1,329 words
C. P. Webster
Lovecraft’s Cat & Other Tales of Weird Fiction
Independently published, 2025
What a foolish, inquisitive fly was I to stumble into this sticky, enveloping embrace of a lurking spider’s web… And very soon, perhaps this very evening, when the sun has set and the twilight creeps up to touch the eaves, then the spider might come crawling for its prize.
—“Still Here” (more…)
2,401 words
“You’re leaving on the 4:30 AM flight to Jamaica, Commander. You’ve got to find out who killed Strangways and why.” M glared at Bond through a cloud of pipe smoke, his tone sharp. The murder of Strangways had clearly rattled him.
“4:30 AM?” thought Bond, looking at his Rolex Submariner. “That’s in three hours. Normally I need five to six hours to pack. Let’s see. It’ll take me twenty minutes or so to get back to my flat . . .” (more…)
1,411 words
Shawn Bell
Post—: Short Stories by Shawn Bell
Quakertown, Pa.: Antelope Hill, 2022
Other than calling his work “dissident fiction,” it’s hard to categorize Shawn Bell’s short stories. In his recent Antelope Hill collection, entitled Post—, it’s mostly their cutting insights into the insidious façade of globalism — and their tremendously high quality — which link these stories together. Within Post— we have elements of dystopia, coming-of-age, romance, alternate history, family drama, tragedy, and the slice of life found in the faded Houckian suburbs of the American Midwest. (more…)
3,918 words
Peaches.
The orchard’s ripeness floated through the screen window like a first kiss. They begged to be picked. Gathered. Eaten. Rob fought hard for his orchard, for all his crops. From bugs. Birds. Deer. Rot. (more…)
8,120 words
The sky was gray and scuffed, like someone had wiped their feet on it.
It had stayed that way since the dogs came and took Rinty. Mom always said she could do her chores without watching me because Rinty never left my side. (more…)
2,400 words
“War is a bad thing, but peace can be a living horror.” — Ray Bradbury, “The Concrete Mixer”
I trust I am not alone among Counter-Currents readers in my appreciation for the late Ray Bradbury, my favorite author as a boy. Though Bradbury is often categorized as a science fiction author, his stories are just as suffused with magic and myth as they are with the futuristic technology that so repelled and terrified him. (more…)
1,463 words
The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month had passed, and Elsa Bauer could not sleep while the wind howled about the hilltop farm, running cold, malevolent fingers down her big stone chimney, the old beech’s branches rustling against the slate and glass like a cacophony from a demonic symphony. (more…)
609 words
Avner rustled the Evening News, pursing fat lips to speak. “I say Machen’s got a damn fine piece about ghostly bowmen saving the boys at Mons in the paper!” Then, folding the page, he proffered, “Given the Boche a right bloody nose!” (more…)
4,078 words
It happened on a housing estate in the inner city. A piece of former parkland that had been handed over to developers to build two storey homes, based on the town house concept, for yuppies who’d come along too late to be part of the last gentrification wave. I never would have known such a place existed, though it was a short bike ride away from where I lived. (more…)
