Read the book: «Horror Without Borders. Volume 2. Hidden Realms»
Editor Олег Хасанов
Compiler Олег Хасанов
© Олег Хасанов, compiler, 2025
ISBN 978-5-0064-7336-2
Created with Ridero smart publishing system
Horror Without Borders
Volume 2
Hidden Realms
A World Anthology of Dark Poetry
Edited by Oleg Hasanov
Horror Without Borders. Volume 2: Hidden Realms
The authors of the individual poems retain the copyright of the works featured in this anthology.
All rights reserved. No part of this production may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner.
© 2022 Oleg Hasanov
Cover Artwork © 2022 Infographics
A HORROR HAIKU FOREWORD
Do you have the time?
I’ve got a story to tell
About dead beauty.
I once believed that
Life’s a fairytale romance,
But no, I was wrong.
Life’s a ghost story,
It’s a cemetery walk
In winter. No doubt.
I remember that
Journey to Antarctica
Was like a red mist…
In a frozen ship
Is where we found these demons
By the night candles.
Unholy union
Chanting a spell for Satan
From a little black book.
Religions in ice…
A disentombed communion…
A cannibal house…
A girl was summoned,
Concubine of necrosis.
This book’s the portal…
A warm meal helped me
To regain my consciousness.
They gave me potions.
I see a raven
Through the barred window.
Landscape with a tower.
They gave me a pen
And a big stack of paper.
They want a report.
The long road to hell
Through the labyrinth of my
Memories, more like.
In the darkness of
My padded cell, all my thoughts
Go to Dorothy…
They got their report.
This diary of death is
A piece of my mind.
The revelation
In the asylum, a song
From the wailing tomb.
I want to escape.
My amygdala
Tells me I’ve got to.
If I stay any longer,
The lobotomy will be
The ultimate price.
In the waiting room
I hit the nurse with a chair.
Her brain’s a blood soup.
Here comes death. I eat.
No remorse, only hunger.
I am Nosferatu.
I grab the keys and
Open the door. I am free.
Vampire energy.
I am the ripper.
Beyond the dying stars I
Get my freedom.
I have to get home,
I’ve got to see Dorothy.
I hide in the moors.
The night in the swamp
Does me good. It covered me,
Saving from dissection.
I go through the woods
And reach a railroad station.
Red balloon floating.
Now! I slip into
The freight car and hide myself.
But I’m not alone.
Hidden behind the
Big boxes is the dark man.
He is watching me.
His hand slides into
The dark valise and comes out
With a little black book.
The black book I saw
In the demented ship.
He makes me read it…
I know everything.
What killed Aleister Crowley?
Now I know it all.
In her room at last.
My lost love under the sea.
Dorothy, save me.
The day was breaking
Outside. Footprints in
The snow… Not again!
Thought I have escaped.
The curse of the Internet!
They know where I am.
There is no escape.
I shave my beard looking in
The mirror. That’s it!
That’s it! The demons
Are acting on a par with
The government!
They’re here to harvest
Our citizens. Why am
I still pretending?
And Dorothy is
Their agent. I stop shaving
And wipe the razor.
She infected me
With thanatophobia.
Sweet dreams, Dorothy…
Better not take the
Train this time. They’re everywhere.
Don’t trust anyone.
There’ll be no escape
When the dark man comes. The Earth’s
Their inheritance.
I go to the cops.
The enemy within me
Tells me to do so.
Do you have the time?
I’ve got a story to tell
About dead beauty.
I ask for a pen
And a big stack of paper.
I’ll write a report.
They get their report.
This night has a thousand eyes.
So let them have it.
I include weird signs
And bizarre incantations
In this new story.
I write until this
Chalice is empty. It’s done!
The Black Testament.
For all I know they
Hid my little black book somewhere
In a frozen ship…
I know it by heart,
So let me be your darkness.
Feel the poet’s pain.
