...by NICK MEDINA
SHORT STORIES: Page 3
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Select stories are free. Click on the titles in blue to read those tales today.
Black Clouds Roll In
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​Frost's caregiver wheels him outside and leaves him there for over twenty-four hours. Frost's pleading cries compete with the sorrowful moan of the whistling wind as his wheelchair threatens to take a spin down the sloping bank upon which it is parked. There's water below. The waves grow darker as a storm approaches. Either Frost's fed-up caregiver will have mercy on him and wheel him inside, or he'll let the water wash Frost away forever.

Dark Highlands returns with its third crusade of cringe, ushering readers to the darkest edges of humanity. Experience the hunger for flesh, revel in the tyranny of cold-blooded caregivers and suckle on the souls of the damned. More disgusting and tantalizing encounters await. Dark Highlands Anthology is a literary and art journal that specializes in horror, the supernatural, dark science fiction and fantasy. Published in April and October of each year, Dark Highlands showcases writers, poets and artists from the Midwest. In this volume: Alyssa Bersine, Srijon Chowdhury, Shawn Cook, Sarah Corson, Andrea N. DeFoe, Emily Dix, Andrew Ek, Bradley Ellis, Paul-Thomas Ferguson, Alex J. Kane, Joshua Kolbow, Shelly Li, Gina G. Markee, Nick Medina, R.L. Naquin, William Perry, Jonathan H. Roberts, Clare Rosean, Misty Rowan, Nicomedes Austin Suárez, Danielle Thompson, JR Tschopp, Eric S. Wellen, and Zac Woodside.
Published in Dark Highlands Anthology, Volume III - October 10, 2011
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Get your copy HERE
The Moaning Dead
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Joseph Gardener was an undertaker for twelve years before one of the bodies on his embalming table came back to life. Nothing would ever be the same after that.
The dead have been reawakening for some time, but the Gardeners - Joseph, Helen and their young daughter Abby - who live in and operate a funeral home, have always been safe from the infected...until now. Now they must figure out how to survive without becoming victims themselves. It’s a test that leaves them wishing they never got involved with the dead in the first place.
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Published by NorGus Press in Undertaker Tales - October 6, 2011
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Get your copy HERE
The Ghosts in the Gondola
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When Jeffrey Cooper travels to Switzerland to meet the woman of his dreams, he finds that life doesn't always go as planned, and sometimes being haunted is all one can hope for.

One day shy of meeting Maria, the woman he loves despite only knowing her through letters, Jeffrey is told about Harder-Potschete, a local tradition that utilizes frightful masks to keep the country free of evil spirits by scaring them up the Alps. When Jeffrey's meeting with Maria finally comes - atop Mount Pilatus - he soon realizes that she can't come down from the mountain, and that the masks don't just keep evil spirits away.
Published in The Washington Pastime, Volume 1, Issue 3 - October 2011
From the Field
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Arbie Crowl doesn’t remember anything that happened before he emerged from the pitch-black cornfield on the edge of town. That's when he’s picked up by Sheriff Collins and brought to the Old Mill for a drink where everyone inside seems to think that he’s the greatest guy around. Things get stranger when the town drunk points to on Arbie’s shirt; blood that everyone knows came from killing his wife. Arbie’s appalled, insistent that he’s done no such thing, but no one seems to care. It’s not until Arb returns to the cornfield that he realizes why.
Published by The Absent Willow Review - April 15, 2011
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Elbows off the Table
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Wendy didn't want to go back inside the house, and she especially didn't want to look inside the kitchen, because that’s where her little brother was dead on the kitchen table.

Wendy, haunted by what she saw in the house, is even more disturbed by the decision that she must make. Does she allow her mother to go on living with Sammy’s corpse sprawled over the kitchen table, believing that he is "just pretendin'," or does she turn her mother in and lose the only family she has left?

Published by Pill Hill Press in Big Book of New Short Horror - October 1, 2011
Baby Boy Compton
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​The doctor would have said he was a beautiful baby boy. Everything about him was perfect: his sparking blue eyes, his button nose, his pink lips, the right number of fingers on each hand and the all important appendage between his legs that every father evaluates whether they admit it or not. But that’s where the perfection stopped. When the doctor lifted baby boy Compton from inside his mother, everyone in the birthing suite gasped...

Published in The Ethereal Gazette, Issue 10 - March 7, 2010
The Meeks Horror at Half-Light
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Mikey’s big brother, Randy, tells him the story of a young boy who lost his life on Halloween night: a boy named Jonathan Meeks whose soul returns by entering the scarecrows in the cornfields along the deserted country road that runs along their house. Mikey tries to convince himself that Randy’s just trying to scare him, but when a scarecrow shows up outside his door on Halloween night, he knows there’s more to the legend than he would have liked to believe.
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The butchers are everywhere! From eleven authors come a new collection of short stories to split your soul. Of all forms the darkness takes, none are so sinister as the vampire and werewolf. Yet darkness isn't just human, it also exists in the depths of time and beneath the soles of your feet. Read on if you dare.
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Published by UnEarthed Press in Anthology of Ichor: Hearts of Darkness - August 27, 2010
Get your copy HERE
The Hole
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All one needs to commit murder in broad daylight and get away with it is a shovel and a hole.
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Published by Pill Hill Press in Daily Flash: 365 Days of Flash Fiction -
October 15, 2010
Waves of Dread
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Teddy Gordon joins his uncle on a fishing trip out on the Atlantic. Being a boy from Chicago, he’s hot and seasick on the water, but when he wakes from a restorative nap to find his uncle and the rest of the crew missing with the boat still bobbing in the middle of the ocean, nausea soon becomes the least of his problems.
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Embrace your dark side with this eclectic collection of horror stories. The dead torment the living and vengeance clouds the mind; voodoo rituals, infernal fishing trips, portals to violent dimensions, reality-altering artists and cowboy-vampire stand-offs. Soaked in blood and bile, this volume contains the following short stories: Digging Too Deep by Gregory Miller, House of Paintings by Anthony Bell, The Iron Maiden by Eric Dimbleby, Cursed by E.J. Tett, Midnight Ghosts by S.W. Morse, A Temporary Place by Gregory L. Norris, The Dustman by Tim Reed, Peace by Lou Treleaven, Waves of Dread by Nick Medina, The Dollhouse by Douglas Hackle, Afterlove by Tomas Furby, People Person by Stacey Longo, The Dimensionator by Sean Graham and Ride into the Sunset by Marc Sorondo.

Published by Pill Hill Press in Dark Things IV - November 10, 2010
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Get your copy HERE
Springtime Slaughter
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​There's a time for everything: a time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill and a time to heal...just like it says in the Bible. So when the food supply starts to dwindle, the killing must commence. To every thing there is a season...
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Published by Blood Bound Books in Seasons in the Abyss January 29, 2011
