We get thirsty offering all of these free resources and tools for writers. Most of our time is spent making eFiction better as we sit in coffee houses thinking up new ideas and resources for you. Our thanks is that you reach your favorite fan.

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Alright, flesheaters, it’s time for some zombie mayhem with our Undead September theme contest!

Just go to our submissions manager–click here or on the submissions button at the top of this page, and be sure to click on “Undead September” in the Theme Issue dropdown box.

“What’s in it for me?” you ask.

Aside from the usual lifetime share of royalties you get from the individual sale of the issue and the free contributor’s copy, you’ll be entered to win our Undead September GRAND PRIZE.

“Well, what the fuck do I GET, you assholes?!?!” you spit from your festering mouth hole.

How do $50 and a lifetime subscription to eHorror sound, meatmouth? That’s right, fifty bucks, and you never have to spend a goddamn dime on an issue of eHorror ever again… and guess what? If we go to print, actual print on paper, that’s included, along with any special issues or anthologies we produce.

Your name pretty much goes right smack onto our wall of fame, and you never have to pay for shit from eHorror ever again. How sweet… is THAT???

“How how how do I win???” you ask.

Our readers will vote on the stories after the issue drops, and we’ll announce the winner in October.

“B-b-but what are you looking for in a story?” you ask, quivering with excitement.

Good question, limb chewer.

Number one: follow our guidelines and keep it under 7500 words.

Number two: gives us zombies.

“Can they be zombies in love that sparkle like toilet water in the sun?”

If you give us love zombies, you might as well send us the rope to hang ourselves with while you’re at it.

We want two things: a great story and zombie carnage. Okay? Questions go to that eHorror editing slab of pork fat, geoffrey@efictionmag.com.

GET CRACKING, MEAT PUPPETS!!!

Love,
eHorror Magazine

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When I was four years old, I would climb into bed next to my mom each night, listening intently while she made her way through a few pages of Peter Pan. With an accent I didn’t yet know she had and mispronunciations I didn’t yet know were funny, she’d read slowly, running her finger underneath each word as she went.

I both cherished and despised this nightly ritual. While the books were marvelous – all fluttering bonnets and rugged adventures – I was perplexed by the ease with which my mom turned those strings of letters into beautiful words and sentences. How does she know what they say? It was the most infuriating thing in my little life.

Later, now, this insatiable curiosity – the desire to be in on the joke, to see the answer, to have all the pieces to the puzzle – remains one of my guiding principles. It’s what turned me from a discontented writer into an editor, from a doer into a questioner. It’s likely that you’re familiar with this as well. Whether you are an editor, a publisher, writer, strategist, or, most importantly, a reader, odds are that curiosity propelled you to where you are today. Yet curiosity is tricky. It’s the first thing that pushes us forward, but it’s also one of the first to hold us back; it keeps us from shipping good ideas because we’re too busy lusting after unachievable ones. If we want curiosity to take us further, this first principle demands a second look.

Of particular interest is Peter’s shadow which somehow manages to fall off now and then. The notion of a free shadow, detached from its source object, is rather peculiar. In order to explain its purpose in context, themes of courage and fear, fantasy and reality, happiness and sadness, strength and weakness, and past and future must be kept in mind. A possible symbol of each of these elements, Peter Pan’s extraordinary shadow sheds light on childhood and the process of growing up.

Our childhood, fantasy or real, is also a shadow we leave behind. They are there like a shadow one can’t escape from or loose watercolours that are yet to dry: you can still tip the page ever so slightly and change the image completely. It is a thing so vague, so fuzzy, and so distorted that it ends up more constructed than real. You narrate to yourself that something was a good experience because it was meant to be so, regardless of what may have happened and how you actually felt at the time. In your mind cave, deep, deep inside, only a fraction of the truth exists; the rest is what you make it. It is the frame that we now apply, just like beer goggles, or the fact that everyone thinks high school was awesome just after they leave. Your childhood nostalgia becomes more a reflection of who you are now than who you once were. The same applies, of course, to the reverse – to people decrying the stupidity of uniforms and childishness. It’s just a bitter reflection on what probably wasn’t that bad.

