Morgan Delaney

Dark, strange and fantastic fiction

Horror

Dangerous Ladies

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A group of three glamourous but very scary looking women
Image generated by OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 AI system. Prompt by Morgan Delaney

Welcome!

A sweet, white-haired old granny normally sells fruit (figs and oranges, I think) from a public bench outside our closest big supermarket. She’s not there when I arrive with Manchee, so I’m in position when she eventually turns up. But there’s a problem: a drunk is passed out on the bench.
So she starts beating the crap out of him with her walking stick.
Eventually she gets bored of that and crowbars him onto the ground, at which point he wakes up.
That’s Dangerous Lady #1

I am stuck in “Laura’s Suitcase”, the short story I had hoped to finish last week.
Every time I’m just about to give up, it starts to work and Laura draws me back in.
That’s Dangerous Lady #2.

In today’s Flash Fiction, we meet Dangerous Lady #3.

No spoilers, but you should know that today’s short story is aimed at mature audiences who aren’t afraid of spiders.

Flash Fiction: Last Legs

Frank waited until the last moment to cancel. He called the hotel from the hallway, letting them know he wouldn’t be there. The handle of his small carry-on case sweated under his palm. He turned his phone off in case Lisa texted to ask how the traffic was at his end.
She wouldn’t know he wasn’t coming until she arrived, and would be too angry to drive back and confront him.
She had promised she wouldn’t, but she could never resist showing him her spider when they were together.
When he told Lisa he would do anything for her, obviously he meant anything except spiders.
He’d find someone else.
Maybe.
She kept suggesting they move in together. With rent prices like they were, it made little sense to keep their own apartments. That’s what Lisa said.
For Frank, it made perfect sense. She had her spider in her flat, and he had his flat without. She brought it everywhere with her, though, and insisted on showing it to him.
It was bad enough knowing the thing was there. She didn’t have to shove it in his face!
His phone buzzed as soon as he turned it back on. She shouted at him, calling him a coward and other names. Worse was the tapping of the spider’s legs as it touched the phone to get to him.
He had been right to cancel: it was already on the loose, despite her promises. Well, let them enjoy their holiday together. They wouldn’t need him for that.
He missed her, though, as soon as she hung up.
He dreamt about her that night. She wasn’t wearing panties. She had tied his hands to his lonely bed’s headboard with them.
When she knelt to straddle his face, the spider that lived between her wet lips reached out to caress his face with its hairy double-jointed legs.

In Case You Missed It This Week:

Read!
I don’t read much SF, but when I do, then only the good stuff. Like the Mirrorshades anthology, featuring William Gibson, Pat Cadigan, Greg Bear and more. Long out of print, contributor Rudy Rucker is hosting it on his website as a free read!

Prophesy!
I already told you that short fiction magazine, The Deadlands is now free if you sign up. They’ve launched a Kickstarter to fund the next year of fiction, and one of the perks is a 3 card tarot reading for $10. My tarot newsletter was one of my most popular editions, so I know you’re interested.
This is your chance to find out who will replace Liz Truss and clean up at the bookies!
(And marginalised/unpublished short fiction writers can snag a critique from professional writers for a measly $25!)

Research!
I loved this story about the conspiracy theory that Barbara Bush, the wife of George Bush, is the daughter of Aleister Crowley, the self-styled “Beast” of sex magick.
“I wanted to test whether anyone would take the first, obvious step of contacting me and asking ‘Is this real?'”
Daughter of the Beast, or rather Mother of the Beast, is therefore Dangerous Lady #4. (She might not be Aleister Crowley’s daughter, but she did give birth to George W. Bush…)

Enjoy!

(Excerpted from my newsletter dated 8th October, 2022. Sign up for the full, up-to-date experience!)

Hugs and Stuff

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A ruined car parked in front of a setting moon.
Image generated by OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 AI system. Prompt by Morgan Delaney

Welcome!

This week’s story is a blood-drenched psychological horror about a guy who probably needed a hug, while my recommendations roundup will tell tell you when a hug is not appropriate.

