Two girls, outcasts from middle school society, dabble in witchcraft and opening portals whose keys are pain and blood. This is a terrible, beautiful, horrifying story about puberty, bullying, despair, and a…
Category: Story a Day 2022
“The Door in the Fence” by Jeffrey Ford
A widow’s strange transformation is recounted by a neighbor boy whose path crosses hers again many years later. This was a fun, strange story, that gets progressively stranger and more outlandish but…
“Refinery Road” by Stephen Graham Jones
Three friends on a desolate road at night have an encounter with mortality and consequences. This is a very Stephen Graham Jones story – well-drawn characters, strange and disorienting situation, bleak conclusion.
“A Trip to Paris” by Richard Kendrey
A year after poisoning her family, a woman finds that a wall covered with mold and a suspicious repairman stand between her and an escape to Paris. Another from “When Things Get…
“The Hag” by Benjamin Percy
A reporter and her stowaway daughter go to a remote Maine island at the winter solstice to investigate mysterious body parts that wash up on the mainland from time to time, and…
“The Party” by Paul Tremblay
At a party with an end-of-the-world theme, a guest find something disturbing in the bedroom where the coats are piled. This had a little bit of the same feel as “The Invitation,”…
“Money of the Dead” by Karen Heuler
Four long-time residents of an apartment building receive bundles of hell joss paper labeled “Money of the Dead”; two cash them in for dead people who were important in their lives, one…
“Quiet Dead Things” by Cassandra Khaw
After a gruesome murder, a small town isolates itself from the outside world, only to find that it has not in fact protected itself. Another from “When Things Get Dark,” this has…
“War Wounds” by J.S. Breukelaar
Two young men are haunted by a deformed bull calf, and by their families’ trauma from World War II. There’s a sadness to this story, and also a strangeness; it’s not entirely…
“Do You Think We Should Pull Over?” by Brian Doyle
The narrator recounts tales about Pete and cars, and Pete and dogs, each more preposterous or sad or illuminating than the last, before finally reflecting on the importance of recounting preposterous, sad,…