It's been a hot minute since I had a new short story for your consideration, but the day is finally here! My tale of a strange encounter in the wasteland on the edge of reality—otherwise known as “Bat Country”—is now available in Illustrated Worlds #5. Here's a sample:
I was on the edge of the Shadelands, near the Plain of the Shrieking Towers, when one of the void bats I’d spent months there to study was hit by a Greyhound bus.
I didn’t know that it was a bus, or what the word “Greyhound” signified at the time. But there, where the tower-studded plain met the slope of rubble from Realm 348, a slice of road from an unknown Logic dimension had pressed against the fabric of Chaos Space. The void bats, drawn like moths to this fissure, feasted upon a trickle of alien laws of physics. They were usually deft at dodging the machines that shot along that otherworldly highway.
Not this time. As I spied through my optiscope from high up the mound of debris, a large block of metal with markings in an alien script plowed onto the road, surprising one of the two-dimensional bats and smashing it into goo across the machine’s face.
The whole issue promises to be fantastic. From the publisher:
Issue #5, the Spring 2024 edition of the horror and fantasy magazine, features incredible artwork by Reggie Thomas, Ruben Aldenhoven, Amuri Morris, Nick Stevens and more. Fifty pages of top quality fiction exploring the Hammer horror vibe of an all girls' school, a dimension hopping researcher studying bats and a ghost haunting phone apps. Stories by the likes of Scare in a Box, Fiona Scott Stevenson and Jonathan Balog bring the human imagination to life and explore the darker side of our souls.
Do I need to say more? Check it out now.
