20. Joanna Parypinski - We Are Turning On A Spindle
http://www.nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/we-are-turning-on-a-spindle/
I don't know if this is horror or not, but it was published in Nightmare magazine, so it’s going on the list. I love stories that rework myths and/or fairy tales, and “We Are Turning On A Spindle” is a clever re-imagining of Sleeping Beauty written in that prose style that is particular to fairy tales. Parypinski combines horror, fantasy and speculative fiction into something that feels like you might stumble across it in a twisted children’s book.
21. Kelly Link - The Specialist’s Hat
https://kellylink.net/specialists-hat
I love stories that create their own off-beat fantasy creatures/worlds, the rules of which are never fully explained. We never learn who or what the Specialist is, what he does, or where he comes from - nor do we learn the babysitter’s backstory, or why she’s doing what she is doing. Link understands that a story can unfold through concealment as well as through revelation, and she builds an engaging and frightening world with what she doesn’t tell us.
22. Genevieve Valentine - Good Fences
Good Fences
This, to me, is a story about anxiety - about how frightening the outside world can be, whether there’s anything there to be frightened of or not. Like Kelly Link in her above story, Valentine explains as little as possible, leaving us to guess at what exactly is going on - the real story is behind the words. You’ll love this if you like stories driven by atmosphere and emotion rather than plot, and if you’re willing to go along with a significant amount of ambiguity without asking the writer to resolve it for you.
23. Sarah Langan - Afterlife
http://www.nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/afterlife/
I’m not sure if Sarah Langan is any relation to John Langan (it isn’t in her Nightmare Magazine bio, and I can’t be bothered to Yahoo it), and I haven’t read any John Langan in any case, so this sentence doesn;t really have any purpose.
This is one of those stories that is nominally horror, but really fits more into the category of fantasy - in this case, a deeply moving fantasy about stolen childhoods and lives missed out on. It’s a very quick read, but even in such little time Langan makes all her characters feel real. Even the protagonist’s dad, who we only glimpse momentarily, feels like a person with a life that we get a glimpse into, rather than just another plot detail. It’s difficult to do that, but Langan makes it look easy.
24. Caroline Diorio - The Planting Prayer
http://flashfictiononline.com/main/article/the-planting-prayer/
If you’ve been following this series, you’ll know that I like my horror short and nasty. Edgar Allen Poe advised that a writer of horror stories would do well to remove everything from their stories that did not contribute to the intended effect, and you can only really do that in very short fiction - the longer you have to stick with a story, the harder it is to keep it interesting without introducing something beyond one-dimensional horror.
Don't take that to mean that this flash story by Caroline Diorio is one-dimensional though - in addition to being creepy as fuck, it’s surreal and strangely beautiful, with a fictional world vivid and imaginative enough to sustain a novel. If you (like me) thought that there was nothing new to be done with zombies, prepare to be surprised.
25. Desirina Boskovich - Construction Project
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Here’s the creepiest thing about this story, to me at least: it’s told in the first person, and the narrator is clearly a part of the couple who are the story’s only characters, but the narrator refers to both Eli and Sarah in the third person. That, and the fact that we get almost no details on what “the beast” is, gives Boskovich’s story an unsettling atmosphere, like you never know quite where the danger is coming from. The prose will appeal to Angela Carter fans.
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