Seventy-seventh Issue! Demonic Rapture
May drifts in on perfumed breezes and golden light, a month where the earth sings in bloom and shadows stretch a little longer beneath the trees. It is a time of ripening beauty, of thresholds crossed, when the veil between wonder and dread grows thin. In this season of lush awakenings and hidden terrors, we welcome you to the seventy-seventh edition of the Flame Tree Fiction Newsletter. Our journey this month leads us into the heart of horror with Demonic Rapture — where desire and damnation entwine, and the sacred is touched by fire. Thank you to all who submitted your haunting visions; your words left scorch marks on the page. Here’s to a May of strange blossoms and deeper shadows.
Congratulations to both winners of the May theme: Mark Patrick Lynch and C. L. Sidell!
And the Dance Goes On by Mark Patrick Lynch – A down-on-her-luck performer takes a gig at a desolate bar, only to find herself the featured entertainment for a crowd of literal demons...
Oksana B's Nightmare Avenue: Rapture (By Way of Shovel) by C. L. Sidell – A visitor at a surreal art exhibit encounters a deeply unsettling installation that evokes buried memories and suppressed trauma…
This month's newsletter features:
- FLAME TREE PRESS: New titles coming this month!
- NEW Flame Tree Collector's Editions
- New Podcast!
- Original Horror Flash Fiction #1: And the Dance Goes On by Mark Patrick Lynch
- Original Horror Flash Fiction #2: Oksana B's Nightmare Avenue: Rapture (By Way of Shovel) by C. L. Sidell
- EXCLUSIVE Newsletter Subscribers Special Promotion
- Next Month’s Flash Fiction Theme
FLAME TREE PRESS | May Title
We have a new Flame Tree Press title coming out in hardback, paperback and ebook.
Requiem by John Palisano
Ava must fight an entity locked in on taking out the crew of the Eden, a moon-sized cemetery in space, as it brings back the souls of the dead buried aboard. One such soul is Ava’s lost love, Roland.
The spirits of the interred on the Eden haunt those aboard, including a visiting musician is tasked with writing a new song for the dead. Her Requiem calls a cosmic entity that illuminates their darkest fears and secrets. One by one, they’re driven mad. Ava fights her grief and must rise up before they’re lost and the entity reaches Earth.
Flame Tree Collector’s Editions showcase the roots of speculative fiction—classic authors, myths, and tales that shaped modern imagination—presented in a beautifully designed, collectible series. Each volume includes a new introduction and a glossary of mythological terms or historical figures.
Korean Folk & Fairy Tales
Native American Stories & Legends
The folktales of the Algonquin, Iroquois, Ojibwe, Cherokee, and other North American tribes offer a unique mythology shaped by millennia of isolation and deep connection to nature. This collection honors their diverse traditions and enduring reverence for the land.
Both books are out on the 13th May. Get your copy here and check out the full collector's editions catalogue.
First episode drops Tuesday 6th May
Our aim is to showcase the storytelling prowess of our wonderful authors, and pair them with timeless narratives from classic authors.
Weekly episodes will feature two short stories (science fiction, fantasy, horror and the supernatural, ancient tales, myth & folklore) with new writing from our Gothic Fantasy and Epic tales short story collections, and classic adventures from the imaginations from Poe, Lovecraft and more.
Plus: Every month, we'll release special episodes with exclusive author interviews and behind-the-scenes insights into the book industry.
Listen to the trailer here.
Available on all podcast platforms.
Original Horror Story #1
And the Dance Goes On
Mark Patrick Lynch
She had a bad feeling as soon as she pulled into the joint’s parking lot, sickened that her fifteen year old Chevy had gotten her this far.
“You’re the act?” a guy standing over to the side, half hidden in shadows, said as she stood despairing at The Screwtape. It was a glorified wooden bar down a dirt road, pressed in on by pine trees suffering some kind of blight. She’d been wondering should she hit the front doors or was there an artist’s entrance around back. With this guy watching her, she was going in the front.
Offering up a smile, but not an encouraging one, she squinted his way. “Well hi, honey. You work here?”
She didn’t know what might be worse: that he was staff or part of the audience she’d be playing for. Even in sunset’s half-light, he didn’t look good. Didn’t smell it either.
“Here to see you, sweetheart. Me and the other fiends from hell. We’s risin’ to celebrate another year’s chaos. Gonna eat you up.”
He looked mean so she didn’t play him.
“That’s great. Well, I better get myself ready. You be sure and enjoy the show.”
He nodded coarsely and she left him and his whiff of sour eggs, to head for the front doors.
Wouldn’t you know it, the inside was more disenchanting than the out. No one in yet, but a gloomy set up that oozed despair from the chipped log walls. It was lousy with barely repressed anguish. Bad things had happened here. She eyed the small triangular stage wedged in a corner away from the bar. Not large enough to easily stride around on if someone from the audience made a grab at her. She cussed. But she’d come this far, and she needed the money. She crossed to the bar, her costume bag hanging from a shoulder, and spoke to a stray wraith cleaning glasses. She was directed to an office. “Just knock and go in. Mister Lewis’s the manager.”
