NIGHTMARE MAGAZINE - Horror and Dark Fantasy Story Podcast (Audiobook | Short Stories)

It was the unexpectedness of the scream that pulled him to his feet from a sofa slouch before the television, that sent him in a run the short way to the kitchen. Jess’s soft padding steps the same path a few seconds before, unconcerned, slippered, still sounded in his memory. Get me a packet of crisps whilst you’re in there, love, will you? The snap of the light switch. The clicking of the old school fluorescent tube coming to life. | Copyright 2022 by Jonathan L. Howard. Narrated by Alex Hyde-White.

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I have spent my life trying to understand what the thing called memory is. I know some of what it is not. It is not the opposite of forgetting. And it is not a record of what happened. How many summers did we spend at the castle? Five? Seven? We did not go there every summer, though now it seems impossible childhood summers could have existed without the castle. | Copyright 2022 by Ray Nayler. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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She remembered the scent of rain and bamboo. The squish of her shoes in the soft loam as she followed her father through the forest. He with his axe over one shoulder, and she carrying a lunch her mother had packed for them. She had always thought him a giant of a man, so powerful and strong. But she remembered following along behind him and noticing the delicate curve of his back. | Copyright 2022 by Kiyomi Appleton Gaines. Narrated by Taylor Meskimen.

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Ass o’clock in the morning and it’s black out. BLACK black, the kind of black you only get in these miserable, middle-of-nowhere places. No, “middle-of-nowhere” is too generous; this is past that, right at the line where nowhere becomes miles of uncharted forest thick with months of snow and screaming with wolves and whatever other ungodly feral things make noise when everything decent in the world is asleep. | Copyright 2022 by Ian Muneshwar. Narrated by John Allen Nelson, Justine Eyre.

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At least twice a day it occurs to Marissa that the photos she uses to find Neolithic long barrows and Roman forts were taken to better plot destruction. Every image passing through her hands is labeled at the top in a language she cannot speak. A freezing of the land to ease the locating of bombs and the advancing of invasions. | Copyright 2021 by Steve Toase. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.

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Stopping by the canal to piss, and only a third of his way back to the House of Death, Ah Keng found his friend Leung, dead of the cholera. He recognized his oldest friend immediately, even in the darkness; even in this state. Leung’s sickness-shriveled body lay a few feet from brackish water, pallid face upturned towards the moon. Leung. It was really Leung. | Copyright 2021 by Manish Melwani. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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For my eighteenth birthday, I get a tattoo. A small red heart on my shoulder, Loot inked across it in black cursive. Loot was my brother’s nickname. He was twelve years old when he disappeared. I was seven. The next morning, I peel off the bandage to take a look. A vine with thorns where there was no vine with thorns. It wraps around the heart, above and below Loot’s name. | Copyright 2021 by Julianna Baggott. Narrated by Susan Hanfield.

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My visitor gazes at our family bookshelves. I perceive right away that this is less the helpless bibliophile’s habit of scanning the titles of any shelf encountered in the wild, than an exercise in measuring me, of finding the best means of approach. We are in the family living room, a welcoming space with, among other things, three double bookcases. It is not an extraordinary book collection to find in the home of people who read. | Copyright 2021 by Adam-Troy Castro. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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This time I will definitely die, Jeffords thinks. He feels that this conscious thought affords him a certain immunity from such a fate, though logically he knows that’s nonsense. As always, he chooses a window seat, not the aisle or---worst of all---the middle seat. The window seat is essential for a simple reason: Jeffords must remain in control of the window shade being up or down throughout the flight. At certain times it must be closed. At certain times he must open it, even though he dreads doing so, for, when he does, he finds himself trapped in one of three familiar nightmares. | Copyright 2021 by Jon Padgett. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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He looks at me, and I am his. A steady rhythm of flickering light cast from above, pursuing me like a shadow. I scurry through tunnels, crawl through gutters and across fields, and always he is there. Relentless, wearing me down, toying with me. I escape it, breathless and relieved. But when I look down into the puddle of water at my feet, he is me. Black eyes slowly displace my brown, like thick tar pouring slowly into my pupils. Soft red lips stretch into a hard, pointed beak. Oily black feathers spread across brown, hairless skin. | Copyright 2021 by WC Dunlap. Narrated by Janina Edwards.

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