This is month three of DFP being in existence. Even though it might seem quieter on the end of you readers, behind the scenes, we have been busy! From designing covers, editing, promoting, and maintaining our sanity, there is a lot that goes into even a very small press like ours.

Check out what's happening in this month's news:

• Word of the Month
• New Releases
• Flash fiction: "Her Smile" by Syd
• Artist Alley: "Cackle" by Kelley York
• Unsettling Truths: The Cold Case of Brandon Swanson
• Forest Market Feature

SUBMISSIONS OPENING!

Authors, get ready. On April 1st, Dead Fox Pub opens its first submission call. We're looking for your short stories for a spirit anthology publishing early 2027. Find out more and get your work submitted here.

WORD OF THE MONTH

moribund (adj.)

mor· i· bund
/ˈmɔːrəˌbʌnd/

1: being in the state of dying: approaching death

NEW RELEASES

1830, LONDON. When a gang of grave robbers unearths two coffins newly shipped from India, they awaken not corpses... but vampires: Alis, a centuries-old French noblewoman, and Sita Ganeshan, her fiery Hindu partner, bound by blood and desire. Alis is on a mission to join her first lover in Heaven. To do that, she must first acquire a soul.

Her single-minded search leads them to embark on careers as resurrectionists—work that draws them into the shady underbelly of London to clash with rival resurrectionist gangs, reformists, other vampires, and a ruthless surgeon obsessed with weighing the human soul. Soon, the conflict isn't just pressing in from around them. A rift forms between Alis and Sita themselves, and the arrival of a sudden, otherworldly evil threatens to be the final nail in the coffin of their relationship.

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They are the stuff of nightmares, these creatures in the shadows and under our beds, yet we can't look away.

Fear is part of the allure, after all—drawing us into the woods, into the mist, into the dark water, while others run the other way.

We yearn to be craved by what wishes to consume us.

WEBSITE EXCLUSIVES

Both the eBook and hardcover versions purchased here contain two additional stories, "We Deliver!" and "Eyes in the Dark".

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Terrence is a fussy, pretentious little man with terrible allergies and a deep dislike for all things feline.

But that does not mean he ran over Mister Whiskers, his boss's prized cat, on purpose!

He disposes of the body and keeps his head down, hoping no one traces the deed to his doorstep. No one does.

Well, except another cat who bears a striking resemblance to Mister Whiskers...

As Terrence dispatches the new Mister Whiskers, and the next, and the next, it becomes apparent this cat has more than nine lives.

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FLASH FICTION

"Her Smile" by Syd

Again and again and again. The sickening cracks permeate the cool morning air, wrenching the once-peaceful silence away. They echo from the small forest clearing out, the only indicator of her pain, for her lips stay closed in a perfect, placid smile.

As she’s always done.

The burning hatred does not reach her eyes, only boils deep inside her body where they cannot see, no matter how deep they carve open her chest. It’s a gaping hollow now, and they break off her ribs piece by piece while whispering their prayers, wishes, dreams to her. Like she gives a damn what they want.

The golden blood that flows out from the wound stains their fingertips, yet they act as though they have committed no crime, harmed no one. Some even see it as a badge of honor. Like they should be commended for their hard work in breaking her apart. They treat it as their right to take her piece by piece, bit by bit. Her smile is clearly all the permission they need.

 Like she will fix their problems, raise up their stations, grant better livelihoods or help them seek love. Like the things they so greedily turn her bones into will give them better lives. They give no regard to those they destroy and leave behind. Broken. Empty.

But they realize not what it will mean for them to strip her of all she is. And when the storms come, when the winds whip so hard they snap trees and the rains flood the plains… When the unbearable heat and inescapable cold come to chase them down, she will finally throw back her head 

                                                                        and laugh.

—

Syd writes things sometimes, and sometimes even finishes them.

More from Syd:
"We Deliver!" - Twisted Trysts: A Spicy Monster Horror Anthology (Website Exclusive)

ARTIST ALLEY

artist: Kelley York

From the artist: "A fictional creature featured in a dark fantasy story in the works. Think of a weird cross between a hyena, a jackal, and a maned wolf that resemble the environment they live in and are devastating pack hunters."

“The thing pretending to be Rune releases Jude and leaps back, though not without taking a chunk of flesh from his shoulder along with it. It grins with Rune's face, but the glamor has been broken. Through the dissipating illusion, Jude is no longer staring at Rune but at a ghostly, medium-sized beast, gaunt atop its disproportionately long legs and its tall ears erect like blades. Six eyes shimmer a surreal blue. Its blood-covered lips draw up from its fangs, spilling red and shredded flesh onto the snow. Then it throws back its head and lets out a shrill cackle that sends the cold weight of death straight to Jude’s core.

