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Post Office: A short horror story
Post Office: Revised, updated and enhanced with additional content.
David is a horror writer.
He writes stories about horrible things – a monster in the closet, extraterrestrial bodysnatchers, a playground that teleports children halfway across the universe – and sends them to magazines and book publishers, hoping for the acclaim he sees other writers receiving.
He keeps careful track of his submissions, noting the date, the location of submission, and upon their return, the reason for the rejection. He has a process, a necessary evil when you are writing and submitting as many stories as David creates.
But there’s a problem. Out of the two score stories David has in circulation, not a single one has come back to him, rejected or accepted, in the past several months. That’s weird. Sometimes an editor will keep a story for an extended period if he’s thinking of buying it. Sometimes manuscripts get lost in the mail.
But all of his stories, simultaneously?
That defies the odds. Which means only one thing, at least to a horror writer like David.
Somebody is stealing them.
Some evil son of a you-know-what is stealing his (expletive deleted) stories.
Somebody who works at the post office.
And David plans to find out who that person is.
Del Stone Jr. is the winner of the International Horror Guild Award for best first novel. His work has also been a finalist for the IHG, Bram Stoker and British Fantasy awards, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line” were optioned for film.
“Post Office” is a 2,223-word short story and was written in 1986. It was published in Pulphouse Magazine edited by Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch in July 1988. Copyright Pulphouse Magazine © 1988; and © 1986, 2023, Del Stone Jr.
The book’s total length is 4,765 words.
David is a horror writer.
He writes stories about horrible things – a monster in the closet, extraterrestrial bodysnatchers, a playground that teleports children halfway across the universe – and sends them to magazines and book publishers, hoping for the acclaim he sees other writers receiving.
He keeps careful track of his submissions, noting the date, the location of submission, and upon their return, the reason for the rejection. He has a process, a necessary evil when you are writing and submitting as many stories as David creates.
But there’s a problem. Out of the two score stories David has in circulation, not a single one has come back to him, rejected or accepted, in the past several months. That’s weird. Sometimes an editor will keep a story for an extended period if he’s thinking of buying it. Sometimes manuscripts get lost in the mail.
But all of his stories, simultaneously?
That defies the odds. Which means only one thing, at least to a horror writer like David.
Somebody is stealing them.
Some evil son of a you-know-what is stealing his (expletive deleted) stories.
Somebody who works at the post office.
And David plans to find out who that person is.
Del Stone Jr. is the winner of the International Horror Guild Award for best first novel. His work has also been a finalist for the IHG, Bram Stoker and British Fantasy awards, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line” were optioned for film.
“Post Office” is a 2,223-word short story and was written in 1986. It was published in Pulphouse Magazine edited by Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch in July 1988. Copyright Pulphouse Magazine © 1988; and © 1986, 2023, Del Stone Jr.
The book’s total length is 4,765 words.
28 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 15, 2023
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