Flash Fiction: Willem Dafoe’s Face

Greg puked on the grass verge near the disco. In the moonlight, the mess of hot dogs and fries looked like an autopsy photo of guts. The blood splashed over the back seats was black oily paint.
He didn’t understand how could want them so much when they were alive, yet be so disgusted when they were dead. He could stop at the bridge to get rid of the body if he drove the long way home.
When he arrived, it wasn’t in the trunk.
He even got on his knees to look under the car, in case it had fallen out and rolled there. He had definitely killed the man in the back seat. He had definitely pulled the body out and dumped it in the trunk. The ticklish sensation of enjoying the still-warm skin, while repulsion built in his throat at the blood like greasy sweat, was fresh.
He thought he remembered the thump of the trunk lid slamming shutbefore he puked and drove off. He was always so careful. Could he have left a dead body beside a pile of puke with his DNA in it?
The car wouldn’t start. He got out again to push, but it moved an inch before rolling back to its original position. It didn’t matter about the puke, if they caught him on the bridge in a blood-drenched car.
He was trapped unless someone helped him. He dropped to his knees beside the car and prayed to God. He swore he’d never do it again, if the car would start. It was a lie, and Greg knew it. His God, who had Willem Dafoe’s face, but meth teeth and calluses on his knuckles, knew it too.
Greg stood. The body was in the driver’s seat. He met Greg’s stare of disbelief with disgust.
Greg thought about jumping into the river himself. It was where all the bodies went. There was a beauty in that pattern. But he couldn’t stand the thought of the cold water in his lungs, or the rocks on the riverbed smashing his teeth.
If he walked home, maybe he could slit his wrists in the bath before the police arrived. Caught but not caught. There was a beauty in that idea, too.
Instead, he got in on the passenger’s side. Just to see what would happen.
For the longest time, nothing did. Then the rears doors opened, and the car filled itself with the stench of sweet decay and musty clothes.
The car coughed into life, like spitting out water, and they drove off the way they’d come.

In Case You Missed It This Week:

Watch!
A comedy-horror show with puppets? Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared is as good as it sounds!
Check out the new series on Channel 4! Compare them with the original YouTube videos!! Don’t Be Scared!!! Have Fun!!?

Watch!
After being postponed due to the death of Queen Elizabeth II, Stewart Lee’s Tornado is now available on BBC’s iPlayer for UK viewers! Get blown away here!

Watch!
Jarleth Regan is a new stand-up comedian for me. Maybe you’ve already heard of him, but here’s a full hour of comedy first posted online in June 2022.

Enjoy!

(Excerpted from my newsletter dated 1st October, 2022. Sign up for the full, up-to-date experience!)

Canary (from September 3rd 2022)

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Image generated by OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 AI system. Prompt by Morgan Delaney

Thanks to everyone who bought People Skins, Volume 2 last week! We made it to #62 of the British and Irish Horror charts! 
If you’re still thinking about it, you’ve only got a few hours before it goes back to $4.99.
Get it here: https://books2read.com/PeopleSkinsVolume2
Then come back for this month’s short story about someone who keeps making the wrong decision, and my selection of this weeks best links!

Canary

“There’s nowhere to go but–” Overuse has rubbed out the rest of the white postcard’s message.

Two identical, unvarnished wooden doors stand in front of you. One of them will continue to take you down, as impossible as that seems. The other one, presumably, will lead you to the exit.

Billed as the ultimate escape room on the UrbxnAbxndon website, this is the worst game you’ve ever played. Possibly also the last one.

Your body cam is still recording, but you can’t imagine the feed is getting through. Even if it is, it won’t be much of a video.

Metal steps wind their way around the concrete wall, with a drop into the bottomless dark in the middle of the stairwell. Everything is pitch black, with your torch, on its last set of batteries, providing too little light.

Only these landings with the doors and a card break the monotony. But whichever door you choose, you go down further.

You can already see the comments below your video saying it’s all a trick, that you’re using the dark and bad quality footage to disguise the editing. There’s no way stairs could keep going down that far.

And yet here you are.

You’ve been here a week, always heading down. Your supplies are exhausted, as are you.

