Dark Fantasy Short Stories

Nadia Moran is an illegal wizard, an expert thief, and an occasional killer. Riordan MacCormac is an assassin of the Family, a legendary band of assassins bonded to Shadowmorph symbionts. And unless Nadia and Riordan work together, the creatures of the Shadowlands will devour them both....

War has come to the human kingdoms of Parth! From the capital cities and castles to the most remote mountain villages, the Kingdoms of Man, the Elven Enclaves, and the Dwarven Dynasties are all under attack from the Dread Lord Vargo Duuk and his hordes of barbarians, demons and orcs.

The police take Terrell Boyd to Malcolm Bliss Mental Hospital. Diagnosis: Schizophrenia, paranoid type. Can the paranormal powers he claims really work? What if Jesus Christ returns to Earth the second time, only to have the world drive him insane? Unavailable for over 30 years, until now. This short story first appeared in the July 1982 issue of Rod Serling's Twilight Zone Magazine.

Heaven's Burning God gave Ted Erickson the power to freeze the sinful, so why does his own body keep growing numb? A prostitute. A dirty bum. They can't survive Ted's growing ability to exhale cold air from the Ninth Circle of Hell. So how can the suicidal teenager next door keep singing? At first Ted Erickson doesn't understand how or why he can freeze things just by blowing on them. He believes God gave him a mission to clean up the world of sinners.

In this short story, paranormal detective Will Castleton gets a phone call in the middle of the night that appears to be about his girlfriend - who happens to by lying in a catatonic state in the hospital. But within an hour Will is thrust into an investigation involving vengeful spirits and a decades-old murder.

In this short story by bestselling author Myla Goldberg (originally published in Harper's magazine), an unemployed artist lands a freelance job that gives him a strange brand of influence over the population of a distant island nation and places him in an equally strange relationship with the...

"On the busy, bustling, colonized future Moon, McAuley reminds us that although everyone makes mistakes, some mistakes have far greater consequences than others..." So writes Gardner Dozois, editor of the Seventeenth Annual Collection of The Year's Best Science Fiction, about this thrilling and...

Estás a punto de entrar en la Casa Oscura, ahí donde habitan las sombras. Esta es una recopilación de relatos que tratan de rendir homenaje a los clásicos del género, a los verdaderos maestros.

In a frozen land where power and wealth are sought for at any cost, a dangerous old man seeks revenge on his children for crossing him one too many times. Spend a Winter in Hell is a dark fantasy short story by Caleb M. Powers.

Cuando los humanos vienen a talar el último bosque, se llevan una desagradable sorpresa. Un corto y oscuro cuento de fantasía sobre la ira de la naturaleza.

Quando gli umani arrivano per abbattere l'ultima foresta, hanno una brutta sorpresa. Un racconto sull'ira della natura.

From urban hotel rooms with interdimensional portals to far-future robotic societies, to far-flung galaxies, to the near future, to the present day with a twist. Eric Fomley's first full collection brings a variety of dark futures for your consumption and enjoyment. Flash Futures contains three very short stories and 21 sci-fi flash fictions guaranteed to take you to the future in 10 minutes or less.

What if you couldn't say no to others, but they never knew? Empathy should have its limits. But for Freya, it doesn't. When others are around she finds herself bending to their will, unable to tell anyone what she wants, unable to assert herself or defend herself. Can she find a way forward or will she forever be drowning in their darkness?

In a land of forbidden magic, a mysterious cave holds both riches and danger for three adventurers who discover a mighty treasure and a terrible secret.

The workings of heaven are shrouded in mystery and myth, leaving us to only theorize as to what awaits us when we pass. There are those among us, however, that are special cases. These are good people who have committed a horrendous crime, such as murder. What makes their cases special, however, is the fact that by committing these egregious acts, one could argue that they have made the world a better place.

Prometheus - one of the keenest Titans to ever walk the earth. Until, that is, his weakness for the human race resulted in his imprisonment. For thousands of years, Prometheus's only certainty was his daily torture at Zeus's hand. Now, unchained by the Eternal Guardians, he spends his days in solitude, trying to forget the past. He's vowed no allegiance in the war between mortal and immortal, but when a beautiful maiden seeks him out and begs for his help, he's once again powerless to say no.

The problem with the dark is you don’t really know what’s lurking in there. Something hiding? Something menacing? Or just an inky dome for the stars to twinkle on? Writers rarely let us dwell on the latter. No, they would much rather they put our nerves on edge, that our skin would begin to crawl and that the cold sweat of fear propels our pulse and heartbeat to nightmare-inducing trauma. I think they’re ready.

Four dark tales of the holiday spirit. In "Christmas Eve Gift", Old Bill sets out on her annual Christmas Eve journey to her niece's house and encounters an unexpected darkness along the way. In "A Dark Christmas", Alice, a dark daughter of the vampire, Elizabet, turns the table on a family of hunters. In "On the 7th Day of Christmas", Sunny finally gets to throw a party, only a monster shows up and twists a small kink into her New Year's Eve festivities. In "Twelfth Night", A 13-year-old encounters the Woman with No Face for the first time.

El protagonista nos relata con cierto regusto nostálgico una vivencia extraña y entre real e irreal, sobre un viaje que realizó a las montañas, y su casual encuentro con una pequeña isla ubicada en el centro de un lago. El derroche de una rara y cercana fantasía que supura el relato es envidiable, y está contado con tanto detalle en tan escasa narrativa que no por menos habríamos de imaginarnos en una conversación con el protagonista y narrador.

Valerie is an adrenaline junkie with a weakness for surfer boys and long swims at night. As her beach resort honeymoon draws to a close, she sets her sights on three locals for a night of scandal and indulgence.