I also often worry about whether people change so much that they become different people. What links ‘past me’ to ‘current me’ other than some bones, flesh, and a distinct lack of muscle? We grow, we change, and, I don’t always know if I like the little twat that logically precedes me. I can just see ‘the child I was’ plotting his revenge for stealing his body and hijacking his dreams for my own personal satisfaction.

The shadow develops in us, because as we grow and absorb our culture, we naturally repress parts of our nature as they are not acceptable to parents or society. These grow and mature in just the way our conscious personality does, through experience and further information – except the shadow has a life under the surface like any socially unacceptable organisation, criminal activity or individual. But often it is the functions or instincts in us that date from prehistory, when present day social and sexual restraints did not have survival value, that make up a large part of the shadow.

If you can think of the characteristics you loathe in others, it is a fair picture of what you repress in yourself. The great ‘ladies’ man’ may hide a shadow which feels inadequate sexually. The loving Christian mother might meet a shadow full of resentment and anger at how she has been taken for granted. The rigid heterosexual might hide homosexual tendencies. Meeting the shadow through our dreams is a meeting with our own reality, which in turn enables us to look at the world realistically. If the shadow can be met it leads to wholeness.

However, because the shadow is the ‘out of sight’ area of our psyche, it also holds in it great treasure through its connection with our unconscious potential. In fact a great deal of our energy is involved in our ‘negatives’. When we meet our shadow or our fears, we are enormously more energized  Meeting the shadow and unfolding the possibilities held unexpressed is our life’s work. Without it we may never become the mature and full person we are capable of. As Prospero says of Caliban, we need to say ‘this thing of darkness I acknowledge mine’. Through this we gain not only our own greatness, whatever that might be, but also the acceptance of our common connection with humanity. If we could fully meet our shadow, we would be immune to any moral or verbal insinuations. We would already have seen this for ourselves. Finding this sort of transformation to a state beyond guilt is a task for the protagonist who has the strength to descend into the underworld and wrestle dark creatures; to open Pandora’s Jar and deal with what is revealed.

If I’ve managed to get you curious enough to turn another page, go right ahead and I am sure you’ll love what you’ll find between the shadows of the page. Don’t love all of it though. That would be highly carcinogenic. *chuckle*.

Nikhil Sharda
Managing Editor

PS: Our Magazine is Live and Exclusive at Amazon Kindle for one week – till 13th May 2013 at our lowest price. The magazine would be available on other shops after the 13th.

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The movie starts with Christmas Eve in the year 1999, where a nerd named Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce) pitches a project proposal to Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) which he turns down because he is busy partying. Cut to present day where Tony is facing the after effects of fighting off the aliens in The Avengers, which has made him anxiety filled and sleepless. He tries to confine himself to his better half Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) where she asks him to slow it down. While all this is going on, America is facing a new terror threat from a guy called Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) who starts by saying, “Some call me a terrorist, I call myself a teacher.” He is made to sound and act like a version Bin Laden-meets-Bond.

Tony issues a warning to Mandarin to leave America alone or come fight him, which makes Mandarin attack Tony’s home making it look like Ground Zero. Tony has developed an action-synced Iron Man suit, which saves his life when he is lying on the ocean bed under the debris of his own home and takes him to a safe place. From here starts Tony’s journey to discover the nexus between Killian and Mandarin and save his nation from this threat.

Tony meets a kid named Harley (Ty Simpkins) who helps him kickstart his new journey of self-discovery. He brings him food and tools to make him jump back into action. Harley proves to be Tony’s most resolute assistant. He helps Tony get power back in his suit and find out that a biologist, Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall), has joined hands with Killian to make a formula to hack into human DNA and also be able to upgrade it as per need. And they are working with Mandarin to hold America hostage.

Tony is joined by Colonel Rhodes (Don Cheadle) and his Iron Patriot suit variant of Iron Man to help him solve this mystery and save the world.

The best part of the movie is RDJ himself, who spends more time outside the suit than in it, and the humour and wit of his character, the free falling scene where Iron Man rescues people mid-air, the little kid and most importantly Mandarin. This makes it an action packed plus entertaining movie with an intense climax to end it. It might not be the best movie of the trilogy but it keeps you glued to the screen because of the storyline and the plot.

