Macabre and Monstrous: We Aren't Dead Yet, #1

By Emily Armstrong, Sapha Burnell and KS Bishoff

Engage in eldricht horror, monster terror and a forest of fright with short stories by the trio of We Aren't Dead Yet.

In Emily Armstrong's debut tale Fell Plumes, space truckers Lark and Mech think they've scored the payday of a lifetime when they agree to transport mysterious crates to a remote facility at the edge of the known cosmos.

Veteran salvager Corven decides to make one last scrapping run when he boards a derelict starship deep in uncharted space, but he soon discovers the ghostly void-lost vessel is caught in a nightmare outside of time in Salvager's Loop.

KS Bishoff frightens with a malevolent demon tree hungering for souls in Harvest of Horror, replacing its victims with eerie doppelgangers nurtured in the old gourd patch. As paranoia sweeps the community, fingers point at a lurking bogeyman. Tenya, burdened by mounting suspicions, races against time to unveil the truth hidden beneath the boughs of the sinister tree. Can she uncover the horrifying secret before the imposters usurp every last soul?

Bestselling author Sapha Burnell hits as hard as a road flare and liquor bottle with The Lamia, and Whiskey and Sinners Blood, two bone chilling stories based in the mythpunk Judge of Mystics universe. Caleb Mauthisen runs magic-less and wounded through the streets of Vancouver from a terrifying Lamia, a woman cursed as a half snake, half human monster with a lust and hunger of the damned. Descend into madness with Carolee, the Fae Queen's assassin in an origin story twice as twisted as the obsidian knives Carolee inflicts on the unworthy in the Judge of Mystics Saga. How did Carolee go from mother of one to murderer?

Macabre and Monstrous: A Horror Anthology of Eldricht Space, Myth Monsters & Forest Frights is a science-fiction, fantasy and mythpunk collection of short fiction which will unsettle, frighten and terrify… then lead you through the darkest part of the night to early dawn.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vraeyda Literary
• Release date: Oct 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9781988034485

Book preview

Macabre and Monstrous

Emily Armstrong, KS Bishoff, Sapha Burnell

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Vraeyda Literary

Vræyda Literary.

Port Coquitlam, Canada.

Copyright © 2023 by Emily Armstrong, KS Bishoff and Sapha Burnell

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permission requests, contact Vræyda Literary [e-mail].

The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.

ISBN 978-1-988034-47-8 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-988034-53-9 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-988034-48-5 (digital)

Book Cover & Illustrations by Emily Armstrong

Editing by Sapha Burnell & Tegan Ward

First edition 2023

KS Bishoff

For my parents, who never got the chance to see me published.

Emily Armstrong

To the people we meet along the way that change us for the better.

Sapha Burnell

To my muse. May we see the shadows as they are.

Macabre and Monstrous

Fell Plumes

Whiskey and Sinners Blood

Harvest of Horror

Salvager's Loop

The Lamia

Acknowledgement

About We Aren't Dead Yet

Also by Sapha Burnell

Fell Plumes

An Eldrispace Story by Emily Armstrong

17 AU From Final Destination

Lark awoke slowly, groaning as the harsh artificial lights flooded her vision. She blinked away the glare and reached across the cramped bunk, seeking the warmth and comfort of her partner’s embrace, but the sheets were cold and empty.

Mech had already risen for the day cycle, leaving Lark to catch a few extra minutes of precious sleep. After thirteen years, they settled into a familiar routine aboard their aging freighter. 

Lark smiled fondly at the little ways they cared for each other, despite the stresses of their hardscrabble life hauling cargo across the fringe systems.

With a reluctant sigh, Lark hauled herself upright and shuffled to the tiny bathroom. She splashed cold water on her face. Faint lines started creasing the corners of her hazel eyes, and she found a few new strands of gray curled around her hair tie. 

This life took its toll, but her inner spark remained undimmed.

Lark threw on her favorite old flight jacket and headed towards the tempting aroma of fresh kaff. Mech was in the galley, humming as she prepped their morning nutrition packs. Lark paused in the doorway, heart swelling at the domestic scene. Her partner could always calm Lark’s restless spirit. Mech raised an eyebrow when she noticed Lark hovering with a dreamy smile. 

