After the hurricane, Reggie and Betsy discover a portion of their backyard has begun to sink. Fearing the ground will open up and swallow their house sooner rather than later, Reggie calls the city to come fix it, but push back from the local Sheriff slows the process down by a day. Come nightfall the power goes out, the sinkhole opens, and a busload of ghoulish children crawl to the surface for their first meal in fifty-two years.
Jake loves his job working for a local family-owned craft ice cream factory. That is, until he’s transferred to the company’s main facility on the other side of town. The new workplace means new rules. And that means no more showing up on the job stoned and having two beers for lunch. The new position makes him uncomfortable and, while he’s told there are numerous coworkers, they never seem to be around much when he’s there. When his best friend goes missing and his new supervisors show up at a party, Jake begins to dig deeper. All of the strange occurrences seem to connect to a discontinued role-playing game Jake owned as a child, Mage of the Hellmouth. It all leaves Jake wondering what secrets are hidden in the ice cream.
A filthy barfly haunts the bar down the road. He lives off the leftover dregs of the patrons' beers and spent cigarettes he finds on the ground. He may be living in the trunk of someone's car. His name is Scummer. He's mysterious and elusive. He's unbound by inhibitions and you want to be just like him.
Beth is ready to move out and be on her own when she suddenly inherits a house from her Aunt Agnes who she’s only met once. Her mother is vague about the relationship the sisters had but decides to let Beth move into the house alone. It starts with bad dreams and mild auditory hallucinations. Then, the hallucinations become more than auditory. Something is happening to Beth and she believes the explanation lays in the cryptic journals she finds in the house. Meanwhile she’s yet to go in the basement and the forest is closing in around her. She thought she was ready to be on her own. She thought her mother supported her. She thought her Aunt was dead.
Good does not exist. There is only the ever-swirling chaos of evil lurking just beyond the veil of our perception waiting to strike arbitrarily without purpose or reason. When evil throws its wiry tentacles out into our world leaving an inky black sludge of death, sadness, and destruction in their wake it's done not out of maliciousness but at random with no forethought, no agenda. There is no prayer you can say, no spell to cast, no totem, no god benevolent or otherwise to provide protection from the denizens of evil who walk among us to carry out an agenda the same as they have for a thousand millennia. he Cadillac Man is one of these denizens, an extension of evil, a collector of sorts. He picks up people and moves them around like pieces on a chessboard vampirically gaining strength through the deeds and situations into which they've been placed. There's no bargaining, no favor to curry, no chance of altering your fate. When the long black Cadillac pulls up alongside all you can do is get in, but you won't enjoy the ride.
Everyone is looking for shortcuts in life, but rarely do they find the kind they're looking for, and when they do it never turns out like they thought. But what if you were to accidentally fall into cahoots with an other-worldly creature who could provide those shortcuts and so much more? Of course, there's always a price attached to such favors, but killing gets easier the more you do it, and everything is great as long as the rewards outweigh the risk. That is until you find out this was never true and you've inadvertently set into motion something so horrible you lack the capacity to understand or accept it.
Bizarro fiction is a contemporary literary genre, which often uses elements of absurdism, satire, and the grotesque, along with pop-surrealism and genre fiction staples, in order to create subversive, weird, and entertaining works. --WikipediaBreaking Bizarro is a twenty-six story melting pot of weirdness, from some of the best authors in the genre. Enjoy!Contributing Authors: John Wayne Comunale, David W. Barbee, Patrick C. Harrison III, Chris Miller, J.D. Graves, Dani Brown, Cody Higgins, Frank J. Edler, Catherine J. Cole, Chandler Morrison, G. Arthur Brown, Shoshana Sumrall Frerking, Robert Essig, Mara Malins, Michael Brueggeman, Duncan P. Bradshaw, Brian Asman, Sam Richard, Elana Gomel, C.J. Silver, Mike Sherer, C.C. Parker, Luciano Marano, C.J. Carter-Stephenson, Kyle Rader, and James Dorr.
Artie is a serial killer obsessed with As Seen On T.V. products. Collecting and modifying these items is his only passion outside of killing, which he's been doing a long time. Far longer than most of his peers, but Artie always took special care to make sure he remained free. Now a strange, small man has moved next door to him, and the smell of popcorn hangs thick in the air. After a few odd interactions with him, Artie starts to wonder if there's something other than himself that's kept him from being caught.