She knocked, she went in. Smoke and a heavy reek of body odour. Not much light. And Mr Lewis.
“You’re the act?” he wheezed.
“I am.”
Lewis was a sweating pore of a man, slobbish, disgustingly unshaven. He looked at her, half predatory, half pityingly. “Older than I expected. But you’ll do.”
He told her to get changed here.
“In front of you?” she said, knowing how this was going to go.
“I’m shelling out the green, figure I oughta get something from it for myself. You never know when it’s your last day.”
She’d done worse things, but she didn’t like doing this. She did it all the same.
“Word of warning,” he told her as she pulled on her g-string. “Dance and don’t stop. Don’t look out. He’s in tonight. Make sure he doesn’t catch your eye. Truth is, I’d have preferred a rock’n’roll band. Worst can happen there is they bleed their fingers to the bone if he keeps them playing. But you’re what he wanted.”
“Who’s he? You sound scared of him.”
Lewis shrank at the idea he might be overheard and lowered his voice.
“They call him the Regent Foul. You ask me, he’s the Devil and no lie. So do your show, don’t think on what’s out there. Don’t look. Pretend you’re in a dream and it’ll be over when you wake. Do that and you might survive.”
She didn’t know what to say to that, so she finished dressing.
A while later, Lewis escorted her to the stage like an executioner, keeping her hooded and caped. She didn’t see the crowd.
When the music started, she began her act, which was dancing in not much clothing, and then even less, until she was down to nothing and look at this, fellas, all yours to dream about...
Except this dream was a nightmare.
She forgot Lewis’s advice and looked out beyond the meagre stage lights, pulling a long glove off with her teeth as she shook her ass, and she saw. And oh my lord how she wished she hadn’t.
They were there, the demons from Hell, carousing and cavorting amongst themselves. She’d never thought that Hell’s bastions had sexes, but her disbelieving eyes showed her naked males and females, all of them horned, with filed teeth, and long sinuous tails snaking out above their bare behinds.
And she saw him, the Regent Foul, lording it over all, and caught his briny eyes. Lewis hadn’t been lying. He was the Devil, red in tooth and brimstone.
She faltered, and the Devil jeered, seeing her stagger. He clapped the time of the music with clawed hands, demanded she dance on.
It’s not real, she told herself.
Dance, Lewis had said. You might survive.
She danced, compelled by the Devil’s stare, unable to look away from him, and went about her act, the stench of sulphur thick about her.
The demons clapped and cheered as she stripped. Beer flew through the air, as did shouts and yells of encouragement, and she performed.
She didn’t know why but she couldn’t stop when she’d taken off all her clothes. The Devil commanded she keep going, dancing and throwing things to the audience. But it was more than her outfit now. She unpeeled the skin on her arms as if it were another glove, and she tossed it, red and bloody, to the demons. Then went her nose, her scalp, her eyelids - lashes and all. Next she flung them the torn globes of her breasts. She’d long removed her stockings, so she rolled down the flesh of her thighs and calves, and pulled at the pulsing meat of her muscles, and then the organs that made a human life function.
The Regent Foul approved, the demons cheered in rapture, until there was nothing of her on stage but a fallen crisscross of bones and two eyeballs in a skull. Eyeballs unable to look away from the Devil and trying to dance for him still.
Mark Patrick Lynch was born in Yorkshire, England and is now living in Kent until they find him and throw him out. His short fiction has appeared in various magazines and anthologies, from Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine to Zahir. He’s had a couple of traditional print books out from Robert Hale and a couple of Independently published short story collections are available too. Growing up, his biggest literary influences were Arthur C Clarke and Stephen King. His latest short stories are set to appear in the Flame Tree anthologies Were Wolf and Loki. You can find him on Twitter/X - @markplynch
Original Horror Story #2
Oksana B’s Nightmare Avenue: Rapture (By Way of Shovel)
C. L. Sidell
You only think you’re okay.
A giggle trips over your lips as you draw the drape and flip the switch. Garnet bleeds from the exhibit’s light fixture, saturating you in a metaphorical heartbeat as it flickers briefly before emitting a steady, effusive glow. One giddy step brings you within arm’s length of the artwork that’s on display behind curtain number five.
You sway like a sapling in an October breeze. Close your eyes. Press thumbs to your temples and forefingers to your sockets. Wait for the unexpected lightheadedness to subside.
And Rapture waits for you. Patient. Knowing already that it has seduced you. Knowing already that you will fulfil its intrinsic purpose.
Are you steady now? Ready now? Unclose your eyes. Examine this uncanny embodiment of “rapture” from where it hangs on the museum wall, hidden from all in attendance but yourself. What is it? Your gaze swiftly unveils its primary composition: a round Federal mirror with mixed media affixed to its reflective surface.
But this isn’t a mere passing glance.
In greater detail, you note the bronze gilt hardwood frame which encircles the original convex glass. Where musket-sized balls once adorned the trim, you now see miniature upside-down crosses carved from onyx.
And what of the glass itself?
A bouquet of bones, representative of lilies, claim the center. There are three peduncles constructed of metacarpals¹ and nine petals indicated by phalanges. These latter are further elaborated upon via the application of coarse black cloth² which extends to the sepals.
