We’re still looking for two or three more thoughtful and gripping tales to round out the anthology — send us your best. Remember, it’s all about the supernatural and uncanny in the bright light of day!

• Rob E. Boley — Companion — Every trip I’ve ever taken, I think I’m going to meet someone, find a companion who sees all I have to offer, but it never seems to happen.
  
• Scott Brendells — Ataraxia — They stood until they died, leaving their loved ones to watch their slow but steady deterioration.
  
• Rebecca Fraser — Uncle Alec’s Gargoyle — It winked at me once, Uncle Alec’s gargoyle.
  
• J.H. Heluk — The Wish Man and the Worm — The worm in Georgia’s mouth slipped when he yanked her head back.
• Harper Hull — Daddy Long Legs — “Saw him clear as day, striding across those top branches with those spindly legs like he was on the sidewalk. It was the morning that Ella – that your momma – my Ella, the morning she died.”
• Davin Ireland — Carrington Cove — There was little love lost between the professional fossil hunters who scoured Dorset’s Jurassic Coast.
• Lorna D. Keach — Fiddleback — Fever and chills were one thing, but “I think something’s wrong with this bite, Walt,” she’d said.
• Scott Lininger — The Woman in the Ditch — At the very bottom of the thirty feet of ditch there was a fancy car, completely upside-down, with its hood smashed through the ice that covered the creek.
• Chad McKee — In Lieu of Flowers — The shock of discovering you had missed the last breaths of your wife by a mere handful of days after six years in exile weighed on a man.
• Gregory Miller — Miss Riley’s Lot — How ’bout when my big brother Chris took me up on Still Creek Hill during hunting season and let me watch while he and his buds shot a woman?
• John Jasper Owens — And the Crowd Goes Wild — “I believe,” I told Bellows, “we are witnessing the end times.”  Bellows shrugged. “That’s gonna play hell with residuals.”
• Aaron Polson — Sea of Green, Sea of Gold — The rocky nature of those  hills had protected the Konza from pioneers and farmers, and now the government guaranteed protection by making it a national preserve, a piece of land lost in time.
• Mark Rigney — Customs — The wait begins, and this time it is more than a little unnerving because we have been separated from our passports, the little booklets that legitimize us, make us official and human and real.
• Daniel R. Robichaud — Down Where the Blue Bonnets Grow — Instinct made me train the rifle on the bare patch.  If the earth itself sat up, I could take a head shot.
• Trent Roman — The Heat Has Fangs — This is one heck of a heat wave, and it doesn’t show sign of breaking anytime soon, either. But not the worse I’ve seen, no sir.
• E. C. Seaman — Sands of Time — The Grey Lady saw it all. Every argument, every drama; from childishly scraped knees to first boyfriends and broken hearts.
• Adam Walter — The Infatuate — Though the two of them knew nothing of each other, they shared the most improbable secret, and no one looking at them — now, in this place — could ever hope to guess it.

The stories we’ve accepted so far vary quite a bit in theme, setting, and style. A few things they all share, however, is a tightly written narrative, a distinctive voice, and an unexpected take on our theme of horror-by-daylight.

The following is a list of the stories we’ve accepted to date, in no particular order.  It’s not a table of contents.

• J.H. Heluk — The Wish Man and the Worm — A child’s fears may assume disturbing face. A bizarre tale of surreal horror.
• John Jasper Owens — And the Crowd Goes Wild — Being successful may be scary. An action-filled story of the future.
• Mark Rigney — Customs — Getting stuck in more than one way. A claustrophobically disturbing tale of travel.
• Trent Roman — The Heat Has Fangs — Your enemy may be closer than you think. A chatty but weird reminiscence of times past.
• Scott Brendells — Ataraxia — Nowhere left to go. A quiet tragedy set in a grim future.
• Davin Ireland — Carrington Cove — Utter, dark, and inescapable despair. A storm-tossed narrative of obsession.
• Aaron Polson — Sea of Green, Sea of Gold — The beautiful and sunny can be deadly. High-noon horror.
• E. C. Seaman — Sands of Time — Scary things may be not bad, after all. An understated and wistful reflection on life.
• Rob E. Boley — Companion — The stories we tell ourselves can be misleading. A horrifying tale of dependence.
• Gregory Miller  — Miss Riley’s Lot — Longevity can be scary. A disturbing urban legend.
• Chad McKee — In Lieu of Flowers — Revenge is a dish best served cold. More so when cold flesh is the instrument.
• Daniel R. Robichaud — Down Where the Blue Bonnets Grow — Where cruelty meets its peer, and horror meets SciFi.
• Lorna D. Keach —  Fiddleback — Never underestimate the little ones. A surrealistic tale of guilt and retribution.

