Cafe Aphra: An Online Community for Writers

Do you like horror fiction? Is that your writing genre? February 2017 marks the 8th edition of Women in Horror Month (WiHM), an international initiative showcasing the underrepresented work of women in the horror industries.  At www.womeninhorrormonth.com  you can find information about fun events in your area. These range from art projects to meet-ups, film screenings and performances taking place in various countries all over the globe including Australia, Japan, Germany, England, Scotland and the United States. Of course there are also literary projects dedicated to Women in Horror Month, such as the 5th annual WiHM issue of The Sirens Call . Check out  last year's issue including a story by one of our Cafe Aphra baristas, B.E. Seidl. And - worth knowing - if you want to promote your own horror writing project which will take place in February, simply use the hashtag #WiHM8 on Twitter or Facebook and take advantage of a readership of approximately 35,000 read...

See the fight last week? Oh yeah Brutal, kid's got a chance - I like The Mexican fella that should be Some scrap who's ordering the Pizza? That new girl in work? Fucking hell Barry'll be on it like gravy o’er a tattie! A flush beats a straight you Daft twat - hand us a beer Stan! Good man. I don't know why We are here or what we Are supposed to be doing But we are here and doing it For some shared reason though We don't know one another or Really wish to and there's no Money on the table. Why do they play  Poker for matches In prison On TV? by Alex McMillan

The waitress, a smallish girl with heavy makeup, came with the menu to take my order. She dropped it and made to turn away. If she was familiar with me, she would know I place my orders immediately. I’m a regular here.  “Please, wait. I am placing my order straight away.” She had the figure of a runway model. I didn’t recognise her. I opened the menu and ordered Purr Double Breakfast. “But, please, make it omelettes instead of eggs.” “This is a standard menu, sir. It has to be eggs.” I peered at the nametag on her blue polo shirt.  “Kathie, please check with your chef. I’ve had it that way before here.” “OK, sir. I will check and be back.” She strode off. Cyndi Lauper crooned Time After Time from the speakers hidden in the ceiling. I shut my eyes to savour the richness of her voice. The waitress came back. “I apologize. You can have it your way, sir.” “It’s OK. With coffee and water. All to be served at the same time.”  That ins...

Grass, grown tall, cuts at his arms. He swipes back, but blade after blade they fight him, drawing lines of blood that serve only to feed the gasping soil. Poppies parade past him as he runs. Their stems erect, their heads tilted back, they watch him leap and fly, tearing through the endless green.  A shout: Captain! Captain! The call, it twists around him, dizzying in its antiphony. Pulled forwards and then back by the words, he stumbles in confusion, then rights himself and continues to trample through the virgin field. Decapitating poppies as he passes, petals dance like the damned around him, fluttering to the ground to form a blood red pool. Black seeds scatter across the mass of petals, only to be crushed beneath the Captain’s feet as he pounds on and on.  Again, there is the call. This time closer but he doesn’t hesitate. On he runs; faster and faster, until he trips. There is the sensation of falling, a velvet thud resounds as he hits the ground, then black. Ho...

With ribbons in her hair, Quan went out to view the lights and commemorate the dead. In the cold, she called to a boy whose face was a flame in a bakery window. They whispered together a blasphemy, a dare: we shall ride on yellow dragons past the river. Later she drew pictures on peach-colored paper while her mother spoke of Chiang Kai-Shek. The world was far from them, but the lanterns swung like faces and the dumplings on the table steamed. Each imagined love, each the road, which ended at Lanzhou. by Carl Boon

Amelia did not have the sort of mind that could compass the richness of Byzantium—the gold leaf halos encircling narrow, dark-eyed faces, the scent of dried roses, the black-skirted priests, all crushed together on a narrow strip of land that tied the dregs of Europe to the promise that was Asia. Her own aesthetic had been shaped in a colder, harsher land. She worshipped in tiny chapels built from raw pine boards on free-flowing prairies far from any sea. No gold glinted behind her father’s pulpit. No saints were allowed within town limits. On most days Amelia enjoyed her job, driving her chocolate-coloured truck, placing birthday presents wrapped in brown paper and fat Amazon parcels in the mailboxes that lined the county roads out of town. But she wasn’t having much fun this January day, not with the winter wind blowing waves of sleet across the prairie. By 4 PM she had to turn on her headlights. As she headed back to town, a swirl of snowflakes obscured her windshield....

blind from birth, she could tell the difference between the odor of chrysanthemums and tulips, and remember her first whiff of both she could identify the scent of her brother in a groping group of sweaty brutes she knew her nose was her biographer collecting memories, visions her eyes could not she studied biology only to discover her compendium of smells originated in a space infinitely smaller than a fly's eye a few molecules devoted to identifying ham, the rich smoky meat of her first Easter another clump to help her hold the faint smell of perfume which lingered in the room hours after her mother passed and who knew what atoms, what cells, what curse of chemistry forced her to recall, most of all, the sweet scent of her newborn's hair, the few seconds she held him, after his tiny heart stopped. by Jim Cunningham