Whose Hell?
The boy awakens to a scratching in the corner. His body recoils even before he’s aware that he’s conscious. He shifts and kicks to the opposite side of the room, sending up gasps of pale gray dust from the unfinished floor. The clicks on the other side of the void turn to skittering, then to a much quieter patter farther away.
Joel Austin’s “Whose Hell?” follows a child trapped in a basement and his would-be assailant. But all is not as it seems.
Joel wrote and published this flash fiction story in 2023’s charity anthology “Hell is for Children.” Reviews of the anthology include:
- ‘Bursting with a wide-ranged collection of horror, Hell is for Children has something for every member of the horror and mutant fam.’
-JJ Payne, When we were ‘4’
- ‘Darkness that will leave a spot on your soul. An unbelievable anthology for a great cause.’
-Stephen King, Not that One’
