Liz Zimmers
Bio
Liz is the author of two collections of dark fiction: Wilderness, A Collection of Dark Tales and Blackfern Girls. Visit her website at lizzimmers.com and her blog, The Palace of Night, at elizabethzimmers.wordpress.com
Stories (13)
Filter by community
The Belsnickel. Top Story - December 2019.
1. Mary Alice Sherwood disappeared on Halloween night. Every bit of her, right down to her crooked bunny ears and the powder puff tail pinned to her white coat, was swallowed by the chilly, bonfire-smoky dark of the Woodside suburb in which she lived. She was eight years old, trick-or-treating with her peers in her safe neighborhood under the admittedly relaxed supervision of a young sitter, and she was never seen again. The respectable, upwardly mobile households of Woodside shrank in upon themselves in shock and disbelief for a time, neighborhood watches became vigilant once again, and children were confined to their yards where parental eyes could fall upon them at any moment. Now, as Christmas approached, holiday furor and excitement displaced the sharpest spur of fear, and the Sherwoods’ tragedy had faded a bit from the forefront of neighborhood conversations. After all, no one really knew them very well. They kept to themselves, in the cul-de-sac of Hemlock Circle, where their only neighbor was an empty house for sale. The search continued for little Mary Alice, the police patrol car still made its rounds several times a day, and the residents of Woodside would have gathered in sympathy around the Sherwoods had they been welcome. They were not.
By Liz Zimmers6 years ago in Horror
The Scent of Desire (Pt. 2)
John Dillinger Connelly had been named for a legend. His mom, a wild young firecracker, had been enamored with stories of the notorious gangster’s Robin Hood persona and with the romance of rebellion. JD had grown up with a name as heavy as a mantle of state in a revolving household of well-meaning but dysfunctional relatives, and while he had not become a steely-eyed gangster, he was not without his own set of shadowy skills. The irony of his life was that those skills had made him an asset to Nick and Tess, setting him on a path of legitimate employment that even helped people. It had been the other thing, the coyote trickster in him, that had got him killed. He sat on the cane seat of a ladder-backed chair in the corner of Tess’s bedroom with his hands on his knees watching her drag shirts and leggings from her backpack and sling them onto the bed. She was angry, probably with him, and he felt the familiar sting of remorse that had so often followed his ill-considered adventures while he had lived.
By Liz Zimmers6 years ago in Horror
The Scent of Desire
He does not float. Grappled by the river’s currents, tumbled in the arms of the river, as he had tumbled in the arms of the demon, he speeds along the silted terrain where suicides have left their bones. He has become a citizen of the dark, turbulent country of the watery dead, deep under the darting fish bellies, under the silver flashes and nonjudgmental eyes of those who regard him merely as provender. But he is not a suicide, nor yet some murderer’s prey. He is a sacrifice on the altar of desire, eager and aghast at once, his heart a delicacy served up in its bloody sauce of folly. He felt it beat just once as she ground it between her teeth, and even then, he reached for her.
By Liz Zimmers6 years ago in Horror
The Night Clinic
Her name was Ana, and she lived as a prisoner within the cage of her bones. That sense of a trapped and stunted identity was what brought her to the clinic on Bat Moon Street. It walked her along the cracked sidewalk under the cloudy night, her eyes on the concrete beneath her shoes. Sensible shoes with low heels and closed toes. Librarian shoes, clasping tender feet that rarely came out after dark. Watching her from the window above the striped awning, I could imagine the trembling thrill that gripped her. How daring she was, to leave her safe, lamplit apartment, and its familiar solitude to wander along this dim street. How brave, to enter this neighborhood of after-sunset trade alone, and small amidst the old buildings with their aggressive griminess and narrow stairwells like tunnels of night. Yes, I could feel her heart quaking from three stories up. That is how it begins here, evening upon evening, the supplicants arriving, begging to be freed.
By Liz Zimmers6 years ago in Horror
Hair of the Dog (Finale)
Trudy Bigg had a walk-in freezer. We had a dead werewolf in need of preservation. We rolled into the empty parking lot at MeeMaw’s with Maudie’s lolling carcass in the Jeep, wrapped in its borrowed tarp. The bar wasn’t open yet, but we could see Trudy lounging on the porch swing of the little cottage she kept on the hillside behind it, sipping coffee. I strolled to the foot of her concrete stairs, leaving Nick to guard our precious cargo.
