Flame Tree Fiction Newsletter | August 2025 | The Mirror's Maw -Flame Tree Press

August has arrived with it's golden and sometimes oppressive heat, warping the edges of reality. It’s a month where shadows stretch long beneath a sun that never seems to blink. A month where laughter echoes too long, and mirrors don’t always reflect what they should. The days are bright, but the nights? They breathe heavy with something watching...

Welcome to the eightieth edition of the Flame Tree Fiction Newsletter.

This month’s theme is The Mirror’s Maw, join us as we descent into horror where reflections deceive, glass becomes a threshold, and what stares back might not let go. Thank you to everyone who submitted stories steeped in dread and distortion this month, they kept us very busy! Here’s to an August of heat, hauntings, and the terror of being seen.
Congratulations to both winners of the August theme: Alexes Lester and DJ Tyrer!

Visitor by Alexes Lester – A tale of grief, inheritance, and the blurred line between love and the unknowable...

Next Door by DJ Tyrer – A haunting exploration of isolation and perception, where the boundaries between reality and reflection quietly dissolve…

This month's newsletter features:

NEW Myths, Gods & Immortals Titles
Flame Tree Myth & Fiction Podcast
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS!
Original Horror Flash Fiction #1: Visitor by Alexes Lester
Original Horror Flash Fiction #2: Next Door by DJ Tyrer
EXCLUSIVE Newsletter Subscribers Special Promotion
Next Month’s Flash Fiction Theme

Forged is the third book in Overmyer’s Blade and Bone series.

Verve is meant to rule and unite the mortal and magical realms. There are several challenges standing in her way, however. Dacre, her former captor and greatest enemy, seeks to set up a kingdom with himself crowned as king and Verve as his queen. That is, until Verve tumbles through a portal leading to a realm from which there are no known means of escape. Now not only must she discover how to conquer a fae more powerful than she, Verve must also find a way home without being eaten by wyverns or losing her magic to a crafty siphon.

The Blade & Bone trilogy follows Verve as she navigates Letorheas, the land of Faerie, where an ancient prophecy shapes her destiny.

Discover the mythology of humankind through its heroes, characters, gods and immortal figures. Myths, Gods & Immortals brings together the new and the ancient, familiar stories with a fresh and imaginative twist.

Aphrodite

Aphrodite, born of sea foam and tied to love, beauty, and desire, remains as captivating today as in ancient myth. Often misunderstood, she is a powerful, multifaceted goddess whose story goes far beyond surface allure. This new collection, featuring global submissions and an in-depth introduction, offers fresh perspectives on a timeless figure.

Loki

Loki, the shapeshifting Norse trickster, has a legacy that spans myth and modern media. With fresh stories from around the world and a new introduction, this collection is a bold tribute to a timeless figure.

Out now. Get your copy here and check out the full Myths, Gods & Immortals catalogue.

Visitor

Alexes Lester

It was because we loved Gladys that we tolerated her strange ways. Yet, it could be said, after her death, that my aunt left us even more uncertain of her nature than in her life. If asked, under the morning sun, some in our family might admit that her house frightened them.

Her house, her lonely death, and if sure of many hours of daylight to come, a few might mention her cat.

Yet, nothing about Gladys had ever frightened me. Not her old, rundown farmhouse, not her strange books, not even Sweetie, her grumpy little tortoiseshell. Quite to the contrary, I loved to play in Gladys' garden, or sit and chat, the cat sleeping in my lap. As I grew, my visits lengthened until I spent whole days in her company. Though my family seemed uncomfortable with our friendship, they never forbade it.

"Going visiting?" Mum would ask, brows drawn together.

"Learning something new," I would say.

Which was true. Gladys taught me Latin, scrying, and even some of the old ways of healing. Many happy days were passed together, pouring over old magical texts.

Though I didn't understand why at the time, those days came to a sudden end.

I had been sitting just across from Gladys, with Sweetie on my lap. We had been discussing a complicated passage about spiritual guides, when I happened to glance up at a movement just by my hand.

Up, over the open pages, a many-legged creature scuttled, and I gasped.

Quickly, I stood, dumping the cat onto the floor, pulled off my shoe, and smashed the little visitor on the table.

At that, my aunt had screamed.

"No!" she gasped.

With my shoe still in my hand, I looked at her in wonder.

"But, they're dirty," I said. Beside my bare foot, the cat hissed.

"Oh my dear," Gladys said, her tone so soft, I could barely hear it.

Only a few days later, I found her, cold and alone.

