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

Slipped My Mind

by Christopher Mari
It’s noon on a Friday in early February seven months after the war ended. Callahan’s in my office less than an hour and he’s already polished off half my whiskey and given me heartburn. It’s not so much his frontal assault on my booze that’s given me a sick stomach or the [...]

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Interview: John Saul

March 15, 2010

In our continuing efforts to bring you interviews with some of the most interesting and successful authors out there we are extremely happy to have had the opportunity to sit down with John Saul.
For those of you familiar with his work no introduction is necessary. John has authored 30+ books which have made best seller [...]

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Seeing Through Doors

March 15, 2010

by Jeffrey Miller
Sometimes when the door opened, it coincided with another door at the end of the hallway opening. When that happened, if Desset pressed himself against the far wall, he could see outside. The glimpse never lasted more than a couple of seconds, but even the briefest image of yellow sunlight on white pavement [...]

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Jackie Straw

March 15, 2010

by Alan Sides
“And don’t think that if we’d done something like, I don’t know, played beautiful music for him, it would have fixed everything. Like, all we needed to do was put on some opera, and it would have soothed the savage beast.”
The kid doesn’t respond one way or the other when I say this. [...]

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Sisyphus Wept

March 15, 2010

by Jeffrey J. Carey
As Serrilius mechanically executed the sorting rules, his parchment thin skin glowed sallow in the candlelight. He had once been quite muscular, but had grown lean and sinewy over the years. His blonde hair hung in greasy strips over his face and had turned a dingy yellow from the omnipresent [...]

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To Plant a Tree

March 15, 2010

By Warren R. Langlois
“Mommy? Are we going to die?”
Veronica let out a faint sigh and closed her eyes for a moment to collect her thoughts. She closed the book she was reading to her son and quietly laid it on the bed. Suddenly Dr. Seuss no longer seemed very important. She [...]

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The Stranger from Elsewhen

March 15, 2010

by Mark F. Bailey
When the Stranger came calling, I had only just buried my wife and child on the hill above our house. The dirt still on my hands, he followed me to the well, where I washed away the soil and a part of my life. He didn’t talk. He just [...]

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The Ballad of The Thin Man

March 15, 2010

by Edward J. Rathke
He pressed his left temple to her left temple and the nose of the gun to his right temple. Her eyes closed, her breath was even and her heart slow, but his was rapid and shallow. He pulled the trigger.
The Thin Man watched the window shatter and the volcano of gore erupt. [...]

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Sludge

March 15, 2010

by Jack Potchen
Ben Downs took a long drag of his cigarette. A young woman named Amy Moore sat across from him at the table. She was a stranger to him. She was no more than twenty-five but Ben could see the age in her eyes. The eyes of a woman whose seen too much, he thought. [...]

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The Devil of Redlach

March 15, 2010

by Richard Bell
A frightful creature is said to take abode in the ruins of Castle Redlach, and while many dismiss these claims as the preposterous products of common superstition and myth, no man alive will venture within so much as a mile of the place. Travelling merchants avoid the long deserted mountain roads winding past [...]

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The Death Experiment

March 15, 2010

by Vincent L. Scarsella
Death is one of two things; either the dead man is nothing,
and has no consciousness of anything at all,
or it is, as people say, a change and a migration
for the soul from this place here to another place.
- Plato, Apology 40c
*
But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is not [...]

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Teacher’s Pet

March 15, 2010

by Dana Richard Freeman
Lesley Stampridge had never in all her years as the Trachsel County chief medical examiner seen someone in their late 20s looking as young as a teenager, but if she knew anything, she knew her teeth. This John Doe was 28 years old if he was a day, possibly 29, pending further [...]

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Aftermath

March 15, 2010

by Pamela J. Jessen
I struggle through sifting ash
hunting remnants of you –
harsh wind a flensing knife against
my cheek.

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The Shopping List

March 15, 2010

by Galen Rossop
Bought fake flowers for my basket
Some air freshener for my casket
Some tooth whitener for my fangs
A broken mirror for the gang
A black light for the den
Some fresh poison for my pen
A Bloody Mary for my niece
A new cross for my priest.

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