Micro Fiction Horror
For the month of March 2025, these are the stories of 100 words that interest us most.
* Take Out the Trash by Matt Scott
​
* Sugar, Spice, and All Things Spliced by Kendra Dennis
​
* Sleeping Under the Eyelids of the Dead by Tom Busillo
​
* Noctambulist by Vidya Hariharan
​​
* The Envelope by Fredrik Siwmark Carlsson
​​
* Tennis by G.M. Neary
​
* A Room Full of Laughter by Steven Bruce
​
* Fairy Tale Killer by Michael O'Connell
​
* So Many Corners for a Body by Scot Ehrhardt
​
* About Certain Guilty Pleasures of Absent Nannies by Marcelo Medone
Take Out the Trash
by
Matt Scott
Clay stood frozen in the darkened kitchen, his left hand on the refrigerator door.
It was late. After midnight.
He stared to his right.
What a day. Busy. Hectic more like it. Family. A few friends. A few frenemies.
It was a good get-together.
But now.
He just stared over at the counter to his right and the range built into it.
He wondered why Dorothy had left a bag of garbage on the stove. It was just heaped up there, a black shimmering mound of trash. Must have been full, he guessed.
It hung partially off the stovetop, its left corner sagging down like syrup almost to the floor. Funny. The bag stretching out like that. Odd really. What kind of trash bag stretches like that?
Then it moved.
​
​
​
Matt Scott is the author of over 100 published horror shorts and has five stand-alone collections of short horror. He lives and writes in southern Colorado.
@mattscott75
Sugar, Spice, and All Things Spliced
by
Kendra Dennis
"Run, run as fast as you can."
​
The poor fox never stood a chance. The Gingerbread Man giggled and grinned, viscera dangling from glinting wolf fangs driven into his grotesque permanent smile. Gingerbread and wrinkly flesh spliced together dug into blood and guts. Tearing and tearing until nothing but a mangled shell of the fox remained.
​
An old couple, a bear, a wolf, and now a fox. His buffet was inconceivable. It wasn't enough. Nothing could satisfy the Gingerbread Man. He needed more. Seeing smoke ahead, he hobbled to the nearby village.
​
"You can't outrun me! I'm the Gingerbread Man."
Sleeping Under the Eyelids of the Dead
by
Tom Busillo
Everyone had a role. I extracted old eyelids, peeling them down until they detached like the final piece of tissue from a roll. These were sewn into sheets, then blankets. Despite being warned not to discuss my work, one night, I mentioned to my wife that we slept under the eyelids of the dead. She laughed uncontrollably. I’m indiscreet and I tend to overshare, so it’s good no one would believe me. I won't mention coffee's origin, as it's one of our last remaining pleasures, and knowing about it might ruin it for you. Perhaps I've already revealed too much.
​
​​
​
Tom Busillo's writing has appeared in PANK, Weird Lit, and Dark Harbor. He has a werewolf story which breaks the stereotype of what - or who - a werewolf can be appearing in the Fall 2025 Calliope. He lives in Philadelphia, PA.
Noctambulist
by
Vidya Hariharan
I had slept late last night and woken up early for a meeting that morning in DC. I was hoping to sleep in flight but couldn’t. On landing in LA, I walked out of arrivals, exhausted, looking around for my wife, who had promised to pick me up from the airport. Eventually, I shared a cab with a morose woman who dropped me at the corner of my street. I rang the bell and waited. The TV was on at full volume. I could hear the news. A jet flying from DC to LA had crashed that evening. No survivors.
​
​
Vidya Hariharan is an avid reader, traveller, coffee guzzler, published poet and teacher. Currently she resides in Mumbai, India.
The Envelope
by
Fredrik Siwmark Carlsson
She noticed it immediately. It was right there, atop the bedspread, bathing in the soft light from the streetlamp outside her window. An envelope—ivory white with scribbles in blue ink at the center. The bed had been empty when she left the house that morning. Which meant—
Someone had been in her house.
Slowly, she moved toward the bed, the old wooden floor squeaking beneath her feet. She grabbed the envelope—To: Rachel, it said. Trembling, she opened it.
The letter contained only three words:
Under the bed.
The next moment, she felt something cold wrap around her ankle.
​
​
​
​
Fredrik Siwmark Carlsson lives in Lund, Sweden, and is pursuing a bachelor's degree in literary studies and the Swedish language. He won the short story contest Värmland skriver in 2022 and is the founder of www.hundraord.se, a newly launched site for 100-word flash fiction in Swedish.
