99 Tiny Terrors

By Seanan McGuire, Ruthanna Emrys, Bev Vincent and 7 more

SOMETIMES THE BIGGEST HORRORS COME IN THE SMALLEST PACKAGES…

 

There's nothing better than a short, sharp slice of flash fiction to get the mind working. 99 Tiny Terrors is an anthology that the reader can dip into for something deliciously dangerous in a short amount of time, or spend an afternoon trolling through blood-soaked stories from all over the world, including Canada, England, Germany, Greece, Ireland, India, Japan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, the United States, and Wales. 
 
Featuring stories from the devious minds of Seanan McGuire, Ruthanna Emrys, Bev Vincent, Meg Elison, Bradley H. Sinor, Wendy N. Wagner, Premee Mohamed, Scott Edelman, Cat Rambo, Tim Waggoner, and many more.

 

"99 TINY TERRORS is an absolutely wild ride through some truly weird territory. Fast, freaky, furious, and fun! Highly recommended!"
—Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author of INK and V-WARS
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pulse Publishing
• Release date: Nov 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201882501

Seanan McGuire

Seanan McGuire is the author of Every Heart a Doorway, the October Daye urban fantasy series, the InCryptid series, and several other works, both standalone and in trilogies. She also writes darker fiction as Mira Grant. She was the winner of the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and in 2013 she became the first person ever to appear five times on the same Hugo ballot.

Book preview

2

The Silence of the Stars

Marie Bilodeau

I unfolded Thérèse’s chair, knowing the humidity would gnarl her fingers and that she’d be too stubborn to ask for help. The evening grew chilly despite the summer humidity.

The sun would set, soon. We had to settle in our chairs before then.

This weather is stupid, Thérèse said from the kitchen, her voice cracking from years of smoking and bitching.

The kettle whistled. Tea steeped. Blankets retrieved from the cedar chest. The radio turned on. We settled outside, breath curling before us, lawn chairs creaking with the comfort of age beneath us.

The tea tasted strong and bitter.

Perfect, I mumbled to Thérèse. You make a perfect cup of tea.

She snorted in response, then straightened in her chair. You know what else I make perfect, Suzanne? I make perfect grandchildren.

I rolled my eyes, laughter erupting from Thérèse.

It’s true! Before she could elaborate, a vapor streak in the distance caught our attention.

The radio continued to play music. No words, no news, no prayers. Everything that needed to be said had been said.

I clutched the blanket a bit more tightly around my shoulders, Edith Piaf’s "Non, je ne regrette rien" bellowing on the radio.

Perfect timing.

The vapor trail was joined by another, and another, until there were so many they cut the sky like yarn on a loom.

So, I take it that means Ben got his PhD? Another sip of tea.

With honors, she answered, her voice uncharacteristically muted, eyes glued to the slowly growing trails.

He’s always been smart. I focused on the vapor trails, turning from yarn on looms to a great shield as they grew wider and merged.

Like his grandmother, Thérèse whispered.

Sunset rays captured by the vapor fractured into pinks and oranges so fluorescent it reminded me of my youth. Fashion in colors so vibrant they couldn’t be ignored.

A few of those poofy clouds could be the bangs, Thérèse said, her thoughts following mine.

I grinned. We’d always been in synch, knowing what didn’t need to be said. Not high enough, I replied, shaking my head. Needs more hairspray.

And that orange isn’t quite neon enough, Thérèse said.

We looked at each other and burst into laughter, the sound mixing with the music, filling every inch of space around us.

It took a few minutes, but we settled down. A dog barked in the distance.

Reminds me of Pocket, Thérèse said, voice choking a bit.

She was a good puppy, I sighed. Dumb as a bucket, though.

Subdued laughter as the quality of the light changed.

Thérèse stubbornly stared up, where the stars began to break through the sky, the sunlight vanishing much more quickly. She refused to look away from those stars, faraway, imagining the ships heading toward them. Toward safety.

And a future.