We’re still accepting submissions, so don’t hesitate to send us your most original, standout stories of 2,500-5,000 words. Remember — we’re looking for supernatural/monstrous horror that takes place in the bright light of day!

The stories we’ve accepted so far vary quite a bit in theme, setting, and style. A few things they all share, however, is a tightly written narrative, a distinctive voice, and an unexpected take on our theme of horror-by-daylight.

The following is a list of the stories we’ve accepted to date, in no particular order.  It’s not a table of contents.

• J.H. Heluk — The Wish Man and the Worm — A child’s fears may assume disturbing face. A bizarre tale of surreal horror.
• John Jasper Owens — And the Crowd Goes Wild — Being successful may be scary. An action-filled story of the future.
  
• Mark Rigney — Customs — Getting stuck in more than one way. A claustrophobically disturbing tale of travel.
• Trent Roman — The Heat Has Fangs — Your enemy may be closer than you think. A chatty but weird reminiscence of times past.
  
• Scott Brendells — Ataraxia — Nowhere left to go. A quiet tragedy set in a grim future.
  
• Davin Ireland — Carrington Cove — Utter, dark, and inescapable despair. A storm-tossed narrative of obsession.
  
• Aaron Polson — Sea of Green, Sea of Gold — The beautiful and sunny can be deadly. High-noon horror.
  
• E. C. Hudson — Sands of Time — Scary things may be not bad, after all. An understated and wistful reflection on life.
• Rob E. Boley — Companion — The stories we tell ourselves can be misleading. A horrifying tale of dependence.
• Gregory Miller  — Miss Riley’s Lot — Longevity can be scary. A disturbing urban legend.

We’re still accepting submissions, so don’t hesitate to send us your most original, standout stories of 2,500-5,000 words. Remember — we’re looking for supernatural/monstrous horror that takes place in the bright light of day!

I’m looking for something stranger than that. Something so bizarre and discomfiting that it sends chills down the reader’s spine in the light of day. Maybe especially because it takes place in the light of day. Because, as our call for stories notes, anything can be scary at night.

The unheimlich, on the other hand, requires sight.

Allow me to wax professorial a moment.

Although heimlich can mean “homey” or “familiar,” in which case the unheimlich is the unfamiliar, Freud usefully points out in his essay “The Uncanny” that heimlich can also mean the “concealed” or “obscure,” in which case the unheimlich is the revealed. In other words, that moment we experience as being uncanny is akin to that moment in which the repressed is revealed — it is that moment in which we see that which should not be seen or we realize that which should not be realized. It is that moment in which our reality turns upside-down and we’re forced to reinterpret everything we thought we understood in light of our new knowledge. Freud comments that a sense of the unheimlich is “often and easily produced when the distinction between imagination and reality is effaced, as when something that we have hitherto regarded as imaginary appears before us in reality, or when a symbol takes over the full functions of the thing it symbolizes, and so on.”

How does this relate to horror? Think of the typical, everyday horror story. Doesn’t it almost always revolve around that-which-should-not-be-revealed? The ancient tomb that shouldn’t be opened? The old house that shouldn’t be entered? The forbidden tome that shouldn’t be read? The evil rite that shouldn’t be performed? The eldritch artefact that shouldn’t be touched? The mysterious noise that shouldn’t be investigated? The seductive stranger who shouldn’t be approached? We see this same theme drawn out even more clearly in psychological horror (naturally enough) in terms of the dark family secret that shouldn’t be spoken or the childhood buried memory that shouldn’t be recalled….