Please tell me you’re awake enough to fly this old rust-bucket today. Her green eyes sparkled with warmth beneath tousled black hair. Lark chuckled and crossed the small space to plant a light kiss on her cheek.

Barely. Need kaff. 

Mech chuckled, they had been together long enough Lark’s grumpy morning manner elicited more amusement than annoyance. Mech knew well the fiercely loyal heart that beat under Lark’s prickly exterior. Lark gulped down the hot kaff before checking her wrist chrono. Twenty minutes from uncoupling to head out on their next contracted haul. 

An uneasy feeling gnawed at Lark’s gut. The coordinates were out beyond the fringe, and the cargo details had been sparse. She didn’t like flying blind. Mech rested a comforting hand on Lark’s shoulder. 

We’ve made runs to sketchy destinations before and survived, love. Whatever awaits out there in the dark, we’ll face it together.

Lark nodded, bolstered by her partner’s unflappable confidence. Mech’s thoughtful caution had counterbalanced Lark’s brashness over the years. With Mech by her side, Lark felt she could walk barefoot into the depths of hell and emerge unscathed. Their love endured every trial the harsh universe had thrown. This time would be no different.

The navigation system’s autopilot uncoupled their aging freighter, the Destiny Ascendant, from the orbiting depot rig. Lark settled into the well-worn pilot’s chair and ran through pre-flight checks and system diagnostics. In the co-pilot seat beside her, Mech reviewed the jump calculations and course data, ever diligent. Her competence gave Lark’s restless spirit a sense of calm and purpose. 

Together, they were absolutely unstoppable.

As the ship lumbered out of the crowded orbital lanes, Lark gripped the thruster controls, relishing the familiar vibrations rumbling through the deck plating. She lived for these moments, skirting the edge of the cosmic unknown. 

But she knew Mech worried for her safety out here in the lawless fringe systems. It was the careful dancer’s love for the reckless fighter pilot. 

Out beyond the comforting borders of civilization lay secrets and wonders beyond imagination, if one braved the risks. She and Mech had built a life on that dare. 

The viewports swallowed them into endless night as Lark engaged the hyperdrive, leaving the familiar starfields behind. She leaned back with a restless sigh, but sleep evaded her. Ahead through the mottled blur of faster-than-light travel lay the looming darkness. And in that darkness, strange secrets awaited that Lark and Mech would soon confront together.

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13 AU From Final Destination

The rendezvous coordinates led them to a nameless planet far beyond the borders of known space. As their aging freighter dropped out of hyperspace, Lark scanned the surface and picked at the frayed threads of her sleeve. Roiling clouds and endless storms obscured most surface details from orbit. Only the occasional ominous gleam was visible through the churning atmosphere.

Quaint little vacation spot down there, Mech’s deadpan did little to ease the sensation gathering like a static charge within the cockpit. Lark nodded, throat tight. Every primal instinct was screaming this place was fundamentally wrong in some unfathomable way no human mind could grasp. 

Making planetfall here felt like a soul-destroying mistake.

Cryptic instructions and docking codes transmitted up from the unseen facilities. 

…The fuck was that? Hey Nav, any luck on translating that?

It does not appear to be a known language in my database. Unable to provide output translation at this time. Good luck. 

Thanks for nothing. Can you at least get us into a safe parking spot? Lark raised her hand in frustration. 

Please and thank you, Nav. Mech held back a laugh and the navigation system clicked in to aid landing.

Lark’s hands trembled on the controls as she maneuvered them into descent position at the coordinates provided. There was no escape from this dread rendezvous now. For better or worse, they had arrived.

Donning rebreathers and biohazard suits, Lark and Mech descended into the stygian depths of the unknown facility in silence. The walls pressed claustrophobic and close as the elevator rattled ever deeper into the planet’s crust. Dim emergency lighting flickered erratically in the gloomy passageways, shadows danced at the edges of their vision. Particles suspended in the air, stagnant with centuries of accumulated evil.

Not another living soul was evident on their tense journey inward, though both Lark and Mech could feel unseen eyes tracking their movement. 