Only the doors break the monotony, yet you dread them, knowing that every time you choose, it opens into more dry blackness, leading you further down.

You hope it is an illusion, and that these steps will somehow lead you back to the top. You don’t have the energy to return the way you came.

The nausea of circling around and around and around for days made you vomit dozens of times, but you’ve acclimatised now. Still, the disorientation would make it easy to fool you into believing you’re going down.

Perhaps that’s what the card means. “There’s nowhere to go but up!”

A hint that you’re on the right track. You rub the card gratefully with your thumb.

It’ll be over soon. Air, water, light. No more migraine from exhaustion and crushing vertigo. Even standing before the doors, your body is spinning around and around.

The last card said, “Hang in there!” That was a day—thirty flights of stairs—ago.

You had thought they were making fun of you, and imagined finishing the game by tying your belt to the railing protecting you from the hole in the middle of the stairwell and jumping.

But it must have been for motivation.

You choose the right-hand door, because there are five words on the card, and five letters in the word “right”.

When you pull the handle, the lock on the other door snicks closed forever.

There’s nothing behind the right-hand door except more feathery darkness.

Metal steps lead down.

With nowhere else to go, but suddenly feeling hopeful, you continue on into the darkness.

Oh, and…
Read!

Awesome monthly short fiction magazine The Deadlands is now free each month. All you have to do is sign up to their newsletter for FREE fiction. Sign up here!

Read!

I like Kingsley Amis’ books. BookBub is currently offering the ebook of The Green Man for 1.99.

It’s one of those old (it’s from 1969), posh English books about drinking too much and failing to have sex, BUT this one is set in a haunted pub. Definitely one of Kingsley’s more interesting books.

I have no control over when BookBub will end this offer, so grab it here quickly if you’re interested.

Watch!

Here’s an entire hour of Alfie Brown doing stand-up comedy. This is my new comedy find. Funny, but dark enough for fans of this newsletter. Watch him here!

Watch!

And once you’ve seen Alfie, you’ll need to see the man I intend to keep calling my spiritual comedy animal until he asks me to stop, Stewart Lee.

His Snowflake show is on BBC iPlayer on Sunday at 22:35! I’m guessing you need to be in the UK to watch this without a VPN.

Listen!

In case you missed it, this is what a black hole sounds like. I have this on repeat while writing!

Listen!

Max Booth III has released his book Maggots Screaming as a five part audiobook on his podcast. You can listen to that here!

See you next week!

Larger Than Life

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Image generated by OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 AI system. Prompt by Morgan Delaney

Originally appeared in my newsletter from August 20th. Some bits might not make sense out of context!

They’re Here For You!

Ebook of People Skins, Volume 2
They watch you, they talk to you, they’ll be your friend.
But they’re not like you.

My latest book is another collection of short stories, People Skins, Volume 2, and it looks gorgeous!

The cover is another winner from the people at MiblArt, and it contains 15 of my best new stories.

Here’s some of what you can expect in the weird, unsettling and dangerous worlds of People Skins, Volume 2:

  • a woman overcomes her fear of flying, then disappears;
  • dreamers rip open a rift between worlds;
  • a Greek donkey with a Hitler moustache stalks a lost tourist;
  • the thing under the bed won’t return to the Night Sea alone;
  • a funeral traps a man in the town he needed to escape;

and more!

Out now! Get it here!

This is going on sale very soon, so keep an eye out for more emails from me this week, containing more information and a very special offer for subscribers.

In the meantime, enjoy this week’s flash fiction and my curated roundup of the week’s best links at the bottom of this email!

Flash Fiction: Larger Than Life
My father’s corpse is naked on the rock. Birds fill the cave, preparing to eat, and they scream at me to get out, circling over his flaccid, wrinkled body.

They don’t need to worry. I’m just here to pay my last respects, having arrived too late in the small town to see him at the repose in the funeral parlour.

I wonder what to say, and whether I need to say it out loud, or if it’s enough to think it. That he really has no right to some other culture’s funeral rites.

But the birds don’t seem to care.

I step closer, thinking it might make him look more like I remember, and he leaps off the long rock and digs his fingers into my collarbones.

