Twisted Horror

There's a darker side to the festive season screaming to be let out in this Christmas edition of Twisted Tales... Read on in terror to five chilling stories of horror and suspense, with a couple centering around that magic time of year!

The end is near... This volume of Twisted Tales dives headlong into the end of everything - shortly after the bombs fall and the mushroom clouds have barely settled. Erica's Stepfather (She might very well be the last woman on Earth, but Erica can't get him out of her head), Jacob's Final Days (Life on the farm comes to a fiery end), Waiting it Out (Michael and Amanda are twins hiding in the remains of a shopping mall as a murderous psychopath searches for them)

A third suspenseful collection of terrifying short stories! These Twisted Tales cover it all, from zombified raccoons to the horrifying ramifications of social distancing. And of course you'll find enough ghosts, vampires, alien creatures, and other sociopathic monstrosities to leave you fear-filled until the late hours of darkest night.

From the biggest of creatures to the teeniest-weeniest monsters... Twisted Tales 7 dives deep into the troubled minds of psychopaths, travels across the globe into dark jungles, and even calls ancient gods from the sky. What a Zombie Thinks (peeks inside the mushy minds of the shambling dead), When the Rain Came (the dangerous side of deity worship), Monkey Business (a retired general takes on his greatest foe), The Infestation (what happens when billions of vampire ticks are let loose), Ups and Downs (don't get caught out on the road after dark)

Bounty hunters, alien abductions, serial killers, and lost Boy Scouts. This fourth collection of Twisted Tales scratches that short horror story itch.

A fifth collection of Twisted Tales to leave you feeling troubled, unsettled, and terrified... Included this time round: Mining My Own Business (Horror a mile underground), The Thing in the Woods (A nerdish teenager's nightmare worsens as he attempts to flee from a couple of bullies), Halloween Nights (An old man remembers the terror of a Halloween past), The Gamer (Reach that next level and it may kill you), Vaccine (This is one pandemic you definitely want to steer clear of)

What happened to James Lockedon? When a man is reported missing, Detective Jain can’t understand why he has to deal with it. Missing people are mundane jobs for uniform officers. However, he quickly realises that he’s in over his head and the investigation takes a dark turn. Going back to crimes from decades before to help him solve this new mystery, Jain wonders how far a man can go in order to stay hidden. A debut novel, mixing genres into an unconventional mystery novel. Independent review quotes (Goodreads): "The best book I've read this year" "What a fantastic read" "I took for ...

STRANGE TALES OF SUSPENSE! A Little League game on an Indian burial ground. A woman haunted by herself. A mysterious carpet stain. Cheerleaders in distress. In Demonica, you'll bear witness to these horrors and more! Erik Handy, the author of She Never Dies and Dead Pool, brings you 8 stories that continue the genre-bending short fiction legacies of Ray Bradbury and Stephen King.

While the vast majority perishes in quiet anonymity, a tour of any national monument quickly reveals countless names carved into stone. These names generally identify three classes of people; scribe, conquered and conqueror. Indeed, if anything, life is an endless series of contests, large and small, but these stone-graven records typically ignore the latter for the former. Too often, history overlooks the struggles of mundanity, which perhaps better define those who endure. Pause a reflective moment to ponder the future – anticipate all the boastful elite to be immortalized there. ...

Rascals, rapscallions, villains and varlets; all terms of a bygone era intended to describe the guy in the black hat, that perverse character of low virtue and strayed morality who forever ties the distressed damsel to cold, steel rails. Gasp! Within fictional fantasies, they are always guys and damsels, and they must wear black. In reality, we still mostly read about bad ‘guys’, but the women tend to fight back now, often with devastating effect. Tonight, the devil laces thigh-high boots over fence-net stockings before taking a turn through town. Be warned and beware. Of evil delight ...

Tabloids invite us to gorge ourselves on tales of epic personal failures, and so many of us eagerly oblige. Guilty pleasures, we savor these stories most satisfactorily with a garnish of sex scandal, a dash of fiscal malfeasance and a generous dollop of social corruption. Next, we expect a weeping dessert of shame and regret to follow. Afterward, everything ends in a dumpster or the backseat of an aging sedan before we stagger home again, sated, smug and full of improving condemnations. Cup your ears and shade your eyes now. Peer into the gloom of your neighbor’s windows to eavesdrop. ...