– Oleg HasanovFebruary 13, 2022
Michelle Moroses (USA)
BLOOD SOUP
Michelle Moroses is an undergraduate student at Emerson College. She is on the management team for The Emerson Review and enjoys dogwatching and Wikipedia rabbit holes.
I’m making blood soup.
I’m letting a lot of blood out for it.
Enough to feed an army.
Here we are in the blue bathroom.
Cotton candy blue.
I will miss you when you leave me.
I’ll miss your oven mitts, your
garlic stained hands, your paring knife, the way you
separate skin from bone
the same way god must have separated man out from under his own flesh.
I will miss you even though you hurt me. This is the stupid thing, the part where the dinner guests you invited over get to clutch their full bellies and laugh. When they do, I will excuse myself to go out to the yard and beat the feeling back violently, with the biggest stick I can find.
It doesn’t work. It never works. My love is not so easily killed as my body could be. You wanted both of them, together, in a way you could consume. I’m afraid I’m not going to taste very good.
Nevertheless you want me, and I want you.
And I am fully clothed in the bathtub,
And the water has been shut off for days
yet the tub is filling up.
you’re making blood soup.
Michael Mulvihill (Ireland)
WRITER’S HEAD ON A STICK
Michael Mulvihill was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1978. He eventually, in his late teens, became a bookworm completing degrees up to the Master’s Level in Addiction Studies, Psychology, Psychoanalysis, and Social Sciences. His initial fictional work was surreal short stories of horror which have been featured numerously in Black Petals, an online horror science fiction zine. He branched out to write an apocalyptic, post-Soviet horror novel, Siberian Hellhole, which was translated and published in Georgia. His latest novel, Syriacide, features The Syrian War. He is an avid reader of history and is fascinated by world events, South Africa, the USSR, and the philosophical idea of a dystopian society. At the moment he is writing a dystopian novel. An avid martial artist and film buff, he trains constantly in Kenpo Karate and loves to also relax whilst watching films.
They used to shoot the messenger,
But this horde wanted gore,
A torture and a killing from the days of yore,
A piece were writ that had too much grit,
It told truth,
Stung a few living demons that wanted blood,
And thus was vowed there shall be blood,
Off went the writer’s hands thrown to starving dogs,
Plucked out of sockets went his pair of eyes,
Knee-capped by a shotgun as a chainsaw started on,
When all was done his body remains was fed to crocodiles in a zoo,
As this horde, this cult of death,
Raised their flag outside a mansion,
And placed the writer’s head on a stick,
A thick stick yes,
But none the less a stick,
The hurly-burly was done,
What was achieved in this?
Stephanie Ellis (England)
COMMUNION
Stephanie Ellis writes dark speculative prose and poetry and has been published in a variety of magazines and anthologies. Her poetry has been published in the Horror Writers Association’s Poetry Showcase Volume 6 and her latest stories include Asylum of Shadows (Demain Publishing’s Short Sharp Shocks series), and Snowbooks industrial horror anthology, Thread of the Infinite. She is co-editor and contributor at The Infernal Clock and also co-editor of Trembling With Fear, HorrorTree.com’s online magazine. She is an affiliate member of the HWA.
Website: https://stephanieellis.org
It’s important, the detail.
She sat, as I recall
Small, a doll, eyes daring
Beyond caring of the future
And?
She wore trainers, to run
Said she’d always been running
From men like me
Men like you?
Men like her father
Forever after possession
Paternal monsters, always hunting
And did you hunt her?
No, no need. She knew I would wait
I’d baited her, held the line,
Sedated her, reeled her in
And then?
I measured the length of her, the stretch of her
As communed without communion
Shrouded in scarlet
But you see her still?
Yes, she sits at my shoulder
My angel, my perfect angel
And she whispers, Daddy…
Norbert Góra (Poland)
CONCUBINE OF NECROSIS
Norbert Góra is a 29-year-old poet and writer from Poland. He is the author of more than 100 poems which have been published in poetry anthologies in the USA, the UK, India, Nigeria, Kenya, and Australia.