That terrible day, I let myself in and called out, to no reply. Shrugging, I closed the door and called again. No one answered in the kitchen, the sitting room, or the den. Not even the cat came to me. It was only when I reached the hallway that held Gladys' scrying mirror, that I fell silent.

The gloomy hall had always been my least favourite part of my aunt's house. It was strangely dark, even in our daytime lessons.

"With a little helper, you can touch the future," she had said once, as we stood before the looking glass.

Holding Sweetie in my arms, I had refused.

"It's creepy," I had said, and Gladys had smiled.

"Not yet, then," she had said.

That was where I found her, sprawled on the floor, one hand flung up over her head.

"Gladys?" I cried, and then, horrified, stepped back.

From her pale cheek, three spiders crawled. At my screams, they scuttled across the wooden floor toward the wall, where they drifted, like black snowflakes falling in reverse, toward the mirror.

There was a sudden darkening of the glass, a blur of light, and they were gone.

Weeping, I collected my skirts and ran.

It was only after the undertaker left that I agreed to return to the house, and then only with my mother.

"Cover the mirrors," she had said, quietly. "To spare her soul."

"Her soul," I said, tears on my cheeks.

Mother moved away from me, searching out mirrors, a few sheets and scarves in her arms. These she lifted against her own reflection.

Shuddering, I turned away and said I might instead look for the missing cat, but my mother insisted.

"Please, love," mum called. "Do the back corridor."

"Yes, Mum," I said, and drew in a breath.

Returning to that dark hallway was not easy for me. Trembling with emotion, scarf twisting in my hands, I decided to do it all in a rush. Opening the door, I darted to the scrying mirror, only to freeze in place just before it.

There in the reflection, was Sweetie. Sitting in the chair just behind me, worn upholstery dimpled by the pressure of her little feet. A quick glance over my shoulder showed me she wasn't really in the room. On turning back to the looking glass, the cat and I stared at each other.

"Sweetie?" I said, reaching to the mirror.

As my fingertips brushed the reflection, the cat burst into a flurry of movement. Flickering, undulating motion, like a handful of black feathers floating in the wind.

Horrified, I watched as dozens of spiders rushed outward from the cat's image, straight toward the mirror, leaving nothing of the animal behind. Nothing of her tail, her ears, or her serious little face. The fur itself dissolved into long, slim limbs, which scuttled across the reflected wooden floor and then up, onto the looking glass, itself.

I didn't mean to scream, this I swear. I didn't mean to, yet, I did, and fled, hand over my mouth, to my mother.

Gladys left the scrying mirror to me in her will, with a handwritten note attached.

"Here is my heart for you," it said.

Over my family's protestations, I accepted the gift.

Up in my room, still in the clothes of mourning, I unwrapped the mirror my mother had gone back and draped with a scarf.

There was a moment when I doubted myself. A moment when I felt like a fool.

Then, with a rush, spiders crowded the glass from the other side, a squirming mass of them.

"Forgive me," I said, squaring my shoulders, then I reached out.

With a bending of light and a breaking of my heart, I watched as the mess of legs came together to form a small tortoiseshell cat, who stepped through the dark glass, just at my feet.

Heart pounding, hand trembling, I reached down to the little visitor.

"Come, Sweetie," I whispered, and bent to scoop my aunt's familiar into my arms.

Alexes Lester lives and works in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She enjoys writing horror, dark fantasy and science fiction short stories but has also published creative nonfiction. She finds inspiration from studying old myths and legends, classic gothic horror and dystopian works, as well as women's history. Her most recent work can be found in Chicken Soup for the Soul: What I Learned from my Cat, Flame Tree's Chilling Crime: Short Stories, and in Flame Tree's Newsletter, number 65.

Next Door

DJ Tyrer

I can hear them next door, moving about, living their lives. I can hear them in the kitchen of my flat, through the wall, the clatter of plates as they wash up, the rattle of the extractor fan as they cook a meal. It’s clearer in the bathroom, footsteps and the sound of their toilet flushing. It always annoyed me in the past, embarrassed me when I thought about what they might hear from me, but now it scares me, because they say there’s nobody there.

The police knocked on my door to ask when I last saw the family at number 76. I wasn’t sure; I didn’t go out often, and mainly during the day when the parents were at work and the kid was at school. I wasn’t even certain if the kid was a boy or a girl! As best I could recall, it had been about two weeks before, when a courier knocked on my door with a parcel.

But, I told the policewomen, I’d heard them just half an hour or so before.

