ALSO BY LINCOLN MICHEL AND NADXIELI NIETO
Tiny Crimes: Very Short Tales of
Mystery & Murder
Gigantic Worlds
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Anthology selection copyright © 2020 by Lincoln Michel and Nadxieli Nieto
All rights reserved
ISBN: 978-1-948226-62-2
Interior illustrations by Daehyun Kim
Cover and book design by Nadxieli Nieto
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020931219
Printed in Hong Kong
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For all of us, screaming in horror
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION • LINCOLN MICHEL AND NADXIELI NIETO
HEADS
GUESS • MEG ELISON
REARVIEW • SAMANTHA HUNT
GRIMALKIN • ANDREW F. SULLIVAN
DOGGY-DOG WORLD • HILARY LEICHTER
TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY VETALA • AMRITA CHAKRABORTY
WE’VE BEEN IN ENOUGH PLACES TO KNOW • COREY FARRENKOPF
LIFELINE • J. S. BREUKELAAR
JANE DEATH THEORY #13 • RION AMILCAR SCOTT
THE BLUE ROOM • LENA VALENCIA
UNBEKNOWNST • MATTHEW VOLLMER
LONE • JAC JEMC
HEARTS
PIPEWORKS • CHAVISA WOODS
THE OWNER • WHITNEY COLLINS
THE RESPLENDENCE OF DISAPPEARING • IVÁN PARRA GARCIA, TRANSLATED BY ALLANA C. NOYES
THE WHEAT WOMAN • THERESA HOTTEL
HAROLD • SELENA GAMBRELL ANDERSON
CANDY BOII • SAM J. MILLER
THE UNHAUNTING • KEVIN NGUYEN
THE MARRIAGE VARIATIONS • MONIQUE LABAN
THE FAMILY DINNER • MICHELE ZIMMERMAN
AFTERLIVES • BENNETT SIMS
THE STORY AND THE SEED • AMBER SPARKS
LIMBS
FINGERS • RACHEL HENG
CARBON FOOTPRINT • SHELLY ORIA
WE CAME HERE FOR FUN • ALANA MOHAMED
THE BARROW WIGHT • JOSH COOK
KATY BARS THE DOOR • RICHIE NARVAEZ
PINCER AND TONGUE • STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES
THE MASK, THE RIDE, THE BAG • CHASE BURKE
CEDAR GROVE ROSE • CANISIA LUBRIN
# MOTHERMAYHEM • JEI D. MARCADE
LEG • BRIAN EVENSON
VISCERA
VEINS, LIKE A SYSTEM • ESHANI SURYA
CARAVAN • PEDRO INIGUEZ
DOWNPOUR • JOSEPH SALVATORE
HUMAN MILK FOR HUMAN BABIES • LINDSAY KING-MILLER
PICTURES OF HEAVEN • BEN LOORY
GABRIEL METSU, MAN WRITING A LETTER, C. 1664–66 • HELEN McCLORY
INSTRUMENT OF THE ANCESTORS • TROY L. WIGGINS
JOY, AND OTHER POISONS • VAJRA CHANDRASEKERA
VISITING HOURS • LILLIAM RIVERA
PARAKEETS • KEVIN BROCKMEIER
PERMISSIONS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE EDITORS
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
INDEX
ILLUSTRATIONS • DAEHYUN KIM
INTRODUCTION
An argument can be made that fear made humans what we are. Literally. Our eyes evolved to see monsters lurking in the grass, our ears to hear creatures going bump in the night. Fear is also, for better or (more often) worse, the dark force that shapes society. Whether it’s politicians spreading hatred to scare up votes or the passive fear that keeps so many of us from risking change in our lives, our communities, and our world.
In Tiny Nightmares we’ve asked some of our favorite authors what scares them. These stories—from forty-two of the most exciting writers of horror and literary fiction—wander through a vast forest of horror: from ride-sharing murders and mind-reading witches to fears of childbirth and funhouse marriages from which there is no escape. They wrest from the shadows not only vampires and werewolves but also the terrors of the waking world—racism, sexism, online radicalization, economic instability, environmental disaster.
In the shadow of these larger systemic horrors, tiny nightmares breed. These nightmares, masked and unmasked, provoke a deeper dread and implicate the reader. We are often the very thing another rightfully fears.
For creatures shaped by fear, horror stories hold a unique place. They can explore the dark cracks and dank corners of life, making us see more clearly. Many of our oldest stories are, in a sense, horror stories. Fairy tales and myths are full of terrifying transformations, hidden evils, and dire warnings about what lurks in the dark woods just outside of town. Despite this, horror fiction is still too often dismissed.
For Tiny Nightmares, we wanted to poke another hole in the artificial barrier between “literary” and “genre” fiction. We’ve collected more than forty stories from established authors of both worlds as well as emerging writers who we’re confident you’ll be seeing more of in the years to come. We have divided the book loosely into four parts, four body parts naturally—Heads, Hearts, Limbs, and Viscera—loosely held together by sinews of weirdness. The stories here are small in size—each under 1,500 words—but the nightmares are large. Each story is a tiny crack in the door to which we press our eye, unsure of what we will find staring back at us.
We hope you enjoy.
Sincerely,
Lincoln Michel and Nadxieli Nieto
1
Guess
MEG ELISON
Nobody likes it when we’re right. Not the guess-your-age guy, not the guess-your-weight guy, and certainly not me. The age guy, well, he’s never right. Because people are more likely to play along if he guesses they’re ten years younger than they are. He loses bullshit eight-cent prizes made in China and he keeps taking a dollar from every idiot in his line. The weight guy is right more often. He gets away with it because the skinny people are proud of themselves and the fat people are a source of entertainment, no matter what he says. He’s right, he’s wrong, they’re still fat.
Then they come around to me. And I am never wrong.
Sometimes I think I can do some good. Whenever I say “lung cancer,” the person I’m talking to says they’ll quit. If I say “liver failure,” it goes the same way. That one guy I told it would be a plane crash said he’d never fly again, but I don’t know if he stuck by it. I also don’t know if a plane crashed into his house while he was asleep. But what about the ones I tell it’ll be a car accident? What the hell are they supposed to do?
When Dad did it, he told people to try to take comfort in heart failure, in knowing how the end will come. “It’s the one thing in life you can count on,” he’d say. “And now you’ll know its name when it shows up. Isn’t that the definition of comfort? Familiarity?”
Dad didn’t do it at the carnival.
