The Absent Willow Review — Tales of Horror, Fantasy & Science Fiction

Review – Design

Read our review of "Design" by G. Lloyd Helm.

Review – Coming From Nowhere

Read our review of "Coming From Nowhere" by Pembroke Sinclair.

5 Chapter Review

In The Valley of Dry Bones

June 15, 2009

by Jason Rolfe
A shadow swept across the rue Notre Dame, stirring leaves and dust and the cautious curiosity of a small black cat. The breeze carried with it a crispness that strangled the last desperate and dying hints of summer. Fall had arrived, and with it a dark harbinger of winter’s cold promise. Nine months ago [...]

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All That Grows

June 15, 2009

By James Lecky
There are those men who, through either good or ill fortune, find their path early in life and dedicate themselves wholeheartedly to it, forsaking all other pursuits or pleasures.
Such a man was Vergallen Gift, poisoner to the court of Cardinal Kirill of the Sonnilon Temple in the vaunted city of PameGlorias. For the [...]

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The Efficiency Expert

June 15, 2009

by Gordon Grainger
I could try to describe the man I’m on my way to meet. I mean, physically at least, he’s shorter than average and unimpressive in every other way. But if you want to know about his character, I’d just have to point at the walls.
Aboard a standard deep space mining station, cylindrical sections [...]

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For Want of a Nail

June 15, 2009

by David C. Pinnt
If I were to lay blame I guess I’d put it on the warrant from Tulsa.
Drunk and disorderly I’ll own up to that, but assault and battery? Battery my ass. That bouncer beat me ‘til I pissed myself and I didn’t get but one good shot on him.
So I had that plus [...]

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The Man Upstairs

June 15, 2009

by Lori M. Myers
The man slouched against the attic wall. He balanced the 1941 pin-up calendar atop his bony thighs, and crossed off each date just like he had been doing for the past eleven years, ten months, six days. Miss January was his favorite, her once rosy skin now a dingy memory on frayed paper. [...]

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Boom Hiss Jane

June 15, 2009

by Mark Stawecki
Boom Hiss Jane is ready for another dull, monotonous day and doesn’t mind at all.
Machine 45 is there as always, a complex, monstrous companion. Jane takes her place beside it, overalls stained from the chemicals, grease, and lubricants that are the factory’s blood. She takes plugs, converters, and bolts from various bins and [...]

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The Incredible Vanishing Cannibal

June 15, 2009

by Kevin Risk
Awareness came to him slowly. He felt cold steel under his back, he felt…
…Thick, humid sunlight licking his skin. He looked at his hands—they were the hands of a child, and the right thumb was covered with a dark paste. He wondered what it was. He watched as that same thumb turned downward, pressed [...]

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Robert M. Munroe

June 15, 2009

by Richard Marsden
The man was hanging from the banister of a stairway. The rope hadn’t broken his neck, and his chin was slumped against his chest, while one foot was lacking a shoe. Tom Darmy figured the unfortunate had jerked about for some time before expiring. The photo was crisp, the grays and blacks were well [...]

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In Time and Space

June 15, 2009

by Michael C. Keith

Eternity is in love with
the productions of time.
–William Blake

The computer screen lit up and the email icon flashed.
To: marshdc@earthlink.com
“Is this the David C. Marsh I knew back in the 70s? The guy who said he’d conquer the world one day and apparently has based on the number of Google [...]

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Desire

June 15, 2009

by Scott Emerson Bull
Walker Townsend stared at the hateful computer screen. Four hours of slaving at the keyboard and he’d managed only five horrendous paragraphs, roughly one thousand words conjured, rewritten, rearranged, agonized over, and unceremoniously dumped into the computer’s recycle bin. Walker had stared down writer’s blocks before, but this was the Great Chinese Wall [...]

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After Midnight

June 15, 2009

by Pamela J. Jessen

Death has visited this house.
***
Now the doorbell warbles an odd tune
in the dark hours after midnight.
Now a fine sprinkling of dirt
collects on normally clean floors.
***
She checks the yard for pranksters
but finds only wind and scattered leaves.
A cat sits under a streetlight,
tail switching,
its gaze turned upward at
stars that burn like signal fires,
their meaning [...]

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You Still Haunt Me

June 15, 2009

by Susanna Hargreaves

Sometimes I search the shadows,
For the memories seem to linger just here and there.
During the briefest moments,
a cold breeze will softly blow-
or was it you who caressed my hair?
Then just as simply,
Something will remind me what we shared
what is true
what is barely left of you
Then I hear it,
a familiar whisper
and your love will come [...]

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