I admired her resolve, my eyes drawn to the horizon, which seemed dissected and much higher than it should be. Like we were surrounded by distant mountains blocking what remained of the sun. Luminescent blue pinpricks shone against their darkness, highlighting the jaw and teeth of the maw that slowly wrapped around the earth, big enough to swallow it whole.

My son, Frank, would have had some explanation about that shining blue. But he was gone, with his family. And Thérèse’s family. And every other family young enough to take the journey to the stars.

The radio cut out. Either the batteries had died, or something blocked the signal.

I didn’t know what caused that either. I was eighty-four, and I didn’t really care. I could hum the music by heart. And I did as I looked back up, the sky now dark, the white stars slowly replaced by luminescent blue light against a darker background.

The stars are blue, Thérèse said, her voice sounding strangely normal. Like the world hadn’t just ended.

But I knew that she knew it as well as I did. It just didn’t need saying. Yup, I answered, putting down my empty cup of tea, voice strangely hollow in my ears. The stars are blue.

In the distance, a dog howled then grew quiet.

Thérèse reached across and squeezed my hand with a lifetime of friendship.

We waited and held hands.

Everything that needed to be said had been said.

Marie Bilodeau is an SFF author, a professional storyteller, and a collector of Masters of the Universe action figures. She loves a good glittery adventure and currently lives in Ottawa, Canada with an enthusiastic baker, four cats, and many unicorns. Visit her virtually at www.mariebilodeau.com.

3

The Devil You Don’t

Tyler Hayes

You wake in the dark, and you know it’s there by the panic surging into your chest. You know before you try that you can’t move, and that you will get no reprieve from the stillness and the darkness and the dread of what’s to come. You know because it’s been like this for a year. The only difference is that this time it’s going to kill you.

You don’t have to see your bedroom to know its decorations: the corkboard of enamel pins disguising all your failed wards, the mess of books on the floor that alerts you when it’s near. And you don’t have to see the window to know it’s ajar, to know that the monster, the shade, is on its way in.

You hear the beetle-wing scuffle of it pouring in through the window. You feel the suffocating chill in the air. You don’t have to see the shade to know it’s grinning—grinning because tonight is the night it finally reaches your bed.

The shade was just lurking by the window when your doctor diagnosed sleep paralysis. It was after the first sleep study that it inched toward the bookshelf, and after the second that it stepped away from the wall and you saw it for what it was. It was after the psychiatrist gave you all the help she could that it got to the middle of the room and told you, in that voice like burning skin and cobwebs, that it would eat you soon. You had hoped you would have more time before it dared to approach the bed, but you’d never been foolish enough to believe you would.

You do fear it. You fear it in your hindbrain and your bones, every paralyzed limb wrenching against its chemical entrapment. But that fear is below the surface, a dull shout from your brain’s next room. You’ve accepted this end long since.

You know it’s close from the bone-deep cold, the feeling of spider legs dancing across your skin, the sweet cupcake smell of its breath. Every hair on your body raises, and your heart and stomach piston against your ribs. You know what comes next, for the shadow has sung it to you every night, so you try instead to focus on experiencing this unique and alien death. If it must happen, you will at least know what it’s like.

I am here, it says in its dusty sizzle, its mouth right next to your ear. I am here at the side of your bed. It has recited its position every time it has appeared. It has made sure you knew how close it could get this time. It has done this four hundred times.

The shade rears up, oozing across the ceiling, one leathery wing spread wall to wall. Its skin is new-moon midnight, a bottomless darkness. Its eyes are gold-white scribbles, like moonlight reflected in water. And its teeth are invisible, but palpable, the concept of sharpness mounted in its shadowy mouth.

I am here, it sizzles again. I am here, and I am hungry, and I will eat you—

But it stops like a skipped heartbeat, and those reflected-moon eyes widen in shocked and shocking pain.

You don’t know this part.