Amid the desolate silence, eerie whispers seemed to dance at the periphery of their senses. Lark’s ears strained to decipher the spectral murmurs, like the mournful cries of distant phantoms. Each indistinct word clawed at the edges of her consciousness, tugging at the fraying threads of her sanity. It was impossible to discern whether these ghostly utterances were the product of their fraying nerves or something far more sinister.

Lark held out an arm to stop Mech, to listen for any sign these whispers were real. They stood in silence until Mech’s impatience breathed life into the space again. Are you okay?

You don’t hear that? Lark pressed her hand against Mech’s shoulder. Shh, don’t move.

Then, in the heart of that silence, as if defying the laws of this ghostly place, Mech’s footfall landed with a sudden, sharp crack against the cold floor. Lark nearly jumped out of her skin, her fingers losing grip on the now-chuckling Mech.

Chill, we’re fine! You’re riling yourself up. Come on, it’s just a storage station. Sure, a really creepy one, but we’ve seen worse. Remember the station outside Maztum?

No, not really… I can’t imagine much worse. Lark picked at the cuff of her sleeve, continuing down the hall.

At the end of the final decrepit passageway, a massive reinforced portal ached open before them. The chamber revealed beyond was unlike anything Lark or Mech glimpsed, even in their most feverish nightmares.

The room exuded an oppressive atmosphere, a miasma of dread that clung. Towering cylinders of strangely etched glass and pitted iron lined the walls, looming at odd, esoteric angles that strained the eye and mind.

Within each monstrous vat, shadowy but unmistakably living forms drifted in viscous clouded fluids. The feeble light struggled to penetrate this sinister liquid, casting a sickly pallor upon the writhing horrors within. 

Wow, you seeing this stuff? Mech pressed a hand against a vat to get a better look but jolted back with a scream. 

What? What happened?! Lark grabbed Mech’s hand, turned it over in a search for damage. Mech’s quiet giggling crackled over the comms and Lark pushed her hand away. The hell is wrong with you?

Oh, come on, you’re too tense! Yes, they’re a little spooky, but what xenofauna isn’t the first time you see it? Don’t look in the vats, we’ll move quick and get out of here. Mech tapped the vat in front of them before walking further into the facility. Lark was more hesitant.

They were amalgamations of the forbidden - biomechanical flesh crafted and cloned out of pure insanity. Twisted blends of mechanical limbs and grotesque organic matter writhed in torment, their forms contorted in an obscene dance of agony. 

Pulsating tendrils of obsidian ichor snaked from the vats, dripping with malevolence. The room resonated with the eerie hum of arcane machinery, the walls oozing with a noxious pulp that bubbled and sizzled as if the walls were alive and suffering.

Etched in crimson and seeping with an otherworldly luminescence, eldritch symbols adorned the walls, their meaning incomprehensible yet sinister.

Fuck this, I’m out. Lark turned to start back down the hallway but Mech grasped her shoulder.

No! No, come on, we’re this close to a hell of a paycheck! Here, turn on some lights, let’s see what we’re dealing with.

Lark approached the nearest cylinder apprehensive, heartbeat thundering in her ears. She activated her suit’s floodlights and a cold sweat broke across her forehead. She clenched her jaw, trying to hold back the bile rising in her throat.

Suspended in the vat was a writhing mass of tissue caught between recognizable species, fused with technological elements and constantly shifting protuberances of raw sinews and sensory organs.

Despite lacking anything resembling eyes, Lark could feel the monstrosity’s malevolent presence wash over her like a frigid, suffocating mist. Invisible fingers reached into the depths of her soul, probing and peering into the most vulnerable corners of her being. A shiver ran down her spine. A creeping sensation of dread eating away at the marrow. She knew that the entity was aware of her presence, and it beheld her with an inscrutable hunger.

A sudden, horrific sound emanated from the cylinder, a wet, slithering noise that seemed to match the cadence of her own racing heart. The liquid contents within churned with violent rage.

Lark recoiled with a strangled gasp. What the hell is this for?

Don’t know, don’t want to know. Don’t look at it if it’s freaking you out, alright?

