Setting the Record Straight
Transcribed by Andrew M. Boylan on behalf of Miss X

Let it begin, though I still don’t understand myself why I wish to set the record straight. Perhaps as I dictate to you, and you make your notes and recordings it shall become apparent to me. Perhaps, Andrew, when you draft this record of events and I read it, perhaps then it shall make sense to me. My name, well it is hardly of any use that I tell you my given name, no-one knows that. The records of events were changed so much when F… Jonathon Harker had Bram Stoker transcribe the notes into the melodrama called Dracula. In that tome, to protect my reputation (and more importantly that of my fiancé), they called me Lucy Westenra and so, to this record, that is what I will remain.

Much of what Stoker wrote was falsehood. Things were changed to preserve a sense of decorum, yet other things were changed to add a sense of melodrama to the events. Some have hypothesised that Dracula survived and caused Stoker to change the details. Let me tell you this; that the man you call Dracula did survive and I am sure would have much to say about the hokum that Jonathon invented surrounding the stay at his castle. Not least of all that he was a Draculea – or indeed Vlad Tepes, Vlad the third. The only similarity was in given-name for he was called Vladislav Farcas, though I suspect that he chose his own familial name, he does have a flair for the dramatic. The association with a Wallachian Prince was purely an embellishment by Stoker and, given I never met the fellow, I cannot say why he chose to confuse their identities. Anyway, dear Vladislav did not influence Stoker, there was no need.

Believing in Luck
By Josie Gowler

Alfwin cringed. Although he’d opened the temple door without a sound, his entrance had been accompanied by an icy blast of wind. He closed the door quickly behind him and stayed where he was – in the shadows at the back of the temple.
The small figure at the altar had noticed the sudden chill even through her white woollen robe. She got up from her knees and turned round, brushing greying hair out of her eyes. She squinted towards the door. “Show yourself, then,” she grumbled.

My Pretty Pony
by Alan Loewen

It was a given that when humanity made breakthroughs in genetic engineering and artificial wombs, our civilization would end in the insidious hell of a bioengineered microbe. I sometimes wonder in the Hour of the Rat, those early morning hours when my thoughts come out and gnaw on me, if we might have been better off?
When GenFriend, Inc. released their first line of genetically-engineered, sentient ponies how could we have known the Apocalypse was already upon us? Though there were the scientists who muttered about ethics and fundamentalists who blathered on about souls and blasphemy, the children of the industrial nations cried out with one voice for these new novel companions.

My Pretty Pony
By Razz

Historical Performance
By Michael A. Kechula

Authorities in charge of New York City’s annual Tap City Dance Festival were alarmed when they received a letter from lawyers representing the city’s Monster Community. The monsters demanded the right to have 500 of their most talented zombies perform as tap dancers. What’s more they wanted the zombies to demonstrate their dancing talents in front of Fox News Studios on Fifth Avenue, so the entire world could see their performance on TV.

Curse Of The Moon – Part Two
By Shelley

The Literary Hollow
by Alice M. Roelke

In Literary Hollow, a hundred trees burned bright with the luminous literary skills of writers long dead, and a few living still. Creative essence transmogrified into oaks, elms, willows and maples represented Keats, Hemingway, Tolkien, and Twain.

Revenge Of The Deformer
By Glynn Barrass

“Just because they’re a bit disgusting looking, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re bad people.”
My friend Shellie and I, a girl whom I’d met at University and built a friendship with thereof, were discussing the relatively gruesome state of a group of alcoholics that were squatting within a house on my street.
Shellie, with her statement, was attempting to garner some sympathy for the derelicts. I, on the other hand, was quite against their very presence in a clean and wholesome society.
But Shellie was gorgeous, and had a lovely Irish accent to boot. As such, I was starting to feel myself being slightly swayed towards her way of thinking.
I said, “Well, I suppose that if they’ve been dragged into a world of drugs and alcoholism, it may be something that a certain type of person might find it difficult to escape from.”
Snobbery aside, this was my way of saying that I almost agreed with her. Almost.
For over an hour we discussed the various ways and means by which a person could become homeless and addicted, with me adding my own social commentaries and theories as to the conditions that might arise to cause such a downgrading of humanity.
Our conversation had turned this way because of something that had happened earlier in the day. The incident had occurred while I’d been sat on my doorstep awaiting my friend’s arrival.

The Rules
By Kevin Joseph

We wanted the transfer to be so much more sporting than when you wiped out the Neanderthals. Call it overconfidence, if you like, but we wanted to give you a fighting chance.

That’s where the idea of the negotiations came in. One representative from you and one from us. They would meet one day a year, every year, with one rule each. No matter how outlandish the rule was, both races agreed to adhere to it. It was our idea, so we chose first. By my calculations we had complete control until year four.

The Skin Changer’s Enemy
A Story of the Crow Witch
by Mike Phillips

Wild flowers bloomed under a sky of purest blue, seeming to come to life by the artist’s hand. Muttering as she painted the bright colors, working a spell with each stroke of the brush, the mural was finally completed. The artist stood back to inspect her work, to assess if what she had done was good. It was. She smiled.
In times that had come and gone with the painting of the mural, she had achieved moments of perfection, and in that perfection the painting could be used to her ends. It was so fair a rendering of that fine, wide meadow that she could turn her mind fully upon it, and in so doing she could make herself a part of it. Lynn Weigenmeister had just completed what was to be a portal, a magical doorway.