“Washing up,” I said. “I heard the plates in the sink – stupid metal thing always makes such a racket – and the taps filling it.”

“That can’t be right,” one of the policewomen said. “We’ve just been in there and the flat clearly hasn’t been lived in for a while. There were dirty plates with mould on in the sink.”

Then, she fell silent as the other one glared at her, as if she’d said too much.

“Really, I did. Come in and listen for yourselves. I thought I heard the radio or something just before you knocked.”

So, they came in and stood in the tiny kitchen and there was silence.

“Must have been from upstairs,” the talkative one said.

I shook my head, but didn’t know what to say; I’m sure they thought I was mad.

Just after they were gone, I could hear sounds again next door. Had they gone back in? No, they continued on and off all evening.

I didn’t understand it. Why would they say there was no one there when there was?

The sounds were there the next day, as usual, as if nothing were wrong, and I began to wonder if I’d hallucinated the visit. Maybe I’d been on my own too long? Even when Dad was still alive, it had been as if I were alone. I’d moved in to care for him and the flat had become my prison, the outside world nearly unknown to me, and I had yet to adjust to his passing.

When I did venture out the next day, I saw that there was a bar locking the door of the neighbouring flat with two notices pasted above it. One was from the police, appealing for information. The other was to the family who lived next door, telling them to contact the housing association office to arrange access to the flat.

They really were gone…

But, when I got back from the corner shop, I could hear sounds from next door.

I was certain it was next door and not echoing down from a flat above, yet that made no sense. With the bar on the door, there couldn’t even be squatters or kids messing about.

I considered calling the police, but I just knew they would laugh at me.

In the end, I decided to solve the mystery myself.

The tiny balconies of their flat and mine were close together, less than a foot, and it wasn’t too difficult, even for someone as unfit as me, to clamber over. As I’d hoped, their balcony door was unlocked and it was easy to slip inside.

There was a damp and empty smell, and, as I investigated, I could see that the flat was indeed, empty. Yet, only minutes before, I’d heard sounds from it.

As I entered the bathroom, I thought I saw a flash of movement as I turned the light on, but when I looked, I saw it must have been me reflected in the mirror.

But, when I returned to the lounge, I noticed a large, ornate mirror on the wall that separated it from the kitchen. Whereas the room was shadowy, the mirror seemed to glow, as if it were reflecting a well-lit room. Then, as I looked at it, I saw movement. A figure walked past. I turned, but there was nobody there. Looking back, I realised I wasn’t visible. But, through the mirror, I could see a reflection of the lounge and a boy on the settee, watching the telly, his mother in an armchair nearby.

The boy began to turn his head, as if he’d sensed my presence, and I turned and ran back to the balcony, scared lest he see me.

See me! What did that mean? I wondered as I slumped down in my chair.

What had I seen? Had I imagined it? Was I mad?

The mirror… That was it. There was something about that mirror. They lived on one side of its glass, but not the other. The ornate mirror was next to the kitchen, and then there was the one in the bathroom… Was that why I could hear them there?

Were they still in their flat, but not when someone else intruded?

What was I meant to do?

That evening, I leaned on the sink and stared at my bathroom mirror, trying to understand it. Then, as I stared, my face began to fade away, dissolving into nothing until it was gone.

I could hear next door more clearly than ever and knew that, somehow, I’d joined them in a half-existence, alive on one side of the mirror and absent from the other.

Through the glass, now, I see faces in what had been my home and wonder if they can see me staring back. And, what happens when the mirror draws them in and traps them here? What will happen then?

DJ Tyrer dwells on the misty northern shore of the Thames estuary, close to the world’s longest pleasure pier in the decaying seaside resort of Southend-on-Sea, and is is the person behind Atlantean Publishing. DJ has been published in such places as Chilling Horror Short Stories (Flame Tree), All The Petty Myths (18th Wall), Steampunk Cthulhu (Chaosium), What Dwells Below (Sirens Call), and EOM: Equal Opportunity Madness (Otter Libris), and issues of Occult Detective Magazine, parABnormal, and Weirdbook, and in addition, has a novella available in paperback and on the Kindle, The Yellow House (Dunhams Manor).

Eightieth Issue! The Mirror's Maw

FLAME TREE PRESS | August Title

Forged by Beth Overmyer

Aphrodite

Loki

Original Horror Story #1

Visitor

Original Horror Story #2

Next Door

Next Month’s Newsletter Sci-Fi Theme:

Categories