One-to-one trysts, which were too weird
to understand how those feelings appeared,
the light of beauty met the darkness of eyesore,
innocence tasted the filthy bitterness of gore.
In the arms of death she quickly forgets
about the sort of things that can upset,
she worships the smell of decaying meat
when the slimy tongue touches her teat.
Longing washes her body during the day,
at night she loves the carcass, to whom she obeys,
infatuated and blissful, the concubine of necrosis
submerges in the source of lifeless hypnosis.
With each grain of time her face becomes paler,
brighter than the fabric kept in the hands of a tailor,
with every sunset, such a visible difference
between them disappears, fatal severance.
Kevin J. Kennedy (Scotland)
THE CURSE OF THE INTERNET
Kevin J. Kennedy is a horror author & editor from Scotland. He is best known for his 100 Word Horrors & The Horror Collection anthology series. He is also the man behind the Collected Horror Shorts series and an editor on multiple other anthologies.
He co-authored You Only Get One Shot & Screechers and has two solo collections available called Dark Thoughts & Vampiro and Other Strange Tales of the Macabre.
His stories also appear in a wealth of anthologies from a variety of publishers.
He lives in a small town in Scotland, with his wife and his two little cats, Carlito and Ariel.
Keep up to date with new releases or contact Kevin through his website: www.kevinjkennedy.co.uk
In a world where internet is king,
We often forget it’s just a thing.
It takes over lives every day,
We had no idea it would get in the way.
It seemed like a marvel at first,
That was until the bubble burst.
Our future is grim at best,
Leaving social media and apps the real test.
No one knew it would own us,
All the info seemed like a bonus.
We are zombies in front of a screen,
No one’s internet history clean.
Mankind was destined for annihilation,
The machines an abhorrent violation.
We can never turn off and go to bed,
Not to worry. Not long till you’re dead.
Vyacheslav Kotov (Russia)
MIDNIGHT
Vyacheslav Kotov wears many hats. He is a poet, writer, translator, screenwriter, film director, animator, songwriter and singer, and also the one who you can call the most popular catchword of today, a YouTuber. Vyacheslav is an award winner of several film festivals including in particular Dollar Baby Film Festival Russia where he won second place and audience choice award. He is the author of several songs for animation series released by Riki Studio (creators of Kikoriki series. His YouTube channel was given a Silver Creator Award. Vyacheslav is also a representative of The New School of Translation and Interpretation. He has more than a thousand translated films to his credit.
Midnight. Alley. Victim. Knife.
Struggle. Stab. The dusk of life.
Thunder. Scream. “No! Oh, my God!”
A rain of tears and a rain of blood.
No one near to make a call,
Only me and him, that’s all.
It is over. Quick. Too bad.
He has left and I am dead…
Paulo Palz (Nigeria)
THE RIPPER
Paulo Palz is a B. Tech in Polymer Science and Textile Technology and is currently a 300 level student of Biochemistry who hails from the southern part of Nigeria. He has written many poems and has also been recently featured in the anthology Nightfall and Other Poems.