Snow
By Amelia Goodwin

Dusk was spreading her inky fingers all around as I trudged wearily down the long road. Snow danced through the air carpeting everything in white. I slowly came to a standstill and carefully looked around me. Everywhere appeared to be absolutely quiet and still. My heart was beating so fast, I could hear it thump-thump, thump-thump.

The Healing Process
by Holly Day

She wakes to the same annoying square of sunlight that always finds her face every god-damn morning, no matter how she positions her head on the pillow at night. And she knows she doesn't move in her sleep, men have told her so. She sleeps like something dead. The sweet-scented woman in the crisp white uniform will be coming by soon, and she will have pills, pills that always take away the ache of uncooperative sunlight. She cannot look outside her window until she has her pills.
There are bruises on the insides of her arms again, they don't hurt unless she presses down on them with the tips of her fingers, they were not there last night. They are doing research on her, conducting medical experiments without her knowledge or consent. She can see the tiny holes in the center of the bruises where the needles have gone in.

Believe
By Suzanne Jackson

Do you believe in witches? I do. I have seen them trembling upon the gallows stand, shaking from head to foot with a rope around their necks, waiting for the breath to be taken out of them. I have mingled amongst the crowd and felt the desire, the need, the longing. They wait for the last grasp of breath. They take a breath with them, feeding off the surge of blood pumping through veins and hearts; the need for death etched upon their faces, clear and sharp.

Tobin Bridge
by Elizabeth Inglee

Boston was a City on a Hill. It was also a bunch of communities separated by water, connected by bridges: tall bridges, short bridges; old bridges and new bridges; artistic and plain bridges. It is hard to get anywhere in the area without crossing a bridge of some sort.
“Amy, why don’t we take the bridge?” I knew Jimmy meant the Tobin Bridge, connecting Charlestown to the North Shore, the only sizeable bridge that would be on the way to his practice.
“You never want to take the bridge, Sweetheart,” I replied.
“Today I feel like taking the bridge,” he said and shrugged.
Even at one in the afternoon on a Tuesday at the end of June the Tobin Bridge wasn’t normally so empty. This was, after all, Boston. Rush hour normally ran from six a.m. to eight p.m. But that day the city seemed empty of drivers, so maybe taking Route 1 all the way would be faster than creeping over the surface streets.
Jimmy, like me, was a Shape Shifter: bigger stronger, faster and overall better than a Normal Human, and that’s not even taking into account that we got to be an animal whenever we wanted to be. For him a Big Cat, for me a Seal. Well I should say those were our preferred Shapes; we could take any animal form we wanted, but the preferred shape was as easy as being human.

Lure
By Sarah Deckard

The apple is swollen, red like desire. Succulent it seems. Though, imperceptible, half its juices are dripping with poison. We are drawn by a hunger and a twinge of delight at the prohibited—a dream of the untasted. Sometimes in our craving, we choose the wrong side.

Black Fishnet
By Eternity Valette

Listen carefully, because what I’m about to tell you, you probably won’t believe. The closest anyone else has ever come to believing it was to justify it as an ‘out of body experience’, or whatever else they tell people who’ve been pulled back from the brink of death. They tell them anything that sounds vaguely scientific, because that way they never have to wonder themselves if there is anything bigger than this, anything bigger than us. Science, technology, medicine. In the end is it just another faith dependant explanation for things we can’t understand.
But if you can’t believe me, don’t worry. All I ask is that you listen, because maybe, just maybe, there’s a less abstract meaning to this story.

STRANGER AEONS
By Glynn Barrass
(In Dedication to Howard Phillips Lovecraft)

I see you in strange aeons,
Once a couplet,
Now a rhyme.

I see you dead but dreaming,
Lying still,
For all time.

Your death was merely dying,
Stranger aeons,
Lay beyond.

The grave it could not hold you,
Your gift grew,
Eldritchly spawned.

Lovecraft Woman
by Leon Atkinson

(Image to follow)

The Gypsy Curse – Final Part
by Teresa Ford

A woman stood in the doorway; she was at once beautiful and terrifying. The hair that streamed around her face seemed to have a life of its own, as a sudden breeze flowed past her into the cellar. There came a howling, which Paul knew was just the wind, but which sounded like a hundred tortured souls in hell. The girl next to him found her voice again and screamed, a sound which threatened to burst his eardrums with its power and pitch. He turned back to her, his gaze leaving the figure in the doorway for a moment, and tried to calm her. A voice boomed towards them, impossibly fierce for the woman he had seen.
“Get out of here, you snivelling wretch! LEAVE US…NOW. GO!!”
Tearing from his grasp the maid did as she was told and dashed towards the door, the female there moved to one side to allow the escape. Stumbling, the young woman took the stairs two at a time, and with only the slightest hesitation at the top she passed the frightening figure and disappeared, into the now dark entrance hall.
He watched her flight a strange mixture of relief that she had escaped, and regret that he was now alone with the strange woman…

(Don't forget that if you want to read the first two parts of
'The Gypsy Curse' that copies of Issue One and Two are still available. )

Lilith
By Leon Atkinson

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