Author: Heavy Feather

Fiction: “Men with Potential: A Guide to Getting Sober and Staying Sober” by Kate St. Germain

Schedule a date with a tall someone with salt-and-pepper hair who finds you online. He will play drums. He will be part of an art collective. This will be interesting to you. Order beer, he will order tequila. Get drunk. You will be turned on by the fact that he is almost a decade older…
Haunted Passages: “Halloween Poem” by Lucas Mangum, author of the dark suspense novel Gods of the Dark Web

Halloween, six-years-old:Stephen King’s Silver Bullet,My brother and IChased by a mummy.The next year I dressedAs the Devil in red,And a Catholic friend said,I shouldn’t do that.Trick or treating broughtReese’s and 3 MuskiesAnd fun-sized Milky WayAnd candy corn I only sawOnce a year.Halloween is a dentist’s nightmare,But I’ve still got perfect teeth. Halloween of ’97,I lived…
“The Good Folk” a Haunted Passages nonfiction essay by Carrie Laben

It was one of the most grueling scenes of my novel to write. A mother confronts the supernatural family horror that has possessed her child, driving it out with cries of “No! She’s my daughter! Not yours!” as the little girl’s sister looks on. It sounds heroic, doesn’t it? In most stories, it would be.…
David James Keaton’s “Gasoline Dreams”: A Definitive, Last-word Inventory of Car-Chase Flicks for Haunted Passages

As I was poking around under the hood of my new collection, Our Pool Party Bus Forever Days: Road Stories, gathering up stories and realizing that a theme had miraculously begun to emerge, I also understood that, at some point, a reader might find the book’s supposed connection to the road a little … abstract…
“My Day with the Donald,” a modern American tall tale by Jeff Cuffee

The dead visit me in dreams, and sometimes speak with me. People have said it’s because of my heritage, that I’m African American and Native American, and that has something to do with it. I’m not so sure. In fact, I believe that most of us dream of the dearly and not-so dearly departed and…
“The Colossal Beast Strikes a Match in My Brain”: Lee Widener Introduces His Cosmic Horror Collection Under the Shanghai Tunnels to Haunted Passages

It all began for me on a Saturday night when I was eight years old. I had awakened thirsty and crept down the stairs to get a drink of water. As I tiptoed past the living room, careful not to make the slightest sound, since I wasn’t supposed to be up, I heard the most…
“Proof in the Blood,” a short story by Michael Allen Rose for Haunted Passages

They say there’s proof in the blood, that something can be in it that you didn’t put there and there’s nothing you can do to change it. It’s not only part of your whole entire being, but it flows through every tiny piece of you, touching everything you are and always have been. You can…
Three Poems by Jim Daniels

Suspension Quiet cinder of shame, until a young boy finds the willto hit back. Except. Suspended from school, that’s what.They don’t care who or how. Accept. He wants a Tums to help him sleep—he likes its soft soundtaste. The photo of courage has no negative, cannot bereproduced like a trick from an old comic book.…
Poetry: “Colombo” by Senie Priti

Morning. I eat rice and curry, so hot it brings tears to my eyes. This is Sri Lanka, I think. I take a tuktuk to the central station. Bustling. Colours and sounds and smells I don’t recognise. The light thick and smoky. And hot. So fucking hot. Everyone’s about the hustle. Cues in the street…