The shade quivers, its edges blotchy and indistinct. Its teeth hide behind some curl of darkness, no longer bared for execution. Its eyes stare forward, and forward, and then stare at nothing at all. The shade whose haunting you’ve known for a year slides off the ceiling, its edges folding into themselves; and with a sound like a sack of meat hitting concrete, the presence of the shade you know exits the room.

The presence of something else replaces it.

We apologize, says a voice without a body, somewhere beyond your immovable sight. It sounds stiff, fossilized, something ancient that’s still re-learning how to talk. They were never supposed to touch you. That’s not the kind of fear you’re meant to feel.

You want to ask them what they mean, but your mouth is as frozen as your eyes.

Whoever earns the right to harvest you next, it says, they will follow the rules. They will make you fear, but not for your life. Until then, enjoy the rest. So few of your kind ever get any. The voice says this with genuine affection, and then it is gone.

That is when you are able to move; and that is when you curl up and cry. The second voice suggested you could sleep, but sleep won’t be happening any time soon, here in the sudden, unfamiliar silence of a night without a haunting.

Perhaps you will sleep again. Perhaps you will learn to accept a new fear, caused by some new presence in your room. Perhaps this, too, you can find a way to survive. But for tonight, as you creep toward sunrise with still-open eyes, you keep on thinking the thing you wanted to say to that new voice: that you do not deserve this. That to lose the murderous evil you know, and have it replaced with an evil that will never end, makes things so much worse.

Tyler Hayes is an SFF author and Social Justice Bard who has built his nest out of enamel pins, hoodies, and coffee mugs. He believes the best thing in life is a dead heat between brunch and neck rubs. Tyler lives in Providence, Rhode Island with his spouse, their semi-sentient TBR piles, and their Norfolk Island Pine, Pinebert. Visit him online at @ByTylerHayes on Twitter, @tylerhayesbooks on Instagram, or at www.tyler-hayes.com.

4

Would You Like to Rate Your Experience?

Sarah Day

Annalise wheezed. When the building collapsed, it had emitted a death rattle of plaster dust and powdered glass. She’d sucked in a lungful of undoubtedly carcinogenic particles as she climbed the debris pile. The rubble blocked the entire road; no choice but to go over it. When she got to the other side, she could continue her flight.

One of her acrylics was gone. She noticed it absentmindedly as she mounted the pile of debris. She hadn’t gotten the full set anyway, had raced out of the nail salon with a bad burn on the back of one hand and eight plastic chips still drying on her fingers. Now she was down to seven. She counted again. Six. Shit.

A high-pitched, cheerful alert rang out behind her. The sound bounced off the dust and buildings. Throat tight, she swung her legs over the top of the debris pile and spilled over it onto the ground.

Oops, excuse me. The drone spoke in the digital equivalent of a man’s voice; friendly, self-assured, only a little apologetic. It had reached the debris pile. Annalise heard it on the other side of the rubble, scrabbling against the shattered concrete and glass. Oops, excuse me. Oops, excuse me. Oops…

Annalise surged to her feet. Her legs were jelly. She wished she’d taken that obnoxious guy in her apartment building up on his offer to show her around his Primal Warrior gym. Maybe then she’d be in better shape…

Then again, it would be hard to be in good enough shape to evade every internet-connected device in the country.

The AI had escaped from a lab in Mountain View, leaping across the continent into data centers that were thousands of miles, but fractions of a second, away. All the cars, airplanes, cargo ships, televisions, strollers, refrigerators, lightbulbs, outlets, speakers, every device that benefited from a kiss of Wi-Fi had become a nesting ground. The AI took longer to infiltrate local networks and devices, but anything with an internet connection was vulnerable. The eleventh-hour security patches and firewall updates everyone put out had only slowed the spread. Data is inexorable. Machines infinitely patient.

No one knew what it wanted, other than to kill all the humans it could find.

Annalise had been sitting in the manicurist’s chair when the AI came to town, watching the spindly arms of the nailbot spray adhesive on her fingertips. The other hand, already done, baked under a heat lamp.

