Zero Hour! Halloween 2014 — Pegs

Jonathan Elliott is an old friend of Episodes from the Zero Hour! who served as an editor on EZH! Volume 3: Weird Game Hunter.  His story, “Circular Logic” will appear in the upcoming Weird Tales from the Zero Hour! anthology.

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Pegs

by: Jonathan Elliott

It’s hard to slip into a space not meant for you. Like one of those children’s toys, with the solid sheet of wood with holes in it and a bunch of blocky shapes to correspond to each hole. Pressure and pain and resistance and splinters teach us very early on what happens when the pudgy little pyramid meets an opening meant for the fat cube. But as we get older, we learn the virtues and potency of force and grease and compromise, and somehow, the shapes work their ways on through the spaces we’ve got, appropriate or otherwise.

This is how we get what we want. This is how I get what I want. This is why she is in front of me now. It began downstairs at a gorgeous new bar in Asbury Park, patterned after that French film, “The Red Balloon.” Nothing but dark woods and flights of fancy and classy fonts all mish-mashed together, tinted in a little bit of crimson and scented in assorted varieties of chocolate. She found me. This is different, and I am off-balance, because I am very good at doing the finding. Sometimes the nights end in misery and rejection, and sometimes I locate a lady who is willing and waiting for me, and what you might imagine would happen does, indeed, happen, and we go our separate ways.

Zero Hour! Halloween 2014 — Slow Burn

Halloween has arrived!

It’s no secret… at Episodes from the Zero Hour!, Halloween reigns supreme above all other holidays.  It’s the time of year when we give license to our darkest imaginations to bring forth their worst, in service of the scare.  It’s the holiday during which we dare the ghosts and goblins to slink out of the shadows of our own fearful minds, to prove that the world isn’t as rational and logical and safe as we had hoped.  And that makes for some great storytelling.

Each year, we strive to bring you our Episodes from the Zero Hour! Trick ‘R Treat Halloween short stories.  This year, we gave our writers the freedom to write whatever they wanted, so long as it was scary or otherwise related to Halloween.  We’ve got some Zero Hour! veterans in the mix, as well as some fresh faces who have contributed their own tales of horror.  We hope you enjoy, and if you do, please let our writers know in the comments section of their short story posts.

Happy Halloween!

-Episodes from the Zero Hour!

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Our first offering is from Episodes from the Zero Hour! Managing Editor Jason Butkowski.

Slow Burn

by: Jason Butkowski

The world was going to shit.

I know every generation says the same thing. My parents, in their time, said it. My grandparents said it. But this time, it was actually happening. The human race had reached the end of its rope, the foot was on the accelerator, and the space between the car and the cliff was getting smaller and smaller by the moment.

It started innocuously enough. One or two fucked up stories in the news. Half-naked cannibals in Florida… the newscasters said it was because the assailant was on “bath salts.” First time I ever heard the term. Then some humans doing downright inhuman things in Jersey. Relatives, family friends, savagely attacking and killing children. Bad weed, according to police reports.

You see, people were shocked, and then they moved on. We all had our problems. As long as the drug-addled psychos didn’t bother us, we thought we didn’t have to pay any of it much attention.

But then things started getting bad for everybody.

They’re Coming to Get You, Barbara… Zero Hour! Halloween 2014 Flash Fiction Challenge

What’s up, Toga Zombie? And what’s going on with Zombie Jerry Lewis in Boxer Shorts?

So, if you’ve been coming to this site for a little while, you know we’re a bit bonkers about Halloween. And why not? Halloween is a holiday of infinite possibilities, in which the dead can roam the Earth with the living, in which ghouls and goblins are made manifest by overactive imaginations, in which vampires and witches prowl the night in search of tasty treats, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria. It is a holiday during which we may engage in our most primal of emotions — fear — and either conquer it or succumb to it. You can’t really say the same for Arbor Day, can you? (well, I suppose you can, if you’re dendrophobic…)

One of my favorite Episodes from the Zero Hour! traditions is the annual Halloween Short Story. It’s a chance for our creators to let loose and participate in the pure art of storytelling, while poking at the weird bits that coagulate at the edge of the Zero Hour! universe. It’s also a chance for me to revisit what got me into writing in the first place.