Shallow Waters Vol. 3: Shallow Waters, #3

By Joe Mynhardt

Shallow Waters—where nothing stays buried.

With twenty-one dark tales diving beneath the surface of life, death, and the pain between them.

Shallow Waters is the official monthly flash fiction contest hosted by the award-winning Crystal Lake Publishing. Every month a new theme is posted online, with authors submitting via email. The best submissions are then posted on Crystal Lake's Patreon page, where patrons read daily entries and vote for the winner. What you'll find in these Shallow Waters anthologies include the most popular of our finalists.

Stay tuned for more volumes in this series, or find Crystal Lake Publishing on Patreon to enter or vote on future contests.

Volume three includes horror, thrillers, suspense, and stories of hauntings, monsters, clowns, twisted love, and the beauty beneath it all.

Introduction by Joe Mynhardt
"Piece Meal" by Madeline Mora-Summonte
"The Anonymous Dark" by Jonathan Winn
"Number Seventeen" by Monique Snyman
"For Her" by Jo-Anne Russell
"Second Chances" by Rob Smales
"Maker of Flight" by Richard Thomas
"Inertia" by Joshua Hair
"Malignant Roots" by Red Lagoe
"Two to a Desk" by Dani Brown
"The Comb" by Theresa Derwin
"Echoes" by Megan Hart
"Haunted Places" by Mark Allan Gunnells
"Hallways, Long and Dark" by Dale Elster
"The Chance of a Lifetime" by Pete Mesling
"GOGGINS" by Stephen Crowley
"Caoine" by Jennifer Loring
"Hacked" By Mark Cassell & Patrick R. McDonough
"Ghosts of the Wood" by Tim Meyer
"Paid in Full" by Roberta Codemo
"This Other Door" by Dan Rabarts & Lee Murray
"Always and Forever" by Jay Faulkner

In this volume…

• This Halloween, the girl might just get more than she bargained for.
• A gumball machine dispenses something far more sinister—and sweeter—than candy.
• Lessons don't always have to be taught in school.
• You never know what you'll find at the end of a dark hallway…
• A serial killer reminisces over his last victim.
• An Irish-American man come to terms with the legacy he leaves, thanks to the ancestral apparition that has haunted his family for centuries.
• Some relationships leave scars that linger even beyond death.
• When a Victorian actor's career comes to a sudden end due to a flare-up of gout during an opening-night performance at the Delphi Theatre, he is left with only one chance to exact revenge on the inflexible house manager.
• Stalked by shadows, a woman prowls the darkened halls of her longtime home.
• Her body found mutilated down the tin mines and pursued by her step sister, she scratches her hooks against the wall as her classmates disappear.
• Some curses are eternal and unbreakable.
• Inertia—a property of matter in which something moves at a set speed and direction until made to change by another force.
• After his dark soul took to the soil, evil plagued the roots of the family tree.
• Houses aren't the only places that can be haunted...
• A man hunches over a workbench, a basket of tiny birds chirping nearby, wondering if the sky is still blue.
• Charlie's luck turns around when a storm rolls in, but things aren't always as they seem when you find love on the sea.
• In the center of a once-beautiful, now derelict forest, the trees aren't the only things that are dead.
• Sometimes, till death do us part is just not enough.

Proudly brought to you by Crystal Lake Publishing—Tales from the Darkest Depths.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Crystal Lake Publishing
• Release date: Oct 9, 2019
• ISBN: 9798223446675

Book preview

Shallow Waters

A Flash Fiction Anthology Vol. 3

Compiled and Edited by Joe Mynhardt

Published by Crystal Lake Publishing—Tales from The Darkest Depths

Website: www.crystallakepub.com/

Copyright 2019 Crystal Lake Publishing

Join the Crystal Lake community today

on our newsletter and Patreon!

Download our latest catalog here.

All Rights Reserved

Cover art:

Ben Baldwin—http://www.benbaldwin.co.uk

Layout:

Monique Snyman—http://www.moniquesnyman.com

Proofread by:

Naching Kassa

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the authors’ imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

In loving memory of Joey.

