In just 15 pages, Massie defined her main character with a richer history and more harrowing "dark night of the soul" than some authors convey in 300 pages.
—Lana Cooper
While I’ve written in spurts since I was about thirteen, I only decided to try to write and publish horror early last year. January, 2011, I was surfing Chiaroscuro e-zine and discovered the story “Pugelbone” by Nadia Bulkin. The story set a high standard of storytelling craft that I wish to achieve as a writer.
It was macabre and elegant, with a scary visual sensibility like the best of Munsch or Goya—and it reminded me why I love horror. Bulkin’s prose created a believable yet darkly fantastic world, while maintaining a deep sympathy for the characters she'd created. It's a wonderful talent, and “Pugelbone” is the kind of story that makes me think “I wish I could write one damn thing that’s that GOOD.”
—Selene MacLeod
The authors of the anthology, The Monster’s Corner, were asked to write stories from the monster’s point of view. In her story, “The Screaming Room,” Sarah Pinborough chose Medusa. I loved this story because I found Pinborough’s rendering to be completely unexpected. Instead of depicting Medusa as a vicious, man-hating monster, she portrays her as a lonely woman, longing for the arrival of her next lover.
Medusa’s reality may be flawed—to her the men are suitors, not enemies, and the sounds they make are songs, not scream. It is a reality full of passion and desire—two things not often associated with Medusa. Pinborough’s style is beautifully understated and as sensual as her protagonist’s. She engages and tantalizes, making the reader want more. And, to me, this is the mark of a truly exceptional story.
—Meghan Arcuri-Moran
My recommendation is “Aftermath” by Joy Kennedy-O’Neill, publishe
d in Strange Horizons February 2012. This is a zombie story with an original slant: the infected are cured and brought back to life. They—and everyone else—have to try and find a way to live with what they did when they were mindless, cannibalistic monsters.
This is an immersive story full of deft, realistic details of a world attempting to recover: radio stations won’t play songs like “Love Bites,” the ex-zombies smile with closed lips because their teeth are broken from gnawing on bones. The protagonist is desperately trying to get back to normal and to be thankful that she got her husband back, while still mourning her young daughter. The narrative is interspersed with terrifying, claustrophobic flashbacks, and the ending packs a powerful emotional blow, leaving the reader with a truly horrifying image.
—Michelle Ann King
I’ll never forget reading “Calcutta, Lord of Nerves” by Poppy Z. Brite in Still Dead in 1992. The mood stuck with me for days. I could taste the air and feel the streets’ energy. The story wrapped round all my senses. Yup. Even my sixth sense—the feeling of doom crept inside. Such is the power of perfectly rendered prose. I had to read more of Brite, and grabbed everything in my small town bookstore. I’d found a voice that broke open barriers. It was okay for the characters not to be middle class white guys. These people were imperfect. Lost. Searching. Broken. Soulful. This encouraged me to find my voice and explore new worlds. At the time, “Calcutta, Lord of Nerves” was well esteemed. But that was twenty years ago, and anyone with just the right mindset will fall in love with this timeless story just as I did.
—John Palisano
Sometimes great things come in small packages, as with the story “Taking Care of Michael” by J. L. Comeau, a sneaky little slice of horror originally published in the anthology Borderlands 2, edited by Thomas F. Monteleone. With each word precisely placed to give this flash fiction piece great depth, Comeau weaves a tragic tale of a child left to care for her disabled brother after her mother sits on the couch to watch television and never gets up. This has to be one of the most disturbing stories I have ever read. At no more than two pages long, the visceral images haunted me for days. Depressing, horrific, and dreadful, this story shows us that one does not need gratuitous blood and guts to genuinely shock the reader. This clever, dark tale is what I look for in any collection of fiction. A true gem not to be overlooked.
—Robert Essig
My deep cut is “Apocalypse Scenario #683: The Box” by Mira Grant (pseudonym of Seanan McGuire). Grant’s outstanding Newsflesh trilogy (Feed, Deadline, and the recently released Blackout) is easily my favorite new horror series. I love the fresh take on the zombie theme, where zombie popularlty in pop culture works to prepare everyone when the undead rise for real. I stumbled upon “Apocalypse Scenario #683: The Box” while anxiously anticipating the release of the last book in the Newsflesh trilogy. It tells the story of a group of friends that gather weekly to plot the hypothetical end of the world. The only problem is that one of the group hasn’t shown up for a few weeks, and soon everyone is wondering if their innocent get-together might be turning into more than a game. It is a quick gem of a story that is sure to spark some interesting conversations.
—Steven Voelker
Shirley Jackson wrote many famous stories. My favorite is a lesser-known, brief, enigmatic story, “The Witch,” from The Lottery: Adventures of the Daemon Lover. On a commuter train a mom, distracted by her infant daughter, allows a man to sit next to her four-year-old son. At first charming, the stranger’s chat with the boy turns gruesome, and the mom asks the man to leave. I often return to this tiny masterpiece to study its depiction of menace. It exemplifies a quiet, inexorable horror I love. I’m in awe of the economy with which Jackson evokes a deep undercurrent of dread. Expert juxtaposition of the man’s violent story, a sense of maternal affection, and the boy’s delight make it work on many levels at once. The joy and innocence contrast with horror to make the story resonate with conflicting emotions. It is the light which makes the darkness so compelling.