A moment later: a cacophony of laughter and howls from its pack as they slink from the surrounding fog, heading the call.”

UNSETTLING TRUTHS

May 14, 2008. Rural Minnesota. Nothing but flat fields and towns whose populations rarely exceeded two hundred. Quiet, serene.

It’s a little before midnight when nineteen-year-old Brandon Swanson leaves an end-of-semester party in Canby to head to his home in Marshall, forty-five minutes away. Easy-breezy.

Flash-forward to 1:54 a.m.—more than twice the time Brandon should have needed to get from his friend’s to home. His sleeping parents are roused by a phone call from their son. He’s driven his car off the road and into a ditch, he tells them, and would they mind picking him up?

Brian and Annette Swanson immediately head out. Brandon isn’t entirely sure where he’s at—fields are fields are fields; ain’t nothing special about them—but he wagers a guess that he’s a few miles from a small town called Lynd.

For forty-seven minutes, Brandon’s parents remain on the phone with him as they search. Both parties flash their lights, trying to locate each other on the dark road, to no avail. Brandon, frustrated with waiting, thinks of a new plan: he’ll make the walk to Lynd and meet up with his parents there. He can see a light in the distance and thinks, surely, that has to be the town. What else could it be in the middle of nowhere? (This is the part where you point at the screen and go, “Brandon, nooo.”)

Now, I mentioned Brandon was on the phone with his parents for forty-seven minutes. Does that mean they find him? Or that he finds civilization and hangs up to wait? Maybe he’s tired of being on the phone. Maybe his battery is low. Maybe their battery is low.

No.

Forty-seven minutes into the call, Brandon abruptly interrupts himself and says, “Oh, shit.”

Then… nothing.

The call doesn’t disconnect. The line is dead silent, no thumping, crashing, or anything suggesting some horrible accident has taken place. For a while, his parents remain on the phone, desperate to get a response. They hang up and call back. Repeatedly. Because now Brandon isn’t answering at all.

When they don’t find their son where he said he’d be waiting, they call the police. You know exactly what happens next, so don’t even start with me: he’s an adult, young men stay out partying all the time, he’ll come home when he wants to. In fact, one police officer goes so far as to tell Brandon’s mom that he “has a right to be missing”. (You do have the right to go missing. You also have the right to be an attorney. Contact me for further life tips.)

Eventually, after many precious hours lost, Lynd police give in and start their search. It isn’t until they get ahold of Brandon’s cell phone data that they realize why they can’t find him: he’d actually been calling them from near Porter, Minnesota, twenty-five miles past Lynd. What in the world is going on? Brandon has lived in this area his entire life. His father is certain his son sounded fine and that if he had been drinking at the party, it must’ve worn off by the time he called to be picked up. He was lucid, reasonable, and yet…

Brandon’s car is eventually found trapped at the top of an incline at the edge of a gravel road north of Taunton, Minnesota—why he’d gone off on these back roads, no one knows. There is no damage, but the way he landed, his two front tires are not touching the ground. Nothing seems amiss in the car itself, and because of rain, gravel, and grass, there are no obvious signs which direction he might’ve gone. (That light Brandon saw, by the way? A grain elevator. Not Lynd or any town at all. How could he have thought that was a town?)

What happened? To this day, no one knows. No trace of Brandon has ever been found and no one has ever come forth with fruitful information. Various police agencies and volunteers spent years, all the way up to 2015 at least, searching every area they could think of, but Brandon was simply gone.

There are theories, of course. It could have been foul play, but the problem with that scenario is how his parents sat for a long time on the phone after his, “Oh, shit,” and heard absolutely nothing. Falling into the river, being attacked, a medical emergency—all would have made some kind of commotion.

His parents insist there’s no way Brandon would have just left. Which, yeah, I mean, it’d be an ass move to wake your parents up at 2:00 a.m. and have them drive around for hours knowing all along you were skipping town—on foot?

Which leads us right back to the fact that he simply… vanished.

Brandon’s mother remained—justifiably—furious over the police officer’s comment about her son’s right to be missing and their lack of action, so she and her husband went on to help pass legislation in Minnesota that is known as Brandon’s Law; cases of missing adults are now required to be investigated the same way as cases of missing children are: immediately.

It’s weird how people can disappear, isn’t it? That it can strike anywhere, at any time, with absolutely no evidence left behind. Just—pop.

Gone, as though he’d never existed.

—written by Hannah-Banana

FOREST MARKET FEATURE

Our Forest Market partner feature this month goes to Kala Godin. Kala brings to the forest three beautiful horror poetry collections! Available individually or grab them as a bundle.

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