This movie gets 4 out of 5 stars from me for making our weekend superhero-filled.

- Pankaj Ahuja
Published in Vol.1.Issue.08 of eFiction India

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Pankaj Ahuja is a superhero while playing Halo and Warcraft on his X-box when he is not working in exchange of shoes in his normal life. Music and movie have made him able to deal with people around him since 1985. In his free time, he would be found applying his bargaining skills in public.

In reviewing such a highly publicized film as ‘Evil Dead,’ the 2013 remake of the 1981 cult horror classic, one cannot help but make a comparison between new and old. Horror remakes are, after all, notoriously bad. Filmmakers so often think modern technology will make horror films better, but more often the opposite is true. Take, for example, the computer graphic-heavy remake of John Carpenter’s ‘The Thing,’ which was a far cry popularity-wise from its predecessor. Granted, John Carpenter’s film was itself a remake of the 1951 classic, ‘The Thing From Another World,’ but what made it so good was that in the 80s, practical special effects had reached a pinnacle. That was what made the 1982 version of ‘The Thing’ so good, and what made the 1981 version of ‘Evil Dead’ so damn good.

The 2013 ‘Evil Dead’ has much to live up to; the original is a cult classic of the highest regard among fans, and it spawned two equally revered sequels. What made the original a classic was its leading man, Bruce Campbell, whose good-looks and over-the-top acting would have made him a first-class celebrity in the fifties, but which were slightly out of place in the eighties in anything but B-rated horror. It was Campbell, plus the explosively gory effects, that made ‘Evil Dead’ a film that is now considered a timeless comic horror.

2013’s ‘Evil Dead’ is anything but a comic horror, having taken on a much darker tone. The film’s tagline, boldly stated in an enormous ad campaign, is, “The Most Terrifying Film You Will Ever Experience.” In terms of the tagline, the film falls short; in terms of everything else, it is horror perfection.

One filmgoer, Jon Smith of College Park, MD, said before the film started, “You need to start your review like this: ‘Where the fuck is Bruce Campbell?’” The obvious: Bruce Campbell is not the star of this film. ‘Evil Dead’ fans will have to come to terms with that fact. In this case, the outrage turns to surprise, then to horror ecstasy as it becomes apparent that this film is wonderful, even without Bruce Campbell (although it helps to know that both Campbell and Sam Raimi, the writer/director of the first film, were both on board as producers for this film.)

Where the original film and the remake part ways is that except for the use of the usual horror film clichés, the remake is in no way a comic horror, having taken a much darker tone this time aorund. The comedy of the original film was really more of an accident, the combination of Campbell’s enthusiastic mugging and a low budget. Except for a few one-liners here and there, there’s almost nothing funny about the new ‘Dead’ (unless one of the main characters slipping on a hacked off piece of his friend’s cheek and smashing into a toilet tickles your funny bone—no judgment if you answer yes.) The film’s bold tagline is, “The Most Terrifying Film You Will Ever Experience.” In terms of the tagline, the film falls short; in terms of everything else, it is horror perfection.

The director of the new film, Fede Alvarez, pays homage to the original in small ways, keeping the setting almost identical, and throwing in a few detailed treats that only ‘Evil Dead’ die-hards will notice. He pays homage to the original in a major way by keeping entirely to practical special effects, with nary a computer graphic to be found. For horror buffs who remember the rise of gore horror in the seventies and eighties, this is a horror filmmaking touch of mastery, and it makes this film rise above so many other remakes.

‘Evil Dead’ has very little to offer in terms of story: a group of friends goes to a cabin in the woods to help their friend kick her drug habit. While there, one of them discovers, and reads aloud from, a book of ancient evil, which releases said evil. The cabin-in-the-woods concept has become very overdone by now, and has been skewered both successfully and unsuccessfully (Joss Whedon, I’m looking at you) many times. ‘Evil Dead’ is forgiven, however, because it was the original film that started the cabin-in-the-woods cliché in the first place. The overall story sounds simple, and it is. One would think the easiest way to combat the evil is to do what is scrawled in bold letters across the first pages of the book, and do not read aloud from the book. Well, it wouldn’t be a horror movie in that case; it would be a drug film.