By Liz Zimmers6 years ago in Horror
Hair of the Dog (Pt. 6)
She rose out of the darkness of the laurels and made her way to the foot of the steps, fast and lithe, her bare feet silent. Her nakedness was terrible, her body lean and ropy with muscle, her limbs long and built for swiftness. Age had touched her little, and she rolled her powerful shoulders in something like ecstasy under the caress of the murky moonlight. She looked up at me with her leafshadow eyes, and the cognac rings around her irises burned golden.
By Liz Zimmers6 years ago in Horror
Hair of the Dog (Pt. 5)
Just like that, my romance with the night was over. A wave of adrenalized fear swept me up the steps and past him into the lobby. My teeth clacked and shivers wracked me. Whatever warm fuzziness our drinking binge had afforded me was gone. Nick handed me a beach towel and crossed the room to crouch at the fireplace. We had stacked some of the dry wood from the porch in it earlier, and now he stuffed it with crisped leaves and old newspaper from the litter in the room and set a flame to it. Sweetish smoke rose and infused the air, then the welcome crackle of burning oak. The fire leaped; we stretched our hands out to it.
By Liz Zimmers6 years ago in Horror
Hair of the Dog (Part 4)
I emerged into the hot fog of beer, grease, and cheap aftershave that defined Friday night at MeeMaw’s, and for a moment, I was sure the storm had arrived to knock out the electricity. The place was dim, lit by flickering candles, and strings of blinking white and blue Christmas lights festooned along the dirty junction of the walls and acoustic tile ceiling. The juke crooned out a slow country ballad in the requisite twang at full volume, and couples thronged the dance floor, swaying and groping in the summer gloom.
By Liz Zimmers6 years ago in Horror
Hair of the Dog (Pt. 3)
MeeMaw’s Tavern gleamed in the hazy twilight, the flaws in its weather-bitten white paint smoothed away by storm light and the romantic flush of neon beer signs. A low building, it appeared to rise from the depths of a colossal pothole. The dirt lot, jammed with pick-up trucks, funneled toward the crooked concrete slab of its porch where a single caged bulb flickered over the screen door. We parked under the boughs of an elderly oak, far enough away to be beyond the reach of the light, but close enough to feel the tremble in the chassis from the rocking juke inside the tavern. Lynyrd Skynyrd’s "Whiskey Rock-A-Roller" spilled out on a buzz of laughter and raucous conversation. We climbed from the Jeep into the electric air. Above us, a growl of thunder competed with the tavern din, a ponderous sound like that of a piano rolling across a marble floor, and heat lightning cracked the indigo sky.
By Liz Zimmers6 years ago in Horror
The Sycamore House Chronicles, Pt. 1
It’s the end of November 2017. I am moving into Sycamore House, an 1896 late-Victorian in a small river town in rural Pennsylvania. I am moving alone, from a beautiful farm where I left the ghosts of the previous 15 years. I’ve lost people. My grandma, who raised me and spent the last 11 years of her life with me, has passed on. I am recently divorced after 25 years of marriage. I’ve lost the future I had planned and worked toward. The losses, and the break with the person I was before they happened, have nearly killed me. In fact, they have. This person walking through the door of this old house is a resurrected me, back from the brink of suicidal despair. Sycamore House has endured years of emptiness. It needs renovation. We are on the same journey, the house and I, together. This is our story.
By Liz Zimmers6 years ago in Motivation
Hair of the Dog (Pt. 2)
Inside, the cabin was dim and musty. Crumbling stacks of newspapers covered every surface. The kitchen counter held a collection of dented coffee cans, some bent and shedding rust. An ancient glass coffee pot sat on a stove burner, burbling like a tar pit. I’d seen the propane tank by the side of the house. There was no electricity or running water. A hand pump rose beside the vast enameled sink. Maudie fished two chipped mugs from the depths of the sink and gave each a rub on her apron. She set them beside the stove and turned to wave a long finger at Nick.
By Liz Zimmers6 years ago in Horror