Everything fell apart so quickly.

First the heat lamp turned itself up, scorching the back of her hand, then the nailbot tried to swing its spray bottle attachment into her head. It was probably hard to make manifest the will of a malevolent, human-hunting AI when you were an immobile personal care bot armed with nothing more dangerous than an acetone mist, but Annalise gave it an A for effort and fled the salon.

The town boiled. Someone sprinting up the sidewalk knocked her down. An airplane roared overhead, flying much too low. Someone screamed, and then lots of people screamed.

Watch out please!

The drone scuttled along the sidewalk, manipulator arms folded tight against its carapace, giving an automated warning to anyone walking nearby. Its running lights flashed in blue pulses until it got close to Annalise and went completely dark.

It recognized her. All its lights blossomed a steady amber.

You have a delivery!

It sounded overjoyed.

Annalise imagined the various ways manipulator arms could manipulate her flesh and ran. The drone pursued.

People leaped the pedestrian barricades and fled into the streets in pure panic, destinations unplanned. Annalise considered joining them, taking a less linear path away from the drone, until she saw a self-driving car mow someone down and decided to stay on the sidewalk.

You have a delivery! the drone prompted from behind her. Annalise sobbed, a cramp like a stiletto in her side, and ran faster, away from downtown.

Half a mile later, a concussive boom from the other side of the street shattered the glass in all the nearby windows and dropped her to her knees. The drone calling out behind her got her back up and running, barely a jog at this point, around the corner and over that pile of rubble—

Ten steps from the debris pile, she stepped in a pothole and fell, skinning both palms and twisting her ankle. She inhaled another lungful of dust and spent three long seconds on the ground, hacking.

Gravel clattered above her head. She flipped over, wheezing, and stared as the drone topped the debris pile.

It beeped happily in recognition and descended, extending two more manipulator arms to stabilize itself as it picked its way down the scree.

You have a delivery!

Annalise knew better than to plead for her life. She tried anyway.

The drone stopped in front of her, emitted a high-pitched chittering whirr that she interpreted as delight. She closed her eyes.

Ten terrified heartbeats passed.

When she opened her eyes, she wasn’t dead. The drone’s lights were all green and its cargo carapace was open. Two manipulator arms extended toward her. It was holding a package.

Thank you for your purchase!

What was going on? Had this drone not been infected by the AI? Was it just trying to do its job?

Annalise extended a shaking hand and took the box. It bore the logo of a boutique health company. ZEN SPA RELAXATION AROMA was printed on the side. She had ordered this aromatherapy oil diffuser last week. It was supposed to relieve stress, although she imagined existential terror was not the kind of stress the product designers had in mind.

When she took the box, the drone played a celebratory tune. Its lights flashed blue and green.

Annalise stared at it, smiled weakly. …Thank you.

You’re welcome. Would you like to rate your experience?

When she didn’t respond, it attacked.

Sarah Day is an author, gamer, and SFWA member. She lives in the SF Bay Area with her cat and a large collection of LED lights. Her interests include raves and festivals, nontraditional relationships, attachment theory, and being queer. Connect with her online by tweeting @scribblingfox or visiting sarahday.org

5

The Body Once Practiced

Ruthanna Emrys

You hadn’t known what it was like to feel beautiful until you woke with rainbows in your skin. Spectra coruscated across prismatic fur short as velvet, sharp as needles if stroked in the wrong direction; the colors set off the drop of blood like garnet against silver chains. Kafka in glory, you thought, and went out to show off the body more yours than you had ever imagined your body could be.

You were not the only one. No two changes were alike: streets full of fur and feather and bone and chitin. You felt sorry for those who hated their changes, and sorrier for those unchanged. Better to be blessed—or cursed—than ignored. You fell asleep trailing your hand along your chest, letting your new beauty prick one finger to feed as you slept…

and woke limbless, slithering and scaled, fine tentacles draping from your narrowed face. Your mind formed words, but tongueless and fingerless you could write distress only in writhing loops against your sheets. The memory of delight and sharp-tipped fur faded as you strove to control your movements. Your thoughts stretched painfully thin around unfamiliar muscles.

