Humorous Horror

Adam and Alice are reaching the age when some of the children created by the fertility treatment that spawned them begin to turn feral. Will they succomb to the same physiological horror that destroyed their parents? Every change brings on terror - the voice cracking as it changes, the swelling of the breasts, the coarsening of down into actual hair. Their aunt, Cynthia, oversees renovations to the Twisden family's Manhattan residence - torn apart by the children's parents at their most savage....

Möglicherweise leben riesige, unsichtbare Spinnen in euren Schädeln. Und das ist nicht irgendwie metaphorisch gemeint... Ihr werdet das als alberne Angstmacherei abtun. Aber etwas als Angstmacherei abzutun ist eines der ersten Symptome der parasitären Spinneninfektion. Ihr könnt die Spinne nicht spüren, denn sie kontrolliert eure Nervenenden. Ihr könnt sie nicht sehen, denn sie entscheidet, was ihr wahrnehmt. Ihr werdet nicht mal merken, wenn sie Eier legt. Und sie wird Eier legen.

On a scale from zero to dumpster fire, I tend to hang out at the far, trash-burning end. But lately, things have been going eerily well. So when Festus showed up with a birthday cake and less blood on his suit than usual, I was a little more than skeptical. Add to that a scythe-wielding accountant that is wearing the carpet thin, a demonic soiree in Missouri, a murderous gang of Red Caps in cheese country, a lie-detecting seven-year-old, and a snooty corporate cult, and I can smell the gas fumes on the trash heap at 40 paces.

Clive Menard is just an ordinary guy living an ordinary life. But when a talking spider crawls inside his head, things get a lot less ordinary…and people start dying. Could an itsy-bitsy arachnid be behind the killing spree terrorizing Clive’s community? To evade a sharp detective and find a murderer among friends, Clive must shake the cobwebs loose and piece together the puzzle of his life, all without falling prey to a dark force beyond his comprehension.

Victor Gischler is a master of the class-act literary spoof, and his work has drawn comparison to that of Douglas Adams, Kurt Vonnegut, and Thomas Pynchon. Now, Gischler turns his attention to werewolves, alchemists, ghosts, witches, and gun-toting Jesuit priests in Vampire a Go-Go, a hilarious romp of spooky, Gothic entertainment. Narrated by a ghost whose spirit is chained to a mysterious castle in Prague, Gischler's latest is full of twists and surprises that will have listeners screaming - and laughing - for more.

In the spirit of the shot-on-video horror of the '80s, Meat Photo is a transgressive, absurd horror comedy and the love child of Andersen Prunty and C. V. Hunt. Meat photos are the hottest trend. Everyone has one or is willing to do anything to get one. It’s all anyone can talk about on social media. Grab your meat photo. Wear it like a mask. Join the Great Migration to the local Dollar General.

What's a ghoul to do when the latest job dropped in her lap involves the sudden disappearance and murder of several children in the area? It's not like she doesn't already have enough on her plate; what, with being recently declared Public Enemy Number One by the Templars (an organization of which her roommate and best friend, Lisa Jenkins, is a member), and a problem involving the neighbor's massive dogs using her lawn as a toilet, which is becoming a real issue for the goblin horde living in her basement.

An enchanted blade. An evil old man. An ancient spirit. The Weird West just gets weirder. Hucksters Orville and Jimmy struggle to buy a decent meal. When an old man asks for help with a supernatural pest, Orville smells opportunity. Jimmy smells danger. And danger is what they find. Jimmy must retrieve an enchanted knife, while fighting a huge coyote, a shapeshifting opossum, and an ancient spirit determined to keep the blade where it is, all to save Orville from the old man's clutches.

Kate and Michael, twenty-something housemates working at the same Trader Joe’s supermarket, are thoroughly screwed when people start turning into zombies at their house party in the Oakland hills. The zombie plague is a sexually transmitted disease, turning its victims into shambling, horny, voracious killers.

Goldilocks' latest case takes her to the deserts of the southwest, home to gun-toting cowboys, sun-scorched caverns, and high-noon showdowns. Goldilocks has been given a fresh start, trading in the lush forests and Midwest plains for sandstone cliffs and desert cacti. This time around she’s determined to play it straight and show the higher-ups that she’s got what it takes. Easier said than done, especially when the Great Coyote Spirit Glooskap appears and charges her with finding the Dawn’s Blessing, a mythical flower that only blooms once per century. The race is on, and she’s not...

