Hello Darkness, Old Friend

A Macabre Monday poem (plus the weekly digest)

Photo by NOAA on Unsplash

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I endured a brief early evening power outage a few days ago — an advance warning to a thunderstorm that ultimately fizzled out. Few raindrops fell and power was restored as quickly as the “stormy” weather came and went.

Macabre Monday thankfully has much greater staying power before a much more forceful storm. Our weekly celebration of horror stares into the darkness and embraces what lurks in the shadows. We don’t flee from the unsettling, strange noises and unholy monsters. We chase them down and show others where to find them.

Let’s kick off this week’s newsletter with a poem to set a perfect dark mood:

A sudden splash of vivid lightning.
heralds ominous peals of thunder.
rain hammers windows on every side.
thousands of liquid nails pounding.

House lights surrendered to the storm. 
Wall switches now a taunting artifact. 
Fragile candles slow drip their wax.
Lone towers restraining inky darkness.

Do shadows really walk, run, and crawl?
Trust not what your eyes claim to reveal. 
Refuse to accept what your ears report. 
Your five senses are original deceivers. 

Crack open a well-worn candlelit book. 
Shut out the world beyond the pages. 
Seek out the monsters lurking there.
Flee from the other ones feeding here.

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The Weekly Digest

A selection of last week’s Macabre Monday Posts from our team.

Gather around our campfire as we highlight memorable stories and notes from last week’s Macabre Monday offerings:

• A drug trial foreshadows monstrous side effects in The Transformation — a clever flash fiction tale from

  Lorne Bronstein
  .

The Transformation

• You think you’ve endured crazy first dates?

  Chris J. Franklin
  shared The Date, a flash fiction tale of a first date with an unexpected twist.

• If you love monster horror, you’re in for a treat with the first entry in Dog Days of Summer — a summer horror series from

  Jessica Maison
  . This creepy mystery is inspired by the Michigan Dogman.

Dog Days of Summer (Day 1)

Fans of weird fiction will want to check out this review from

Victorian Vignettes

of The King in Yellow — a memorable collection of stories by Robert W. Chambers.

Why You Should Read - The King In Yellow

Finally,

Travis Blake

treated us to Fertilizer For Sale — a suspenseful tale he first wrote back in 2022 about intelligent alien birds.

Fertilizer for Sale

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