The casting is typically uninspired for a horror flick like this, with the exception of Jane Levy as Mia, who pulls off a strangely entrancing and creepy performance beneath the demonic abuse and layers of prosthetics. Lou Taylor Pucci, as Eric, the group asshole skeptic and releaser of ancient evil, is fun to watch as he takes horrific injury after horrific injury, including aforementioned cheek-meat slip and toilet-dive.

The real star of this film is the intense gore, which will turn many viewers awat. Another filmgoer, Nick Raatz of Columbia, MD, squirmed visibly throughout the film, and said afterwards, “That made me uncomfortable.” Uncomfortable is an understatement, as the razorblade-licking, ling-hacking, and tendon-ripping ensue. The film is entirely shameless in its violence, but the wild and unlikely gore is what helps this film retain some of the campy tone of the original. When one of the characters gets her hand stuck beneath a fallen vehicle, she simply tears off the offending limb and moves on, pain, blood loss, and shock having no apparent affect.

There are no surprises in the new ‘Evil Dead,’ and that is for the best. There isn’t much that needs to be changed in a cult classic, and to attempt a remake of this one is a highly ballsy move. Yet, with the backing of the original star and director, the move pays off. ‘Evil Dead’ is not for the weak of stomach, but it is for the hardcore horror fans who will appreciate the nod to the gory horror films of decades past.

Ilustration by Bijay Biswaal

He always had three legs, none shorter than the other two. In the corner of the room he stood in silence, year after year, gathering dust, like most of the other furniture in the old bookstore. Nestled in a quiet, dark alley, not too far from the bright lights of the main city, the little old store remained forgotten. Overwhelmed by the newer, brighter and bigger aisles of the glossy books of fiction and non-fiction, when the shop faded into the background, no one knew. No one knew when it shut down, no one knew how many days, months or years passed by and no one knew of the worn leather bound books lying around there in silence, gathering dust… the pages yellowing as days went by and some, crumbling to dust.

No one knew, apart from little old Tom who lived across the street. Little old Tom, as old as the store, as wise as the books, with eyes that saw perfectly and teeth that gleamed when he smiled. Little old Tom and his little old toys. With the crooked legs and the bells, with the hand-made clothes and the paint that never could be worn out. Little old Tom, who sat in his over-sized chair each night and smoked his well-worn pipe. Like the book store, Little old Tom lived in a world that was forgotten in the city of lights and life.

Every night, Little old Tom would sit in the chair, next to his window and watch the yellow lights cast shadows here and there. He would see cars and bikes zooming past the house, he would see drunks spray paint messages on walls, he would see young people in love walk by, hand in hand, occasionally stopping to peer through the rusty bars of book store and share the inevitable moment and sometimes, a kiss.

This one night, Tom sat and looked at the yellow light spill through the rusted bars that closed that little haven of stories from the world. He peered at the dusty glass windows and wondered why no drunk had ever stoned it to bits. He could see the street lamp light up the little three legged table he had once, rather long ago, made for Mary, and he wondered what happened to her.

Mary was, Tom still would admit sheepishly, the first woman he had ever fallen in love with. He was twenty, a rather impressionable age, and she, the daughter of Mister D, who owned the little old bookstore. Some sixty odd years ago, Tom was not the little old wizened man, as we know him now. He was the young man women turned to smile at. The man who smiled back at them, the man who helped the little old ladies cross roads, the man, whose eyes twinkled as he played with the neighbourhood dogs and of course, the man, who could make bits of wood come to life with minor movements of his fingers.  And Mary, was the girl he knew he would love forever.

It was a cloudy morning when she had first come to his workshop. It had been raining till a few minutes ago and Tom was lost in painting a puppet for the five year old down the street. He whistled while he worked and sang tunelessly and well, rather loudly. Unsurprisingly, he missed the first few soft knocks on the door and even the polite cough. He dipped his brush into the tin of red paint and was about to start on the mouth when he felt the light tap on his back. Looking at the messed up mouth of the puppet, he turned around, hoping to give the irresponsible nincompoop a good piece of his mind. But inevitably, he was at a loss for words. As he stared into her wide green eyes and her wet, stringy hair, he could feel himself smile a rather foolish smile and mumble things about wood and paint, which were rather incomprehensible and unnecessary. Something he never could imagine doing around a girl.

