A short story by S.P. Murphy

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A reclusive man imprisoned by his own fear is shaken from his self-imposed exile when a strange letter is slipped under his door.

A transcript of a dream

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Just a strange dream I had last night which I've hammered into a very short story.

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His eyes reflect the shattered ice drifting in the currents of the Neva as it casts its woes to the indifferent arms of the Baltic, only to find yet more sorrowful coldness which it may never expunge. He feels the unspeakable agony of grief weigh upon his broad shoulders. He knows that if it...

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Time and the agony of loneliness work to produce something which cannot be exclusively described as either contentment or horror.

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Ella normally left the club alone, but this guy seemed special. He had a gleam in his steel-blue eyes that was something other than lust. Ella liked that quality. He was dressed in a nice Italian suit, and his hair had a wild charm to it, although she wouldn't have strictly called...

By Simon P. Murphy

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I was about eight or nine years of age when my family was urgently called to my Great Grandmother Clothilde's bedside on an urgent request from her doctor. Although I had not seen Great Grandmother for some years, I had for some time anxiously feared her passing - not because I had any...

Thomas Ligotti likes his kitchen...

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A short story featuring an (almost) entirely fictional version of Thomas Ligotti as the protagonist.

By S.P. Murphy

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A deformed vagrant longs for release from the world that is torturing his soul.

How Unit Came to Realize Unit (And How Nothing Was Gained)

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The final installment, to be retro-actively preceded by more abominations of the soul.

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I was deep in meditation in my study one warm summer evening, as I am wont to do, when a strange man came to pass by my open door. He caught my attention by asking for directions, but we soon came to talking. I found him of a very similar intellectual disposition to myself, and for hours...

He must destroy to create.

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Rebirth, agony.

The true story of Easter

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Very early on Sunday morning the women went to the tomb carrying the spices they had prepared. As the women approached the tomb, they found the great stone rolled away, and before it, the body of the gardener, his head having been sundered and emptied of his brain. Full of terror and despair...

by Simon P. Murphy

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(an osteo-epistemological misadventure)
A dried-up writer struggles to regain the fecundity of his former creativity. Perhaps his strange ancestry holds the key to unlock his destiny...

by Simon P. Murphy

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I couldn't say how many years it has now been since I last visited a circus. I remember how they used to be in those days long since past, those countless hot summers before the war, and before the Great Sunquake. There were certainly attractions in those days, and not just circuses, mind...

A Short Story

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The company for which I worked was experiencing a substantial restructuring of internal policy. My rapid disillusionment with corporate life lead me to consider other avenues, and it was with mixed sentiments that I agreed to embark upon a foreign business venture with an old associate,...

A Meditation on the Absurd

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A Story of the Plague-Years

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It was a great concrete cellar - dark, dusty and stale. It might have been the basement of an old factory – the rusted tubes and levers across the cobwebbed walls made it seem like the gutwork of an industrial pipe-organ. Two lights glowed – one was the flourescent bulb that flickered a dim...

Nothing lasts forever - and Nothing lasts forever...

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I have lost count of the thousands upon thousands of years I have stood in this burning desert. I have stood in this self-same space for what seems an eternity, the heavens above wheeling about my rotting head like the vanes of a cosmic windmill. I stand here in my tattered ruff, and my...

A Tale of One of the Most Ancient Relics

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My day began as gloomily as usual, although thankfully without the vexatious uncertainties that novelty tends to carry in its wake. Events of days past but not forgotten unwound themselves once again before me as I walked to work, unfolding anew as the Kosmic barrel-organ repeated its...

A Soliloquy

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This ocean is perhaps one of the last places on earth where Man cannot with good conscience call himself master, a realm where, as with the Kingdom of Heaven, Man must first enter as a child. But like every other myth since the dawn of the human tongue, Heaven is lost to me. But there is...