While Lark stared at the vat-bound horror, Mech investigated the vast laboratory space. Her blood turned to ice along the chamber’s rear wall - rows of crates, resembling heavy-duty transport pods. Each was emblazoned with arcane sigils and glyphs from blasphemous traditions forgotten by history. The markings pulsed with an eerie, eldritch glow, as though the crates themselves were infused with the madness that lurked within.

These containers, Mech realized with growing horror, were intended to safely transport the facility’s unspeakable specimens off-world. Her mind swam with visions of the creatures they encountered in past adventures. Close calls, scars that refused to fade. What fresh wounds would this adventure tear asunder? 

The realization hit her like a sledgehammer.

Lark and Mech were there for one appalling purpose: to collect and convey these freakish experiments to some unknown location even deeper in the bowels of cosmic madness.

She felt a presence, an alien intelligence lurking beyond the veil of reality, watching and waiting. It whispered incomprehensible secrets into the recesses of her mind, and the world around her seemed to distort and warp in response. 

Reality was a fragile facade, and the horrors that lurked beneath threatened to burst forth at any moment.

Mech swayed on her feet, caught in the throes of a maddening revelation. She fought to maintain her composure, suppressing the urge to scream or flee into the abyss of the unknown. Her gaze met Lark’s, and in the depths of their wide-eyed terror, they shared an unspoken understanding—a grim determination to complete their horrifying task.

With trembling hands that felt like they belonged to someone else, Mech approached the nearest crate. It loomed before her like a sarcophagus of despair. Lid secured with intricate, interlocking seals. Beside her, Lark mirrored her actions. Face a mask of fizzling willpower. They worked in silence, their labored breaths the only sound in the chamber. Each crate they shifted revealed a new abomination, each more mind-shattering than the last.

A writhing mass of tentacles that defied geometry and reason. 

A creature with far too many eyes, each one a window to a different dimension of horror. 

Beings that seemed to exist in multiple states of existence simultaneously, their forms shifting and merging in a nightmarish ballet.

As they carefully loaded the entities into the padded transport crates, Mech couldn’t help but feel their malevolent presence pressing in, like a suffocating fog of lunacy. The air grew thick with the stench of decay and despair, and she could hear the creatures’ whispered secrets, a cacophony of gibbering madness that threatened to unravel the fragile threads of her sanity.

…the unraveling, the unmaking…

-woven by blind hands-

-weep for the truth they guard.

Mech’s head throbbed with the weight of their incomprehensible thoughts, each disjointed utterance carving its own brand of madness into her psyche. It was as if they were debating the nature of existence, their voices clashing in a nightmarish chorus. It might have been minutes or eternities that passed as Lark and Mech toiled in the chamber of cosmic horrors, their minds teetering on the precipice of insanity. There was a hurried determination, a desperate need to complete their macabre task and escape this eldritch nightmare.

The creatures never stirred or resisted their confinement, but both Lark and Mech could feel the overwhelming malevolence and wrongness pressing down, suffocating all other thoughts as the containers were methodically sealed. It was all Lark and Mech could do to keep from retching inside their sealed masks. 

As the final abomination was secured into the massive crate, a deep rumbling cacophony akin to a volcanic eruption rocked the entire facility. Resonance shivered through Lark and Mech like the claws of some cosmic predator.

Disembodied alarms began blaring erratically as violent arcs of unstable energy lashed wildly along the laboratory ceiling. An automated voice garbled over their suit comms amidst the growing din.

...total containment failures ongoing...the specimens have breached...engaging Omega Conting-- The signal dissolved into the roar of unleashed madnesses, then silence.

Lark and Mech exchanged a single horrified glance.

I told you taking this job was reckless! But did you listen? No, and now we’re trapped in the middle of an outbreak of void-knows-what! Lark shook Mech’s shoulders, as much to wake herself up as her partner.

Mech opened her mouth to retort, then bit back the words, let them roll behind her teeth before reforming. You can say you told me so later! For now, run!

Whatever profane rituals had been aborted, they no longer held the creatures’ malevolence in check. Death and insanity ran rampant in these cursed halls.

The first abomination emerged into the corridor, a grotesque fusion of tissue and machine, its limbs ended in twisted appendages that oozed a viscous muck. Its eyes, fleshy protuberances, glowed with a sickly, pulsating light, and its movements were a nauseating dance of biomechanical