Macabre Magazine

Category: December 2024

  • The Mouth Inside the Pillow by Tom Busillo

    The mouth jutting out of the pillow had the teeth of a piranha, snapping its jaws, dripping thick, gooey yellow saliva, and making tiny squeaks that echoed like distant screams. Squatting down in front of him, his father shook his head, the dark bags under his eyes deepening. Stephen had night terrors when he was…

  • Dolly by Scott Burwash

    A sticky-sweet aroma from a new air freshener made the car’s interior seem like a low-rent nail salon, both acrid and artificial—the way an eleven-year-old girl would smell if she were given fifteen dollars and free rein at a fragrance kiosk in the mall. It did its job, though, masking odd and somewhat hidden odors…

  • Twas the Night Before Christmas by Jimmy Blakemore

    Jake Norton was tired of hearing everyone’s talk about Santa Claus. At twelve, he was pretty sure he’d outgrown the chimney stories—or so he told his parents. But deep down, a flicker of hope refused to disappear. Maybe the jolly old guy was real. Maybe he’d really show up on Christmas Eve, sliding down the…

  • Creepy Malcolm by Ash Egan

    APPEAL FOR INFORMATION – CAN YOU HELP? Police are appealing for witnesses after the disappearance of a child in Hulsted, Lancashire. Alice Stanley has been missing from her home since approximately 6.15pm on 10th October 2023. She is described as having shoulder-length brown, curly hair and green eyes. At the time of her disappearance, she…

  • Trunk Story by Ken Foxe

    A plastic wheelie bin had just gone skittering down the road when Colly Glennon heard his son roaring. “Daddy, dad-eeee.” It was just after 10pm and his six-year-old Cillian should already have been asleep. They stayed up late watching Despicable Me 2 for what could easily have been the thirteenth time. They feasted on popcorn…

  • The Bug in the Lamp by Nathan Poole Shannon

    I had been journeying for several days when I occasioned to stay at the Château Hotel, with only my cat Artemis for companionship. Artemis, a mewling, foul-tempered feline, sat in her leather carrier under my seat as we crossed the countryside by train, crying from beneath me at regular intervals. We disembarked the train in…

  • 84 × 28 × 20 by John Mitchell Johnson

    Northwood Asylum for the Criminally Insane was a stone-faced bastion in the rugged Appalachian coal country of northern Pennsylvania. I was a trusty there, an inmate who had garnered a modicum of independence by virtue of having a record of passable behavior, and also of providing a service that was desirous of the miscreants charged…

  • A Rare Vintage by A.M. Castro

    Mortuary Affairs Specialist Corporal Alan Donohue knew he was dead. He felt certain as he pulled the zipper up on number 152’s cold, white face, he’d never been so certain about anything in his life. It wasn’t a clean pull. The tab managed to get stuck on a loose flap of rotting skin, making the…

  • The Fox Sisters by Colleen Quinn

    Maggie’s father, John Fox, summed it up: “A houseful of women is like a sack of cats.” Mother Ann didn’t like it any better and she was relieved when they got rid of Leah. Her stepdaughter provoked her, sneaky and deliberate. That superior smile of hers held not a drop of Christian joy, so when…