His hands are cold and damp, and the skin feels like wax, and the birds are making such a racket now that I can’t hear the words he’s whispering in my ear. I smell the sweet rot of his insides through his open lips, and I stagger around, trying to shake him off. The birds dart from one perch to another, settling only long enough to scream at me. Their grey wings are dull shooting stars in the cave’s gloaming.

The extra weight of my father pins me to the ground when I fall. His legs straddle me, and his fingers work their way up my neck and squeeze until I force myself into a sitting position, careful not to tip backwards. From there, I use the guano-spattered rocks to push myself to my feet.

I stagger towards the cave mouth, slipping on blood from when I fell. Thumps and taps goad me on, but it’s not my father. The vultures are launching themselves at us, ripping bits of my father off in their beaks before he escapes them.

I hurry before they can burrow their way through his body and into mine.

It’s bright outside and sunlight pours into the holes of my father’s wounds, weighing us both down.

He keeps whispering in my ear and I keep falling as I run, stagger and crawl away from the cave of birds. My dead father piggybacks a ride on my back.

“I’m flying!” says my father, over and over again. “You’re so small from up here. I’m flying!”

When I finally manage to pluck his fingers out of my neck, I wrap his arms around it instead, crossing his arms so that his fingers bore into his own forearms.

As we reach town, I straighten up, and the sunlight splashes out of his wounds. He’s lighter again, and I carry him with me.

Oh, and…
Read!

This short story by Julianna Baggott over at Nightmare Magazine is my favourite of the recent free to read fiction I’ve come across. Check out Inkmorphia here!

Fear!

Is anything more consistency terrifying than ill-conceived children’s toys? As children, we had a knitted “Miss Piggy”, who was clearly waiting for us to have an incapacitating accident so she could eat us from the toes up.

But even her horror pales in comparison to this “cheeky chappie”.

…erm?

If this isn’t a Waldorf school-trained pumpkin dancing its name, then I don’t know what it is.

But I swear I’m going to learn how to do this, too.

Hang on! Wasn’t there already a People Skins, Volume 2?

Well spotted! You should have received a subscriber-exclusive collection of 5 short stories when you signed up for this email.

If you signed up for my newsletter a while ago, that was the original Volume 2.

For ease of marketing, that’s now People Skins, Volume 0: Hidden Cuts.

It’s the same five stories, but if you want a copy with the updated – and much cooler – title, you can sign up to become a subscriber right here!

Chat soon!
Morgan

Not Drowning, Running

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Image generated by OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 AI system. Prompt by Morgan Delaney

Originally appeared in my newsletter from July 30th. Some bits might not make sense out of context!

This is our last week here, the removal company is coming tomorrow to pack up everything. Except for Pudding (pictured above), who is apparently allowed to travel in the airplane cabin with us.

Pudding is the enormous grey one on the right, not the normal-sized white or blue ones, so we’ll see…

We got her here in Kazakhstan, and if she can be believed, then Kazakh cats say “Meg”, rather than “Meow”.

Hopefully she likes Georgia! I’m still working my way through the first big edit of The Squared Circle. By the time you read this I’m hoping to have reached the chapter called “Five Hail Marys And A Bit Of Spice”. Speaking of which, this week’s flash story also features very large animals on the move. Say a quick prayer before you join Peter and Kate in:

Flash Fiction: Not Drowning, Running

For one moment, everything was fine. Then some invisible bastard turned the volume up, and her the whole world was screaming and shoving as the bulls jack-hammered down the street, and she pushed through the crowd to Peter’s body.

A hoof had split his skull and shattered it. The rest of his body was a leaking, lumpy mess, so it was hard to tell how badly it had been injured.

But he was definitely dead.

He had looked so happy just a few moments ago, leading the pack of men running from the gleaming brown bulls as they came into view. She’d waved to him, and he’d waved back.

And smiled.

And stumbled.

The rest of the holiday passed in a blur. She’d expected to spend those days on the beach, or holding his hand in the hospital, but that wasn’t happening and she didn’t know what else to do. Everyone was kind and taking care of things for her.