—S.P. Miskowski
Kaaron Warren is an Australian author, so many in the U.S. may be unfamiliar, which is shame. She’s fantastic, and her story I’m recommending is the novella “The Grinding House.” To me, it’s one of the best short horror stories since Stephen King’s The Mist. A friend recommended this book to me, and I pounced on it, since he was the one who first introduced me to King. Warren has a real talent for taking ordinary people and putting them in messy situations, both supernatural and organic. “The Grinding House” is a post-apocalyptic tale of sorts, in which no one is safe from the creepy disease plaguing Australia. It’s gross, scary, and even makes you think a little.
—Tyler L. Duniho
The story I wish to honour is “Cafe Endless: Spring Rain” by Nancy Holder, a haunting story about a sadomasochistic Japanese vampire. I came across this story in the wonderful vampire erotica anthology Love in Vein, which was edited by the equally amazing author Poppy Z. Brite. The anthology as a whole captured my attention and imagination as a hard-core vampire enthusiast, but this is one of the stories that stayed with me long after I’d put the book away. Holder is a powerful and well-respected writer in the fantasy and horror genres, being a four-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award for superior achievement in horror writing. She won Best Short Story in 1991 for “Lady Madonna,” in 1993 for “I Hear the Mermaids Singing,” and in 1994 for “Cafe Endless: Spring Rain.”
—Liz Strange
I divide fear (rational fear, anyway) into two spheres: fear of the unknown and fear of the inevitable. Judith Merril’s “That Only a Mother” (Astounding Science Fiction, June 1948) marries these disparate concepts perfectly, while capitalizing on the public’s nascent fear of nuclear fallout, years ahead of popular culture. The story concerns the day-to-day life of a new mother as she corresponds with her husband, a deployed serviceman. Off-handed allusions to “accidents,” mutations, and a rise in infanticides suggest that all is not well with the world’s children; between this, and the woman’s (unconsciously) evasive and rationalizing language (and, indeed, the title itself), we know something’s wrong with her baby, but what is it? We must wait until the end, and, helpless, we do. Merril’s tale is a narrow, dim passageway; the path is straight, the exit obvious, but the way forward is dark, and something unseen waits there.
—Desmond Warzel
I still remember the feelings of awe and excitement the first time I discovered “Greedy Choke Puppy” in the collection Skin Folk by Nalo Hopkinson (who, incidentally, deserves much greater recognition outside the genre fiction community). I then progressed to her novels, including Brown Girl in the Ring. The thing that struck me the most was the unique voice that narrated the story, as well as the way Nalo infused West Indian elements and mythology with the main creature, the soucouyant, which has vampire-like elements but is a far more sinister entity.
Although I devoured fiction from Anne Rice, Poppy Z. Brite, and Tanith Lee growing up, Nalo’s works have a special place in my heart because her perspective, that of the ultimate outsider and Other, resonated with me (and still does) as I have been an outsider my whole life—and her works taught me to embrace that.
—Anita Siraki
I first read Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” in an American Literature Anthology when I was an over-read English major. The story has this slow build that I try to integrate into my writing. When the story’s big reveal happens, my jaw was left hanging. A story that has the potential to leave a horror enthusiast like myself gaping is a story that needs to be studied.
I have since read the story a few times, and every time, I am baffled by how Le Guin is able to describe something as horrible without resorting to the typical Saw-level gore porn we have accepted as horror today. For any aspiring writer, I recommend this story to show how to subtly reveal a horror plot and how to let the story drive itself.
—Eric Ponvelle
“Eyes of Emerald: The Bride” is one o
f nine interlocking short stories in the Book of the Beast, which in turn is part of The Secret Books of Paradys, Books I and II by Tanith Lee. This book turned up in an obscure thrift store on an otherwise dull day—and has provided fresh inspiration during countless readings since. In this story Tanith Lee subtly, yet unmistakably, challenges traditional female societal roles, wending her way to the ugly heart of the matter by way of horror dressed up in an elevated and beautiful writing style. This story’s terror is carefully baited with fascinating imagery that embraces and encloses the reader like a Venus flytrap. The expected bloodbath will come, yes, perhaps …eventually. But first, something almost worse: a slow, excruciating buildup of dread, set against the gloom the of gray stone, wrapped in cloth-of silver, and haunted by eyes of malevolent green.
—Kelly Dunn
I’ve long been a fan of Sarah Joan Berniker’s work, from the early days when I workshopped with her in Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope Studios. She’s had some success with short works over the years, including winning a lofty prize in a Playboy Magazine short story contest. It is difficult to choose from her array of stories, but I’ll have to settle on the odd and surreal “Pearlstock,” a front yard carny, freak-show extravaganza published in Dark Recesses Press, Issue #7, sometime in 2007. Some people can write, and some people can tell stories. Sarah spins an intricate web of intrigue in wide open places, catches you in it, off-guard, even though you know it’s there, secures you in tight, and then feeds on you when she’s good and ready.
—Boyd Harris
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