Do yourself a favour
When he hurts you
Do not come for a hug
My arms would be tied
When he abandons you
Do not seek refuge in me
I would have gone abroad
When he despises you
Do not come for my love
I would be short of feelings
My love has gone sour
Bled out cold and dead
My humanity’s been shut
I have gone all black and grey
My heart seems to be missing
Emotions are long gone
I have accepted grief and pain
Sadness and misery now clothe me
Love’s been sent out of my window
When he abandons you
Do not ask for clemency
Mercy is for the weak
I am ruthless now
Even the French call me
La Bête dans l’ombre
My penchant is your blood
The scent and taste of it
Rolling down my tongue
Your flesh stuck in my teeth
All I see is darkness
For I am the ripper
Linda M. Crate (USA)
YOU BAKED THIS PIE
Linda M. Crate’s poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. She has ten published chapbooks: A Mermaid Crashing Into Dawn (Fowlpox Press, June 2013), Less Than A Man (The Camel Saloon, January 2014), If Tomorrow Never Comes (Scars Publications, August 2016), My Wings Were Made to Fly (Flutter Press, September 2017), splintered with terror (Scars Publications, January 2018), More Than Bone Music (Clare Songbirds Publishing House, March 2019), the samurai (Yellow Arrowing Publishing, October 2020), Follow the Black Raven (Alien Buddha Publishing, July 2021), Unleashing the Archers (Guerilla Genesis Press, August 2021), and Hecate’s Child (Alien Buddha Publishing, November 2021) and three micro-chapbooks Heaven Instead (Origami Poems Project, May 2018), moon mother (Origami Poems Project, March 2020), and & so I believe (Origami Poems Project, April 2021). She is also the author of the novel, Phoenix Tears (Czykmate Books, June 2018).
you thought you were the
only predator,
you thought wrong;
the only thing that will be music
to my ears is the beating of your heart
and the quickening of your breath as
you run out of places to hide—
tried to give you peace,
but you wanted a war;
so i left behind the magic of me
that whispers in flowers and light to
adorn myself in the battle armor
of my wrath and rage—
here i am fangs and claws out,
i will rip you to ruin with a smile;
after all you told me i should be happier—
i hope you like the apples,
you baked this pie of misery.
Sam M. Phillips (Australia)
COVERED
Sam M. Phillips is the co-founder of Zombie Pirate Publishing, producing short story anthologies and helping emerging writers. His own work has appeared in dozens of anthologies and magazines such as Full Metal Horror, Flash Fiction Addiction, World War Four, and Dastaan World Magazine. He lives in the green valleys of northern New South Wales, Australia, and enjoys reading, walking, and playing drums in the death metal band Decryptus. You can find out more about his books and publishing at www.zombiepiratepublishing.com. He is also a prolific poet and his poetry can be read on his blog
www.bigconfusingwords.wordpress.com.
A light source,
I force
Myself up from a deep pit,
Sit on the edge of a new world,
I hate it,
Want to be hurled
Back down into the pit,
Grit my teeth
And bear it,
Bury myself beneath
The soil,
I toil
To be free,
But now I see
The light,
I fight
To be covered once more.
Maxim Kabir (Ukraine)
LANDSCAPE WITH A TOWER
Translated by Oleg Hasanov
Maxim Kabir is a Russian-language horror writer and poet based in the Ukraine. He has penned eight novels. His latest novel, Wet Worlds, was co-written with Dmitry Kostyukevich. His short stories are included in various genre anthologies. He also has eight collections of poetry under his belt. Maxim’s poetry has been published in various countries of the CIS, the USA, Georgia, Israel, and other countries.
She woke up in a casemate of a tower, which had been built at the seaside by the Venetians hundreds of years ago.
The concrete mole was ablaze with lights in the night. The ships were cuddling up to it, like the young pigs to their mother. The nets were drying. The guest flags were droopy. The fishermen had hastened home to shuffle out of their oilskins, to snuggle up to their wives, to have dreams about the sea at the speed of 5/6 knots.
The resort city was pouring neon into the water. The trattorias and bars were noisy. But here, at the anchorage, it was peace and quiet. And the moonlight was dancing on the solar panels. The moorings were creaking, the waves were lapping, and a Smart TV was broadcasting a football match. Denmark vs. Czech Republic. The yacht’s owner drew himself a glass of Chianti. He fried a tuna. He checked the weather report. He sat back and cast a casual glance at the tower.
And above it, above this monolith, a shape rose up. She came into the world; she emerged from the casemates like a two-horned moon. The yachtsman was looking stunned, as the horrible giant was walking across the sky, going down the invisible stairs to the sea. The glass fell to the deck.
