Dark Tales - Volume XV - out now!

Dark Tales: Volume XV has arrived, and Candra Hope is illustrating once again.

Click on a thumbnail image to take a closer look...

All illustrations copyright (c) Candra Hope 2011

Make sure you don't miss Volume XV by subscribing for four issues. By doing so you get one free entry into each of our quarterly short story competitions - win up to £500 plus publication in a Dark Tales paperback anthology.

Purchase Dark Tales: Volume XV - 80 thrill-packed pages! Get the print edition here:

...or the e-book edition here:

If you're in the UK you can subscribe or order single issues using this printable form:

She had been dead for two hours when she smiled at me. No pleasure in the smile—something almost predatory lingered in the curve of teeth, yellow now in the arc sodium light streaming through the windshield, and I had to look away.

My driver-side window was part-way down, and I could smell wet asphalt and blood. Insects tap-tap-tapped against the grimy, warped plastic that enclosed the light on the motel wall. Tap. Tap. Tap-tap. Relentless. Driven. Mindless.

The dead woman grabbed the handle on the armrest and pulled herself out of her slouch. The rope-thin muscle in her bicep hardened beneath her skin, making me think of worms tunnelling in loose soil. I licked my teeth with my tongue. They felt dirty, scummy. I hadn't brushed them in a while and they made me uncomfortable, but I tried not to think about it too much.

“You're still here,” the dead woman said. Her voice buzzed like a cracked clarinet reed. Her smile had vanished. Black, dilated pupils, now frozen in place. Her lips already blued, nightshade lipstick that made her skin even more jaundiced in the yellow light. 

From 'Be Seeing You' - copyright (c) Keith Melton 2011