Champions come in all shapes and forms. The same is true of cowards. Most of us line up somewhere between these two extremes of potential, but none of us eagerly anticipate having to prove ourselves in a crossfire. In fact, most notable acts of heroism are not the results of well-considered, carefully laid plans. Rather, these are often spontaneous yet deliberate demonstrations of selflessness occasionally on display when normal human beings must confront life-threatening risk. Take a deep, calming breath now before you dare gaze into the face of death. Trembling, heed its heckling catcalls...

A silly titmouse once sang sweetly to describe love as “a many-splendored thing”. Perhaps this is so. For some. For others, love’s terrible spectacle shines in its many violent twists and unexpected turns. Each feckless angle of its affection or disaffection invariably leaves a disfiguring blemish that renders exquisite facets of character from alternating impacts of tragedy, disaster, triumph and ecstasy. Too briefly, desire’s artistry sparkles the amazed eye with a fateful brilliance before fiery passion fades to leave its victims cold and trembling in its wake. Steal a secret ...

Within each human being lingers a mischievous child, but each of us also cages an unformed primitive. We keep our individual id-monster within the tempered bars of civility, yet it remains our secret delight of a darkened, unobserved evening and we make it our fondest fetish at every available opportunity. No matter how mightily we struggle, history scrawls with endless tales of failed self-control, so each scandal both titillates and disgusts depending upon personal sensibilities. Indulge your inner-beast. How it roars! Of broken souls crushed between despair and revenge; of normalcy ...

While we collectively fear wild animals and muggers, most contemporary plagues come in the guise of unavoidable corporate logos and unforgettable commercial jingles. This new and most modern form of disease presents symptoms that include unhealthy obsessions, unwise compulsions and preprogrammed responses, all accompanied by an irrepressible tune that inevitably drives a rational mind to the very brink of lunacy. Visualize anything except the latest fad slogan while engrossing yourself in a moment of hysteric interest, and then pause to think. Of dreamscape dominions wrought from the felt ...

Boogeymen, banshees, werewolves and vampires; all figments of horror drawn upon parchments of fable, each the scrawl of individual phobias revisited by trembling quills dipped into inkwells of collective nightmare. Despite vaguely amusing caricatures, these monstrous legends probably developed from grisly human origins. Indeed, we confront our violent primitives in every new atrocity, and each murder teaches a simple lesson that humankind consistently resists. Consequently, we forever lack viable means for exorcising so-called ‘inner demons’. Even now, your secret devil whispers into ...

Peddlers and snake oil, pimps and pornography, lunatics and paranoia… each pair travels the same darkened alleyways to service identical shadow-bound gates. We receive them by the backdoor, thank you, and always well into the evening. These are private matters undertaken and clearly marked by clandestine hush and furtive sidelong glance. Sometimes concealed in the open but more often hidden in a fog of disinformation, our every secret contains a kernel of truth wrapped within a burlap of proficient lies. Patience and due diligence may unwrap the enigma to decipher a hidden message, but ...

In the rural, mist-shrouded village of Dunhill, Co. Waterford, cousins Henry and Lucy embark on a chilling journey into the past. Drawn by a mysterious cottage on the eerily named Tourniquet Lane, what begins as a nostalgic exchange of letters between the relatives unravels into a haunting exploration of a family legacy steeped in tragedy. When a broken window at the long-abandoned cottage stirs memories of a dark history, Henry and Lucy delve into old records, uncovering a string of suicides tied to the cursed plot—each eerily similar, each tied to a gnarled tree in the backyard. As they...

You have unlocked the world of Auntie’s Attic and a peculiar set of keys. “Well Kept Storage For Needs Big And Small.” The slogan seems benign. The circumstances, not so much. You’ve received one of the keys. White as bleached bone and slick as lies, your key unlocks a storage room. Inside you’ll find an object that could lead you anywhere, but wherever you go, you cannot return.

Malice has to save her friends from the fairy tale parasites infesting their souls. They have each been combined with the fairy tale that bit them. This has caused them to become hybrids—the Mad Hatter, for instance, is now half Cinderella. To drive the fairy tale portion out, Malice has to drive a stake through their hearts. So, ironically, to save them, Malice essentially has to fight and kill her friends—the Mad Hatter, Tweedle twins, Humpty and the Knight. Hopefully, afterwards, Wonderland will finally get back to how it was before the twisted fairy tales came around.