Read by David Byrd, That Blue Jeans Guy.

Closure.

Everyone keeps telling me that I need closure where Laura Burke is concerned. Skeletons aren’t meant to be kept in the closet forever.  It’s been twenty years since high school.

Twenty years since she broke my heart.

I just about went crazy when I heard that she married someone else not two years later.

I should be over her by now.

Read by Julie Hoverson

Our marriage troubled, a rift had formed between my husband and me for no other reason than an inability to conceive a child. I loved him and wanted no other man. I also wanted a child, a family. But our physician had informed us that our prospects were hopeless.

With several years invested in the marriage and a couple more into the relationship I felt guilty for considering a dissolution of marriage so that I might have the family that I’d always wanted. See, David’s exceptionally low sperm count was the reason for our failed attempts to conceive.

Then, one night while lying awake, staring at the ceiling, a winged creature—a demon of some type with large bat-like wings and muscular body—appeared, frightening me. It seemed surreal. A streetlight cast illumination through the bedroom window, lighting his right side. Was I really awake? Could this be a dream? Before I could cry out or wake David, the creature spoke.

“I can give you the child you desire.”

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Read by Zachary Brewster Geisz

You probably heard that we acted out of fear, and it’s true. That was part of it. We were scared of Rudy Wayne Roberts. There was never any way to predict what he might do, not when he was in one of his moods, and those could hit without warning.

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Welcome to Episode 6, a Flash of Fear episode of the Fear on Demand Horror Podcast featuring flash fiction by Amy Grech.

Read by Eleiece Krawiec

Jack had been dead for less than a year when his widow spotted something gray in a corner of the cellar that resembled a heap of dust, but throbbed like the heart of a dying man.

A sudden heart attack claimed him nine short months ago…

She had his body cremated.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Sara passed the heap of dust whenever she brought her filthy clothes over to the washing machine.  She couldn’t avoid it.  The first time the heap moved, Sara bit her lip and shrugged it off, along with a sudden chill that crept through the open cellar door…

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Read by Sonia Perozi

Obsidian Bay. A perfect name for a place where someone could live whose life had been dark and full of pain. I had moved to this village to make a new life for myself. A year ago I discovered my husband having an affair with a co-worker. My world had shrunk, filling with betrayal and pain, and I’d divorced him. Having won our home in the divorce settlement I hid there, avoiding friends and family. During that year I became a new person, one who found she could paint and bring to life on canvas the interesting faces of people and landscapes. The pain, in short, brought forth a latent talent.

Read by Gord Mackenzie (gord.mackenzie@gmail.com)

Music is provided by Black Pharaoh from the new tune “The Return of the Beautiful.”

“Here’s your key, sir. Room 410. Elevators are to the right.”

“Thank you.” I returned the young girl’s smile. It was the first conversation I’d had all day, and frankly it felt good simply talking to someone, regardless if the exchange had only been a few pleasant words with the hotel’s desk clerk.

I’d been traveling all day, since early this morning. First the flight from Islip’s Macarthur Airport to Omaha, which had been delayed at its scheduled stop-over in Chicago for nearly three hours, and then the drive from Omaha to Grand Island, which also took longer than anticipated. I’d ended up smack in the middle of rush-hour, and believe me, these cornhuskers don’t take to offensive driving as much as us city boys do. They pretty much stick to their lazy ways, even behind the wheel, no matter if they’re early, late, or what. Once I battled my way out of the city though, it was pretty much smooth sailing to Grand Island–all three hours of it.”

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Read by Glen Hallstrom aka SmokeStack Jones.

Music is provided by Black Pharaoh from the new tune “The Return of the Beautiful.”

“Ten minutes in from the start of the session, and the class was waiting – impatiently.  A few students had started to repack their equipment – their spiral notebooks, their ballpoints; one had clicked on the Shut Down option on his laptop.  The atmosphere was pricklish.

For the first time since the beginning of the semester, their grad film student teacher was late.

When the young man finally entered, the group became wildebeest, nervously sensing rain.  Something was obviously different.

“Let’s settle,” said the young man.  And he introduced the subject of the day’s lesson: “The Red Spectre – by an unknown director, but I think it is actually by George Melies.”

After a brief preamble he added: “Could somebody get the lights?”

The film ran.  The print was grainy.

But it was clear enough for the young man to see all that he needed to stir the hour-dead lunch in his belly.  Only the students seated closest to him, however, in the first two rows, heard him mutter, “Jesus God” at the screen that was beaming out into the gloom.

The reels nimbly circled.  And it was on them that the young man settled his gaze – for comfort – when he knew for certain that he could take no more of what the film had to offer… “

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Read by Mark Nelson of SciPodBooks.com

“The boys were still at the bar tossing them down.  Dipple officially shut down the joint at two, but the cops stayed around long enough each night to qualify their spouses’ laments of having their significant others “working” twelve-hour shifts.  Eight on the job and four at the tavern, an unspoken fact at every cop district and every cop saloon in the city.  Might even be part of Chicago’s Municipal Code, you ask Dipple when he’s in a philosophical mood.  Which mostly occurred when some beat cop paid off part of his tab.

Dipple’s Printshop, off Eastwood Avenue.  Dan the Owner named it as a private joke for his customers; the previous tenants had laundered funny money in the back room, the die machines resting in the spot where the pool table now rested.  (Having similar tongue-in-cheek tendencies, the arrestees, now government informants with new identities and maybe living in Duluth or Sheboygan, had called the joint The Up & Up).

Dipple was going to call it The Chez When until a night watch commander gave him the lowdown, and it was with that same gentleman’s blessings – frequent customer that he was – that allowed the owner to have what amounted to a twenty-hour liquor license. …”

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Read by Glen Hallstrom aka Smokestack Jones (On Facebook)

” She had the lips that Satan dreamed of in his long fall to hell.  That’s why I followed her down that nameless, narrow alley in `the city care forgot.’

I’d been riding all day, coming up out of Texas on my painted whore of a Harley, and an impulse sent me angling off the Vieux Carre exit and into the French Quarter.  I’d been to New Orleans many times and never found anything there I couldn’t live without, but my life had been governed by whims of late and I saw no reason to stop paying attention to them now.

It was cool but not cold in the mid-October Southern night.  A rain had come and gone …

Warning: This episode contains mature themes, subject matter and language. Listener discretion is advised.

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