Red Gold

From murder and mayhem to ghosts and grave-diggers (oh, and that strange succubus that just happens to slip into your life when you aren't looking), 'Red Gold' is an anthology of twenty-seven award-winning tales from the Stringybark Malicious Mystery Short Story Awards. Australian and international authors showcase their malicious and nasty imaginations in this entertaining collection of stories. Read them if you dare!

Martin concentrated on her mouth. It was safer that way. Eyes could detect his innermost thoughts and he hated that. So he avoided the eyes and watched her lips, imagining the tongue nestling over the sublingual gland, the saliva erupting into her mouth…
“What the hell are you staring at?”
He jerked his head away and looked out the window. Wrong again.
- from 'A Place in the Heart' by David Campbell

He hunched over the bed, so close, nearly touching Lauren as she slept. The sweat on his bare upper body glowed faintly red in the gleam from the stand-by light of the small television on top of the bookcase.
Lauren murmured and turned onto her back, unaware of the bent figure closing in on her lips. His breath could have stirred her hair but his pose was static; no breath, no twitch of a muscle, no animation. The figure exhibited no life but his image shivered, perhaps in anticipation of the inevitable contact with Lauren’s teenage body.
- from 'Night Moves' by Lyn Brandon

Shrouds of decaying vegetation and algae embrace me in gloom. And while I have no company, I’m never alone. The constant crackle of the bottom feeders see to that. My body has become a home for a variety of tiny shellfish, worms, crayfish, crabs and a kaleidoscope of hungry fish. And while they flit between my bones I lie in the ooze imagining the conga lines of women entering my front door, all feigning sympathy yet veiling scheming hearts.
- from 'Recluse Bay: The View to Die For' by Anne D Arthurs