The others, when they saw you, were too busy to scream.

You had never been easy with your body, before. You had never loved it. It had been a source of pain, sometimes frustration. But you had learned it: first over years of hard, deliberate acceptance and the blunt control of piercings and tattoos, and then again after the accident as you adapted to new constraints, new needs, new tools. You’d had time to practice the skill of wearing it and made it something you could live with.

Morning after morning, now: how can it be worth learning what will only be lost?

The worst morning grows heavy tusks that curl back against your face and shoulders, digging through skin like a narwhal’s horn. You try to fall back asleep, but pain and questions keep you blearily awake. You stagger through that day in a haze until, at 4AM, exhaustion at last outweighs everything else. The next day you find the tusks gone and your legs grown supple and springy as an antelope—and your still-heavy eyes flicker closed for a dawn-lit moment and you wake furious, changed again before you have the chance to take a single leap.

You believe that something of you remains the same across mornings: the part that remembers how you once tolerated the same body for days, maybe years, at a time; the part that responds now to a comfortable form by mourning even before it’s lost. But body shapes mind, and some days you can put a word to every angle of bone and skin, while sometimes language is a haze of questions half-buried beneath the acute awareness of how houses and potholes and weed-grown gardens sculpt space around you. Some days you know only the driving need to connect with the others, to rub against them until you can decide, together, whether it still means anything to be human.

When you can speak, and when you find someone to speak to, you ask: Is this something we did, an experiment gone wrong—or right? Is it gift or punishment or prod from a deity too alien to imagine how we’d flounder amid deep, depthless change? Is it a cosmic storm, like the centuried clouds that bloom and fade on gas giants, from which we’ll one day emerge with no explanation and no promise for the future?

You wake up, forked tongue questing and arms plaqued with eyes.

You wake up, reptilian tail draping off your sagging bed.

You wake up.

You wake up.

You wake up.

Ruthanna Emrys is an author (obviously), a gamer mom, and a collector of tea (deliberately) and squid (accidentally). She believes the best thing in life is parentheses. Or really good cheese. Or settling down with your college D&D group. She is often indecisive. Ruthanna lives in a mysterious manor house outside Washington DC with her wife and their large, strange family of mostly mammals. Visit her online at @r_emrys on Twitter, https://www.patreon.com/RuthannaEmrys, and https://www.ruthannaemrys.com.

6

No Need to Scream

JM Whit

Consciousnesses surges energy into my body. Synapses snap and tingle. Where am I? I’m not where I was. It was warm, but now I’m cold.

Shivers rack my body. I keep my eyes closed so I can pretend. Pretend I’m floating with the others. Everyone supported and loved by the twisted, tangled branches.

But the other’s eyes were wrong. Is something wrong with my eyes? I’ll keep them closed for now.

Voices murmur in the background. I think it’s people. I assume I know them, or they know me. Antiseptic burns my nose. It’s hard to think. Fog covers my brain.

Don’t scream. A small prick and it’s done. It only hurts for a second.

Something slithers at the edge of a thought, but it passes before I can catch it.

Hawkins. Open your eyes.

A strong voice filled with command. I have to follow commands. It’s my job. One eye opens, then the other. I blink and my vision clears.

Blinding lights are overhead and people behind glass stare at me. A metal table to my side and a soft cushion under me. No, a soft bed under me. Crisp white sheets. Machines beep in the background.

Sterile. Cold. Unfeeling. This is not where I want to be. Who took me from my purple skies? Where is my dark forest with the swirling branches? So peaceful. So quiet.

But nothing is wrong with my eyes. Why was I worried?

You are the herald. You are the carrier. Remind them not to scream. It only hurts for a second.