Scotty is no stranger to being bullied, but after a chance encounter in an online chatroom, finds hope in Rebecca. Scotty is about to find out that people on the internet can be worse than people in real life. Facebook. Twitter. These are the places the modern troll thrives. How far would you be willing to go to bring a troll to justice?

From across the far reaches of the internet, the community at Fark.com presents . . . Something Woked This Way Comes: The 2023 Fark Fiction Anthology. Our editors have worked feverishly to bring you the best short fiction of 2023 from the minds and imaginations at Fark, the online community where snark is king and wit reigns supreme. Gods. Angels. Devils (maybe.) St. Nicholas and sinners, foxes and dogs, the future and the past all come together with much, much more. And even better, for the eighth year in a row, all proceeds from the sale of this anthology will benefit an excellent ...

What is it with Olivia and ghosts? No matter where Olivia Kidney goes, they follow. Even when she and her klutzy handyman father start over in a new brownstone in New York City - owned by the mad, bad, and dangerous Ansel Plover - there is no escape from the weirdness that is Olivia's life. Their new living room is entirely submerged underwater, and Olivia needs a boat to navigate past the bobbing furniture and snapping turtles just to get to her bedroom. And then, there are the ghosts. The house holds secrets, lots of them - Olivia can feel it. Why, she wonders, was she invited to live there?

Brad's mostly been a loner, content with his job and his tiny apartment. He's never thought much about being part of something. He's never really thought about the bigger picture. Until he meets a beautiful (and possibly psychotic) girl named Dawn. Dawn leads Brad into a vicious world as hedonistically carnal as it is brutal, forcing Brad to decide if he's going to dig deep within himself and continue to resist the community he's remained apart from his entire life or embrace it and accept his new reality.

In 1838 Frédéric Chopin, George Sand and her children travel to a monastery in Mallorca. They are there to create and to convalesce, to live a simple life after the wildness of their Paris days. Witness to this tumultuous arrival is Blanca, the ghost of a teenage girl who has been at the monastery for over three hundred years. Blanca’s was a life cut short and she is outraged. Having lived in a world full, according to her mother, of ‘beautiful men’, she has found that in death it is the women she falls for.

The Best of Bizarro Fiction: Vol. 2 features 11 carefully crafted surreal tales of the absurd, the hilarious, and the outright horrific. Edited by Matthew A. Clarke.

Richard always believed he'd enjoy a few golden years before Death's bony hand reached for him. But what does he get? He gets to live across the hall from friggin' Stanley Kapcheck, with his shiny bald head and perfect teeth that are all his own; Stanley Kapcheck who struts around like a peacock in his leather coat.

Stanley's lonely. Before the strange events of the past few months, the self-proclaimed alien abductee and T.V. crime drama aficionado would drink and bowl with his friends, Herb and Dallas. Everything changes when Stanley becomes a zombie. With each bite, he gains a new friend. Soon, he has more friends than he would've ever thought possible. If he could just sink his teeth into Herb, Lois, and Dallas, they'd all be together again, and everything would be perfect.

Angels and Demons, Myths and Legends... It's been six months since Reginald Baskin became a vampire too fat to live happily with the beautiful undead — six months in which Reginald and his two-thousand-year-old maker Maurice have learned that safety does not come with power. These days, Maurice is Deacon of the Vampire Nation, but plenty beneath Maurice are still plotting to depose him … or dispose of him. But when a new and ancient threat rears its head, the Nation faces extinction and the truest of deaths — and Reginald, Maurice, and Nikki might be the only vampires who can stop it.

Lawrence Nurdle fancies himself a Goth Edgelord. His girlfriend isn't impressed. To convince her he's the edgiest guy in Toledo, Ohio, he joins a coven of vampires. The vampires kill Lawrence. Death just wants to enjoy a ballgame. But Death has a job to do and must collect the soul of Lawrence Nurdle. There's just one problem. Death can only collect the souls of the dead and Lawrence is now undead, like the rest of the vampires.