Daikaijuzine

I apologize for not telling you in person, but it’s a lot easier for me to write this down than talk about it. I hope you understand. You can’t read the statement I made at the time, it hasn’t even been released to the general public here in Australia. Even if you could, there were [...]

“Sara! Have you seen Buddy?” Seven-year-old Sara perched on the top step of a footstool, knees drawn up under her chin. She was listening to the clock on the wall above her mother’s head, to the tick-tick-tick counting off the minutes until the cookies could be taken out of the oven. Sara chewed her lip [...]

They’d been circling the neighborhood in the pounding rain for half an hour before Kevin slammed on the brakes, sending the car to a jerking halt. “What the hell are you doing?” Elaine yelled as she ripped her hands off the dashboard. Her witch’s hat had flown off and landed in the back seat. “I [...]

Where I’m from, West Virgina ways, everybody know Prissy’s a witch. I mean, she live in this little house outside of town, out on the mountain where it’s all dark and spooky, kinda like a shack but not fallin’ down, and she do things for people. Make them better, make them worse. Make them more, [...]

After you’ve been nobbing the hob for a while as a vampire, you discover that it’s not all lounging about in evening wear and sipping a glass of the red. No, the undead existence is rather fraught with peril. There are days–nights, rather–when it becomes possible the old self will actually have to hunt and [...]

The three men sat at the diner booth wearing matching, three-button charcoal-colored suits. They were not businessmen, but they looked like men who meant business. The Cheyenne Diner was a good twenty miles south of Oklahoma City, just where the highway stretched beyond the reach of city lights. The place was full of brown booths [...]

He sees her now – hair ribbons in the breeze, silk dress swaying about her naked ankles. Her back is to him, and he knows she can’t perceive him following her every step, tracing her exact path. His footfalls overlap her sandy footprints as she strolls the moonlit beach. Why always here? Beneath the stars, [...]

Kid, I’ll tell you right now. It’s hell finding a place here. Here’s the daily rundown: You walk around, see a possible vacancy-something with windows, maybe running water, cable for the hell of it-find the place has been staked out already, move on. Sure, people can bunk together, but there are rules about that. My [...]

Sunset: 4:48 p.m. Thank god for the end of Daylight Savings Time and winter. I hated both of those back when I was really alive, but now that I’m totally limited to the hours without sunlight, I like them. More time up and awake for me. In the summer, I feel like I can hardly [...]

My son’s brain tumor has disappeared, defying any medical explanation. "Did you visit a saint?" the wide-eyed Dr. Kirin whispers to me. "It seems like a miracle." "Not exactly," I say. "But we did go to Ozzfest." She tilts her head, questioning. I take her arm and lead her to the little lounge, where it’s [...]

There was simply no other explanation; Charlie Metcalph was trapped in a box. Actually, it was a crate. He noticed this important difference soon after waking up on his side crammed in the fetal position. At first—after consciousness came back to him in one saw-dusty heave—he didn’t know what to think, only that he was [...]

You want to know when my problems started? You tell me, you’re the shrink. Sorry. Didn’t mean to bite your head off. It’s just I’ve been under a lot of pressure lately. But don’t even think about prescribing me drugs. I’m a sales rep for a pharmaceutical company, so I know more than you do [...]

Dead people talked too much. At least Henry Brabson thought so, and forty-two years of digging graves in Clay County’s potter’s field lent some gravity to his opinion. Winter or summer, whether Henry was chipping away at the stubborn, unyielding earth under a leaden January sky or dripping sweat as he shoveled in the furnace [...]

"Don’t take that one!" Mrs. Misaki came wobbling hard and fast down the produce isle, a daruma doll, all round and no legs. I saw her dumpling face knitted in single-minded intent. Now how did she know which fish I had just slipped into my basket? I glanced at the slender, silver mackerel identical to [...]