“Please, you have to help us! They’re coming!”

My screams made the humans encircling us flinch. Several projectile weapons rose, prodding me back toward the middle and our stolen space cruiser. They shrank away, glancing up at the red, boiling clouds above.

Clasping three-fingered hands together, I hit my knees in the green grass. “Please…” I sobbed. My family peeked out of the cruiser hatch.

The humans understood; they just would not give us asylum.

The threatening clouds parted. A ball of electricity shot downward, accompanied by an increasing roar. Straight for us.

Watching it approach, I whispered, “Oh, Maker…”

Thanks for reading!

Subscribe for new stories, sneak peeks, book reviews, and updates delivered to your inbox and social feeds.

Links

Summer’s Latest

Beneath the Bluebonnets: Tales of Terror by Texas Women

Read my eco-horror short “Well Being” in this fabulous new anthology, in which a mother follows strange impulses from tainted water to find her daughter.

From Mary Shelley to Tananarive Due and Mariana Enríquez, women have long shaped horror—often without equal recognition. Living closest to the genre’s edge, women know these fears firsthand: lost autonomy, violence, childbirth, survival.

Set in Texas, a land of haunted histories and increasingly restrictive laws, Beneath the Bluebonnets emerges from the raw intersection of terror and endurance. Written by twelve Texas women writers: R. J. Joseph, Lauren Oertel, L.H. Phillips, Kathleen Kent, Madison Estes, Jess Hagemann, Emma E. Murray, Jae Mazer, Iphigenia Strangeworth, Jacklyn Baker, S.G. Baker and edited by Carmen Gray, this collection is urgent, unflinching, and deeply haunting—stories that refuse to look away.