Miss you every day.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction by Joe Mynhardt

Piece Meal by Madeline Mora-Summonte

The Anonymous Dark by Jonathan Winn

Number Seventeen by Monique Snyman

For Her by Jo-Anne Russell

Second Chances by Rob Smales

Maker of Flight by Richard Thomas

Inertia by Joshua Hair

Malignant Roots by Red Lagoe

Two to a Desk by Dani Brown

The Comb by Theresa Derwin

Echoes by Megan Hart

Haunted Places by Mark Allan Gunnells (winner)

Hallways, Long and Dark by Dale Elster

The Chance of a Lifetime by Pete Mesling

GOGGINS by Stephen Crowley

Caoine by Jennifer Loring

Hacked By Mark Cassell & Patrick R. McDonough

Ghosts of the Wood by Tim Meyer

Paid in Full by Roberta Codemo

This Other Door by Dan Rabarts & Lee Murray

Always and Forever by Jay Faulkner

INTRODUCTION

Welcome back to Shallow Waters. Welcome to the third volume in Crystal Lake’s series of flash fiction anthologies.

For those not familiar with the series, we post a flash fiction challenge on social media every month. Authors then have a few days to write and submit the story within the parameters of the challenge (word count, theme, or perhaps a prompt). The best stories are posted on our Patreon page for our patrons to enjoy. I post one story a day, and at the end of the challenge, patrons would vote for a winner. The winner would, of course, get a cash prize, an author spotlight in our newsletter, and publication. The winner in this specific volume was Haunted Places by Mark Allan Gunnells.

The challenges included themes of hauntings, the seven deadly sins, love at its weirdest and most harmful, and a few other surprises.

After voting ends and a winner is chosen, I invite the authors of the most popular submissions to join our series of flash fiction anthologies. So you’ll always be reading the very best of the best.

It’s a great way to reward our patrons with even more great perks, but it constantly proves to be a great source of inspiration for authors who rise to the challenge. It also brings a lot of new traffic to our Patreon page, which is constantly improving to offer readers and/or writers great perks.

So if you’re an author or reader, or just a fan of the genre and independent publishing, be sure to check out our tiers on Patreon. It’s a great place to go behind the scenes of the company while supporting authors, the small press, and this genre we all love so much.

For those not familiar with Patreon, it’s a monthly subscription-based site where you can follow creators in exchange for behind the scenes access, sneak peeks, and perks associated with the tier you pay for. There are a lot of amazing creators there. Just be sure to look for a tier that best fits your needs and wallet.

So welcome once more to Shallow Waters.

Welcome to Crystal Lake Publishing—Tales from the Darkest Depths.

Joe Mynhardt

19 September, 2019

Piece Meal

Madeline Mora-Summonte

Lucy ducks behind the gumball machine. Nearby, two girls from school flip through magazines. Lucy chews her bottom lip. She should go over, smile. Grandma keeps telling her not to be so shy, such a sourpuss. Instead, she turns away from them, hunches her shoulders then slips her quarter into the slot. She hopes for purple. The plastic capsule rattles down the chute. She pops open the top half.

It’s not purple. And it’s not a gumball.

It’s a tooth. A fang, really, pointed and sharp.

Whispering draws Lucy’s attention. The girls stare at her over the magazine they share.

Are you girls going to buy that? Mr. Lawrence walks over.

Startled, they shove the magazine in the wrong slot. Weirdo, one of them murmurs as they race past Lucy. Even though Lucy’s not sure if they’re talking about her or Mr. Lawrence, she hangs her head, tucks the tooth away. The girls’ giggles cling to the air like cheap perfume.

Friends of yours? Mr. Lawrence clamps a hand on her shoulder. She tips with the weight. White hairs curl into tiny nests on his knuckles.

She shakes her head, takes the bag with Grandma’s pills.

His fat fingers brush her shoulder blades. Wings of an angel.

Lucy jumps. What?

Sings like an angel. The one with the blond curls. He jerks his chin at the door. She’s a little gossip, though. Not like you, Lucy. You’re a quiet one. Good at keeping secrets I bet. He gives a big, slow wink. Tell your Grandma I said hello.

At home, Lucy puts