Absit nomen, absit omen. If you don’t use its name, it won’t appear. Because to name, to know, to realize, to look, is to open yourself to danger. If you don’t see the monster, it can’t hurt you. Right? Isn’t that why we close our eyes during the scary parts of the movie or pull our covers over our head when we hear strange noises in the dead of night? Because even though those noises might mean a monster is out there, we’re safe from it if we curl up and hide and don’t look out. At least, we’re safe up until that final, dreadful moment in which we finally peek, and there it is, right in front of our eyes —

— at which point our world changes forever.

Horror is a single story told and over and over: something that should remain concealed becomes revealed.

Horror is also a tragedy — it is usually the protagonist’s own character flaw (curiosity, pride, stupidity, stubbornness) that leads to the horrific revelation and his or her consequent downfall, whether s/he is cursed, damned, transformed, driven insane, or slaughtered outright. Which isn’t to say that some protagonists don’t survive horror stories, of course; however, when they do, they are left scarred by their experience. When Oedipus’s blindness to the gods’ warnings ends and he sees the terrible truth at last, he has no recourse but to rip out his own eyes in horror and remorse, even though he can never rip the knowledge of what he’s done out of his head. Similarly, the survivors of a horror story may want to forget what they’ve seen or learned … but they can’t, not even if they rip out their own eyes.

Unless they manage to safely repress the knowledge deep down in their subconscious. But that will just start the horror cycle all over again, won’t it? Monsters never stay buried.

As I said above, sight — or knowledge, if you prefer — is the key to the unheimlich. Because that sensation of unheimlich is what you feel in the split second in which you see the impossible, comprehend the unthinkable, and nothing in your life will ever be the same again.

Which is why horror is so much scarier during the day. During the day you can’t write off what you’re seeing as a nightmare or a trick of the shadows. No, it’s right there in front of you, maybe in front of everybody — something that shouldn’t be, but is.

That’s the kind of thing we’re looking for in Day Terrors. The horrible, the unheimlich, revealed in broad daylight. However, we also want it to be linked to something beyond the everyday, mundane boundaries of this world; something paranormal, supernatural, or magical. Classic horror, slipstream, magical realism, bizarro … in-your-face monster mayhem or eerily subtle patterns of dissonance … we welcome any type of story, as long as it describes the borders of reality breaking down in the relentless light of day. And we do mean reality — stories in which the breakdown is really a hallucination, artificial reality, dream, symptom of madness, or anything else of that sort don’t interest us. We want to read stories that are bolder than that.

So … c’mon. Email us your submissions and do your best to make us see the world in a chilling new light!

References:

Sigmund Freud: The Uncanny

Hell, even my sofa can be scary at night.

Real horror stands up to the unforgiving light of day. Real monsters aren’t afraid to be seen in sunlight. Real fear is standing there and watching the impossible unfold right before your eyes in the harsh glare of the afternoon sun.

DAY TERRORS is looking for atmospheric horror stories set in broad daylight and featuring the chilling, the supernatural, the grotesque, the creepy, and the unheimlich. It is looking for once-familiar people and places that suddenly aren’t what they seem, eerie coincidences that turn reality inside-out, and commonplace events that take on uncanny overtones.

Day-walking vampires, weresalarymen, zombie grandmothers, carnivorous babies, serial-killer schoolgirls, mundane murderers and any sort of dream, hallucination, or virtual reality need not apply.

DAY TERRORS will be the second POD anthology published by The Harrow Press and edited by Kfir Luzzatto and Dru Pagliassotti. Submissions must be sent to anthology {at} theharrowpress.com, as MSWord or RTF attachments. But not until 01/1/10, please!

Please include the words “Submission: Day Terrors” in the Subject line of your e-mail.

Story Length: 2,500 – 5,000 words. Please include an approximate word count in your e-mail submission.
Reading Period: Jan. 1, 2010 until filled.
Payment: $25 for lead story, $10 for others, +1 free contributor copy
Contact: anthology {at} theharrowpress.com

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