She could see in their eyes, though, that they thought her husband was a fool for being killed, and she was a fool for letting him. They were foreigners and shouldn’t have been there at all. It wasn’t a genuine tragedy, like if the bulls had gored a local.

Peter agreed with them when he visited her in her dreams. She really should have done more to stop him.

So she kept it to herself that she would be back the following year.

She returned undercover, worried they would be watching for her. But at the passport check, the policeman glanced at her photo and waved her through, even though she had cut her hair and wasn’t wearing makeup.

She checked into her hotel and freshened up, but didn’t bother unpacking.

On the day of the run, she wore baggy, unflattering clothes and too much acrid “For Men“ sports deodorant. A few of the officials gave her a second look, but she had practiced walking like a cowboy with a potato up his arse, and they let her through. Being a man was easy.

Peter was already waiting for her. He sat on the back of the biggest bull. He blew her a kiss and waved to her when she joined the group of runners.

She waved back as the bulls were let loose.

Oh, and…

Research!I loved this fascinating overview of medieval law, which explains where the expression “a baker’s dozen” might come from, that the Queen loves whales (although not Welsh ones), and that, after trial by jury was introduced in England in 1220, you could just say “”no, thanks” if you didn’t feel like it until 1275. That’s 55 years!
Listen!
I just discovered the Loremen Podcast, and it’s great! It’s hosted by two comedians exploring and discussing (and poking fun at) old legends and other oddnesses. It’s very funny but also surprisingly well-researched and presented. Check it out here!
Play!
Find out what you really think with this neat little casual game where you have to decide who dies and who gets to live!
Listen!
I feel a bit weird recommending a band based on one single song, but I keep coming back to this “moody ska/punk” banger.

Apparently only 24% of people agree with my opinions regarding babies and old people.

Once you’ve played the trolley game, let me know if you – like me – made the right decision!

Strap

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A woman looks into an ornate mirror, a man looks back out at her.
Image generated by OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 AI system. Prompt by Morgan Delaney

In this week’s unsettling flash fiction, we go back to the “good old days” to take a good hard look at ourselves. Join me?

Strap could never be sure she was real, but spent his life looking for her.

Strap was Lord Heaney’s eldest, a black-haired, thick-bodied bully. His father wouldn’t have him in the house, leaving Strap to pretend he managed the estate. He prowled the boundaries of his father’s land with his riding whip in hand. It twitched at every rustling leaf, any animal that didn’t move out of his way fast enough.

He was looking for her.

He had first seen her when he was 14 and decided he wanted her. She had white skin, green eyes, red hair, and the smile she had given him had promised cruelty. Whether it would be gladly given or gladly taken, he did not know.

Despite his family’s wealth, he had not a single friend in the village. The villagers kept their womenfolk, and their livestock, away from him. Even the priest had referred to him as “the unholy Strap” after finding his favourite horse blinded and bleeding from cuts to its face.

He was finally betrothed to a girl from the next county. In return for marrying the aging spinster, her family would give him control of the estate. It was a shame for the girl, but no one said a word so they could be free of him.

Strap wondered what his love would make of the marriage. She would know all about it by now. He could feel her wherever he went, even if he couldn’t see her.

Several times, she had come close enough for him to think he had caught her, but it had been a trick. She liked to lend her face to poor animals to suffer for his love.

She came to his wedding and wore his wife’s face for the ceremony, while witnesses surrounded them.

Their house too was never at peace, for they engaged a battery of nurses to look after the children, for she took turns to wear their faces, too.

He was happiest away from all of them. In the bathroom, she looked out at him from the mirror.

The most beautiful woman he had ever seen, trapped in his brutal, lumbering body.

If you liked that, you might like the exclusive short story coming in the July edition of my newsletter. It also involves a lot of staring, and someone’s very unusual… talent. There’s still time to sign up right here!

(If you didn’t enjoy this story, you might enjoy the exclusive short story coming in the July edition of my newsletter anyway. It involves someone’s very unusual… talent, and some staring. Sign up here to check it out! )

Otherwise, you might like to check out and buy this amazing cardboard gorilla puzzle.