Wedded to the glass as they are, your eyes trick you into perceiving a free-floating cluster of underworld flowers. The bone stems tied together in a neat bow³ beg to be held – as if you’re a modern-day Persephone receiving a love offering from Hades. Your nose twitches. What is that sweet fragrance, subtle as perfumed pages tucked away for a century in someone’s attic? Is it emanating from… the canvas?
Oh!
Your gaze snaps upward.
Above the macabre floral arrangement and to the right, you discern: A tight, twisting staircase. Its steps feature slivers of cork⁴ and the railing is constructed of thin wire. Where, oh where, do these steps spiral to? You squint to interpret the answer. At their termination hovers an open doorway covered in impenetrable shadow and dense, crisscrossing webs. Webs so thick they could entrap an unsuspecting victim. The glass glinting between each step, subdued with a thin application of charcoal-grey paint, allows you to feel the mist hovering below and about.
What is this sensation of airbrushing your calves, this all-encompassing weightlessness as though you’re inside an elevator travelling upward…?
You blink. Roll your shoulders. Softly shake off the queerness. Observe the space opposite the stairs where stands a strange figure, scratched into the glass – a vague outline of narrow torso and limbs, sloping posture, the head hanging at an unnatural (almost perpendicular) angle to the collar. The face is minutely rendered with soul-penetrating dark eyes and a square forehead, the ghoulish smile revealing rotted teeth⁵ that set your own molars on edge.
You still think you’re okay.
The garnet bulb flickers again, drawing your attention to the placard posted beside the artwork. “Rapture (By Way Of Shovel), 2019. Mixed media on glass. Featuring the mirror from Room 2C that notorious child murderer Nathaniel Boltswick rented at Whitefield Anthem House, ca. 1810. This artwork begs the viewer to consider the following: If you were one of the children Boltswick victimized⁶ would you rest in peace? Or would you seek another avenue? Step back and reconsider.”
You take a step back.
The first thing you notice as you contemplate the overall composition is your own countenance, reflected back at you in jagged pieces. For a split second, you lack identity. You are featureless, expressionless, empty. And then you are something else altogether. A bleached skull with fiery-red hair – a skinless Ophelia drowning in memories.
“That’s not me…”
But the memories are flooding in. You feel them rush down your throat, choking you as they increase and expand. As you cough and cough and cough, your watery gaze flicks to the bottom-most section of Rapture. Here, you see the outline of a shovel painted onto the glass, its handle composed of wood⁷ and its blade a matter-of-fact rusty razor⁸. Beneath this item placed horizontally along the reflective canvas is an oily puddle that represents… Loss? Burial? You cannot tear your gaze away from it.
Do you see a ripple in the pitch? Or is this merely an illusion?
When the motion repeats, your pulse races.
And when you finally do break free, you’re drawn back to that horrible visage… Do you recognize it now? The crooked neck, with its sideways face, shocks the blood from your cheeks. And the mouth, hanging wide open, taunts you with its purple-with-death tongue snaking through the teeth, blood-shot eyeball staring from its tip.
You sincerely think you’re okay.
But, as you retreat from the art piece, you feel the heft of a shovel in your hands. Grip it so tightly that it splinters your palms. No matter. Lethe has bled out, and you’re consumed by wrongdoings you’d long forgotten. There’s a voice in your head screaming in red. And it won’t be silenced until it is fed. No matter. You will find the monster responsible for these hurts. You will make them pay. And you will bury them.
“It’s no matter at all.”
You smile.
The drape surrounding Rapture settles quietly back into place as you depart Oksana B’s Nightmare Avenue.
¹ from the hands of child killer Nathaniel Boltswick
² the very material that absorbed the dying breath of N.B. as he swung to his death on the gallows
³ ribbons (of pearl, sapphire, emerald) from each victim braided as one
⁴ stopper taken from the bottle of chloroform N.B. used to subdue each girl
⁵ pulled from the criminal’s mouth before execution
⁶ Samantha, Alice, Mary
⁷ splinters from the rafters that held the condemned man’s noose
⁸ sold at auction, alongside the mirror
A native of Tampa Bay, C. L. Sidell grew up playing with toads in the rain and indulging in speculative fiction. She draws inspiration from the natural world, travel, and all things spooky. A Pushcart Nominee, Best of the Net Nominee, and Rhysling Finalist, her work appears in 34 Orchard, Apparition Lit, Baffling, The Cosmic Background, F&SF, Factor Four Magazine, Stupefying Stories, and others. You can find her on various social media platforms @sidellwrites
Next Month’s Newsletter Sci-Fi Theme:
Our next edition of the newsletter will be SCIENCE FICTION themed, and we are looking for stories around the theme of:
Benevolent Glitch
Please note that all stories submitted should be within the SCI-FI genre.
Terms and conditions for the submissions here: https://flametr.com/submissions.
Please send your 1,000-word story to the Newsletter Editor:
Leah Ratcliffe
Flash2024@flametreepublishing.com
(valid for 2025 submissions)
The deadline is 21st May 2025.
We look forward to reading your submissions. Happy writing!
Sign up for our fiction newsletter 