Mister D needed a carpenter, he needed shelves and counters to line up his shop, and Tom was the man for the job. Over the next year, working in the bare shop with closed boxes all around became a routine for Tom. He would sing tunelessly, whistle and sometimes entertain Mary’s five year old sister May with stories about knights and dragons, fairies and kings. He would occasionally drink bourbon or two with Mister D and would flatter the Missus rather shamelessly. But every time, he saw Mary, he would turn into a puddle of mush, who never had anything very sensible to say. And Tom had no intentions of declaring his steadily increasing love for her. He knew Mary was the girl all men loved. She was not exquisite to look at, yet her firm chin, twinkling eyes and red nails made all men behave in a rather juvenile manner around her. It was a shame.

The year saw Mary fall in and out of love. Quite a few times. It saw her walk down the street with quite a few men and it saw her kiss a few more under the birch tree that then stood in front of the book store. It saw Mary run to Tom and cry over heartbreaks and it saw Tom look horrified as she cruelly rejected men, for fun. Yet he loved her. Her laughter, her ridiculous sense of imagination and her wicked sense of justice.

It was her birthday when Tom was working on the three legged table. It was for Mrs Cooper, who lived next door. It was an ornate little thing. With carvings that told stories and polish that made them come to life. How Mary managed to convince him to gift it to her, is something he still doesn’t remember too clearly. It was perhaps the smile, or maybe, the red nails.

Tom stared at the window as the yellow light flickered. His mind bringing back to him memories. Both painful and pleasant. He remembered Mary’s wedding and then, the kids. He remembered the war and her mourning for her husband. He remembered spending hours in that little book store playing with the kids and he remembered little May growing up to be a nurse. He remembered Mister D’s death and the Missus leaving the town and going away. He remembered Mary remarrying a rather pompous fat man with a truckload of money. He remembered the town growing up to become a city and he remembered newer roads and brighter lights. But he did not remember how the street turned into the little old lane with the yellow lights. He did not remember when the store shut down and he really could not remember when Mary left.

But she did, and with her, gone were the neighbours and the laughter and the things that made Tom smile. As the years passed, he continued to make toys and tell stories to the little ones who came in, from time to time with their parents, who had once been little, eager and hung on to each word that Tom said. He did not realize when the other little houses on the street started to look different. Larger and less human. He did not realize that with the years, even lesser young ones came to his workshop, he did not realize that the puppets and toys that lined all the shelves, lay there, gathering dust. What he did realize was how empty life was without Mary. And he realized, over and over again, that he possibly did truly love her. Never mind her flaws.

It was around five in the morning and little old Tom had just nodded off to sleep. He did not know when the shiny black car pulled into the little old alley, he didn’t know when the young woman with light hair got off and he didn’t know when the Movers came along. He did not know when the mailman rang his bell; he did not know how long he slept. The loud clangs and crashes did not disturb him, the sirens remained unheard and he slept peacefully. He dreamt of Japan and cherry blossoms, of princesses and demons, of stories that would forever remain unheard and he dreamt of Mary. As he slept peacefully, he did not realize that the last memory from what he thought to be home, was being reduced to dust.

A year passed and Mary’s Place stood proud. A swank new coffee house with lights that lit up the entire alley, filled it with music and dragged it away to be a part of the city it so long remained alienated from. Steel, glass and bling defined it and the wee hours of the mornings no longer remained calm. What happened to Little old Tom and his little old workshop, no one knows. But once in a while a couple stops inside the coffee shop to stare at the little wooden table with the three legs. The one, that has stories carved on it, the light reflecting off the carvings and making them come to life. The one where the little hand painted puppet sits proud. Head bobbing up and down, smiling and evidently ignoring the careless smear of red paint on its otherwise perfect face.

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Sreejita Biswas

A writer (for hire), her relationship with words can only be defined as dysfunctional. There are times when they can be woven beautifully into tales of wonder and times, when they can only be defined as a hapless dyslexic disarray.