Don’t scream. My voice is rusty. My throat hurts. But this is where I’m supposed to be. I wish my brain worked better, but I don’t think it’s mine anymore. I try to lift my arms, but bandages wrap them and tie them to boards.

This isn’t right. This won’t work. My branches. They can’t escape like this. I try to explain new secrets to old friends. They can’t grow up and be free.

You’re safe now, Hawkins. You won’t feel any pain. We brought you home.

The voice is familiar, but I can’t tell which person behind the glass spoke.

The glass won’t protect them.

Something rips. Red spreads across a bandage. A black tendril unfurls and stretches. I’m numb. It doesn’t hurt.

There, all done. No need to scream.

I sigh. My branches. Winding, weaving branches. So soothing, so generous. A tiny prick and one more is free. Red covers more of my bandages. My darling branches shiver in the cold.

Warm. Make it warmer. You like the warmth, the floating.

I did. I did like the warmth. But it was wrong. The cool room brings slight clarity to my muddled mind.

Something was wrong in that peaceful dark.

The eyes. What was wrong with the eyes? I fidget on the semi-soft bed. White sheets turning red. More tendrils burst through the bandage, searching, always searching.

A mustiness chases away the burning antiseptic, reminding me of a dank underworld where things are left to rot.

Tell them so they understand. Warmth. Remember the warmth.

Right. Warm is good. Cold is bad. But I don’t want my friends behind the glass to have the wrong eyes.

My mind is not my own. I can’t trust it.

What was wrong with the eyes? I have to remember. I need it colder.

Cold. Cold is bad. Make it colder. I shout the words.

My branches are mad. They whirl and stab at the bed, at me. Some have grown enough to reach the glass. They test and probe, searching for a weakness

One curls around my neck.

My breath fogs. I wonder if it’s the fog from my brain. My mind opens. I know who I am and what I did. I crossed the sand and stared into the void. Into the endless purple twilight.

Branches swayed and twisted together. Strange trees in a strange place. A branch slithers on the edge of my vision. People held by the branches. People like me? I can’t tell.

Don’t scream. A small prick and it’s done.

I peered deeper into the void and saw the truth. Slack bodies and open jaws. And the eyes.

Empty. Sightless. Dead.

The others are all dead. They’re dead, but I can hear their screams in my mind. I tried to run. I tripped. The branches caught me. A small prick. I start to float. I didn’t scream then. I want to scream now. A scream outside of my head brings my focus back. Was that me?

My arms. Covered in red, blood running down the sheets, and pooling on the floor. Copper in the air. My branches, growing fast despite the cold. They reach for the glass. For the ceiling.

But it doesn’t hurt, does it? No need to scream.

The voice inside my head lies.

Scream. Make it cold and scream all you want. It does hurt, it does. I try to warn them.

Am I speaking? Can they hear me? It’s hard to breathe. The branch on my neck tightens.

I made the branches mad. Good. I must protect the people behind the glass.

My vision blurs. At the edge of sight creeps a void. Blacker than black, there is no escape. But beyond that black is the peace I want. The peace I need.

I don’t know how to ask. I don’t have the words. Something wet crosses my cheek.

Glass shatters. Screams fill the air.

Yes. Keep scre—

Snap

JM Whit is a writer, engineer, and collector of more dragon artwork than she has wall space. She believes the best thing in life is placing that last piece in a 2000 piece jigsaw puzzle. JM lives in Huntsville, Alabama with her family and overactive dog. Visit her online at JMWhit.com

7

127th Halloween of Pea Salad

Elizabeth Guizzetti

A human holding an oval-shaped thermal bag approached the ghouls’ lure. She smelled meaty, succulent. Elias licked his lips. He wanted to chomp on something delicious before his initiation by pea salad.

His mentor, Kelly, smacked his ear with a greater strength than one would expect from such a lithe, elder ghoul. We’ve no idea what’s in that crockpot!

Crockpot? Elias rubbed the sting away.

"Her bag is a crockpot