A Scribe from Beneath: Sinister Stitches

Friday, 30 October 2015

Sinister Stitches - the stories

Sinister Stitches is released tomorrow, so here's another teaser. It's time to reveal the 12 stories included in this Shadow Fabric mythos collection:

NEXT ON THE LIST

“I hate changes.”

MIDNIGHT CLAY

. . . a mess of black and crimson.

A DEMON’S THREAD

. . . campfire stories . . .

ON THE VINE

Barbs sliced his forearms

and the torch flew from his hand.

THE ARTIST AND THE CRONE

Part-flesh, part-shadow,

the foul garment writhed on the ground.

DUE SOUTH

He really should’ve driven like most people.

RED, WHITE AND BLACK

. . . filth glistened, protruding through

torn flesh and broken bone . . .

INTENSIVE SCARE

It churned like liquid, bubbled,

and swept up and into my eyes.

MEETING MUM

Beneath the gleaming skin,

those traceries of veins wriggled like a hundred worms.

SEEING IS BELIEVING

When he removed those glasses,

I saw his bloodshot eyes.

DISTURBED

The night pressed down. His hands clawed his head,

tugged at his hat. “No!”

WELCOME HOME

She’d vanished last night . . . or was it last week?

One tale, "Dead Lines", didn't make it into the collection and quite honestly I didn't know what to do with it. After lurking on my hard drive for a while, the thing soon demanded to be let out. With a bit of tweaking, it was suitable for submission to a flash fiction competition.

I won, and you can read it on the Dark Chapter Press website.

Sinister Stitches is available on pre-order from Amazon and is released tomorrow! The paperback version release date is yet to be confirmed.

The blurb:

Twelve horror stories weave truths you do not want to hear. The collection includes:

Intensive Scare – Three teenagers dabble in the occult and learn there's a good reason to be afraid of the dark.

Red, White and Black – When a clinical trial goes horribly wrong, a lone survivor finds herself fleeing from a sentient infection.

Meeting Mum – Introducing a new girlfriend to your parents has never been so problematic.

Midnight Clay – An otherwise pleasant homeward journey is interrupted by a demon with a particularly grotesque skill.

Each story binds the Shadow Fabric mythos tighter, revealing that everything around us is entwined with a deep-rooted darkness. And sometimes that darkness — the fabric — tears.

Mark Cassell lives in a rural part of the UK with his wife and a number of animals. He often dreams of dystopian futures, peculiar creatures, and flitting shadows. Primarily a horror writer, his steampunk, dark fantasy, and Sci-Fi stories have featured in several anthologies and ezines. Rayne Hall has included his work in three of her Ten Tales anthologies: Fiery Beasts, Cogwheels, andFiends, and also a Shadow Fabric mythos story can be found in April Grey’sHell’s Garden anthology. His flash fiction often features in the popular ezine,Sirens Call, and he writes a series for the Sci-Fi ezine, Future Chronicles, in which we follow the adventures of Alpha Beta Gamma Kill. His upcoming short story collection, Sinister Stitches, is only a fraction of an expanding mythos that began with his debut novel, The Shadow Fabric.