Tennis
by
G.M. Neary
“That was one hell of a drop shot on me,” I commented.
​
“Thanks, but I can’t take all of the credit.” My singles partner bounced the tennis ball over to my side. It felt fuzzy but also leathery. It was a sickly green, not the bright turf color a normal tennis ball would be.
“New model. What do you think?”
“Pretty good spring. What’d you make it out of?”
There was that toothy smile of his. “Inner thigh. Same hair, too.”
I held the ball in my hands. “...Think I still like the one with the foot and heel better.”
​
​
G.M. Neary is a fiction author and game designer who splits his time between the rainy Pacific Northwest and the haunting Appalachian Mountains. He travels with his partner and two cats, who may or may not be Great Old Ones with fur. You can find him on socials @gmnearywrites.
A Room Full of Laughter
by
Steven Bruce
Elliot holds his ear to the trembling door. The laughter inside is high-pitched, relentless, aware. It rattles the walls, poisons the air, draws him closer.
He hesitates. The laughter shifts, sensing him.
The door creaks open. Elliot peeks inside the room. Blinding light. Shifting, shapeless shadows.
Then he sees it. And it sees him.
His legs lock.
The laughter twists into a chorus of deformed voices, screaming, “Stay.”
Elliot slams the door, but the laughter is out, seeping into him, clawing through his skull.
The door yawns open. Elliot grins and dances into the room, lost to its laughter forever.
​
​
Steven Bruce is a writer and a multiple award-winning author. His poems and short stories have appeared in numerous international anthologies and magazines. In 2018, he graduated from Teesside University with a Master of Arts in Creative Writing. An English expatriate, he now lives and writes full-time in Poland.
7:06 AM
7:06 AM
7:06 AM
7:06 AM
7:06 AM
Fairy Tale Killer
by
Michael O'Connell
The call came at exactly 7:06, or as the unidentified caller breathed, “It’s 6:66 a.m. Do you know where your children are?”
​
It started with Three Blind Mice, only the victims hadn’t been mice. All children—toddlers, mostly.
​
Now I stand inches from the wall. Eyes glazed. Nearly weeping. I need more than a minute. I’m ignoring what he did to the family photo, but the words scrawled with the children’s blood hit hard.
​
My partner joins me and begins to read, “Jack, be nimble, Jack, be quick, Jack—”
​
“Read one more word and I’m gonna be sick.”
​​
​
​
​
​
​
Michael G O’Connell is an author, illustrator, and award-winning poet. His work has appeared online and in print, including The Bacopa Literary Review, Moss Gossamer, The Raven Review, Words and Sports, and Bindweed Magazine’s Winter Wonderland. He lives in the Sunshine State and is working on an illustrated middle-grade book.
So Many Corners for a Body
by
Scot Ehrhardt
Her footsteps multiply, tumbling into corners and stairwells of the hospital garage. A girl alone, a cavernous dark—the liminal stillness that makes monsters. She grips a key between each knuckle. The halogen lights shudder.
As she closes the driver-side door, a shadow curls around her. She tenses but recognizes his face, half-shadowed, through the passenger window—
Erica lowers the paper, glaring at me. “Not funny, Maxwell.”
“It’s a horror story, it’s not supposed—”
“It’s fun reading horror in safety from a certain distance. Whatever violent or gruesome—”
I pull her keys from the ignition. “Keep reading, Erica. The violence comes.”
​
​
Scot Ehrhardt writes and teaches in Baltimore, Maryland. His novel-in-verse The Armillary Papers is a combination escape room and cursed manuscript. His work has appeared in the museum of americana, Lines + Stars, Little Patuxent Review, and The Baltimore Anthology.
About Certain Guilty Pleasures
of Absent Nannies
by
Marcelo Medone
I ventured into the deserted street between the craters of the bombs, the burning cars, and the rotting corpses.
The setting sun still provided some protection, but I had to hurry so that the darkness would not surprise me.
I wandered through the ruins until I came upon a house that seemed intact. I went in and headed straight to the kitchen, but I found nothing to relieve my hunger.
I desperately searched every room.
Finally, under the child's crib, stained with dry blood, I found a bar of chocolate.
I thank nannies with a sweet tooth.
​
​
Marcelo Medone (1961, Buenos Aires, Argentina) is a Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fictions nominee for fiction writer, poet, essayist, playwright, and screenwriter. He received numerous awards and was published in multiple languages in more than 50 countries, including the US. He currently lives in Montevideo, Uruguay.