Her stomping hoofs went through the motorboats and yachts, through the cutters, schooners and yawls, and in a flash she was on the ground. And the city began screaming. The stupefied yachtsman looked, as the beach was blazing and the marina was being filled with blood. The Danes lost two-one. But there was neither sense nor the viewers to appreciate the tally of the game.
The tally was a shadow over the promenade.
The tally was the victorious clatter of hoofs.
And in the morning the sun crawled from the east to stare at the dead gulf. The yachtsman sliced his wrist with a piece of glass, and on the concrete of the mole he scrawled, “She woke up in a casemate of a tower.”
Yevgeny Abramovich (Belarus)
IN HER ROOM
Translated by Oleg Hasanov
Yevgeny Abramovich was born and grew up in the city of Novopolotsk in the North of Belarus. He is a civil engineer by training. Since 2014 he has lived and worked in the city of Minsk. And since about that time he has written fiction. He works primarily in the horror and science fiction genres. His short stories and novellas have been published in the anthologies, The Scariest Book, Aelita, and magazines DARKER and RedRum. In 2018, he wrote his debut war zombie horror novel, Cutthroats.
In her room
Under zero gravity
I’m drowning in the whirlpool
In her room
Whispering biting words
Stroking her hair
In her room
Her hair
Smells so good
Of lavender
Soon it’ll smell of incense
We’ll all be there one day
And nothing at all
I want
Everything will stop
In her room
In the closets
She has her blouses
The boys are screaming
Through the fortochka
Doesn’t respond
No time for that
Life’s dissolving
In her room
Like cascades
Strewn all over
Oh, this hair
Her hair
And the ice floes
The eyes are pretending to be
With dark red
Cobwebs
Half-lidded
They do not close
The living are pretending
To be dead
And vice versa
They are pretending
The doors and fortochkas
Are closing
What used to live and grow
Is decaying
With a blue fingernail
Her little fingers
The boys are screaming
The boys are screaming
Motionless
Her little fingers
Hiding her nakedness
In the skirtalls
If you can love
Then love desperately
If you can float
Under zero gravity
In her room
In her room
Any vulgarity
And all the liberties
In her room
In her room
Oleg Hasanov (Russia)
THE DEVIL OF THE SANDS
Oleg Hasanov is a writer and translator, and also the founding editor of the international literary project, Horror Without Borders. He lives in the city of Chelyabinsk, where men are so tough that they light cigarettes off meteorites.
Don’t believe in what you see, or madness will creep into your soul
like grains of sand, and waves of dunes will hide your tracks.
The thirst for blood has led him to you – keep going,
don’t look back, or you are doomed to be imprisoned,
to be swallowed by this ghostly world of dreams…
Your caravan vanished in the desert of deception,
taken by storms blowing for fifty days,
these blinding, suffocating walls of dust.
And the fine sand castle,
which you have built,
will now become
your home
forever.
Michael Mulvihill (Ireland)
LIFE BLOOD
Michael Mulvihill was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1978. He eventually, in his late teens, became a bookworm completing degrees up to the Master’s Level in Addiction Studies, Psychology, Psychoanalysis, and Social Sciences. His initial fictional work was surreal short stories of horror which have been featured numerously in Black Petals, an online horror science fiction zine. He branched out to write an apocalyptic, post-Soviet horror novel, Siberian Hellhole, which was translated and published in Georgia. His latest novel, Syriacide, features The Syrian War. He is an avid reader of history and is fascinated by world events, South Africa, the USSR, and the philosophical idea of a dystopian society. At the moment he is writing a dystopian novel. An avid martial artist and film buff, he trains constantly in Kenpo Karate and loves to also relax whilst watching films.
In the meantime,
Take of my life blood,
Drink it whole,
It is all I got to give,
You have asked for everything,
It is there with a noose.
