The Maul

We have decided, based on user feedback, to make our Cosmic Horror Contest free. This means many things, which are detailed below. The first is that anyone who paid for entry on PayPal will be offered a refund. You can decline this refund as a way of helping us fundraise, but just know it will […]

Who: Anyone who wants to support The Maul Magazine and/or win a Flash Fiction Contest! What: A Flash Fiction Contest Fundraiser w/ $5 entry; $100 Grand Prize When: May 1st – May 16th Where: Entries and PayPal entry fee to themaulmagazine@gmail.com Why: Because 8 cents a word, submission systems, and Google ads are all expensive […]

I was fortunate to meet with a prominent editor of a famous sci-fi magazine before I started The Maul to discuss basic publication practice. One of their insights was this: “People read a magazine because they share tastes with the editor.” I have some major reservations about the Cosmic Horror subgenre. I’ve slushed over a […]

We’re holding a Cosmic Horror Contest! It turns out running a magazine where people actually pay their authors costs money. Who knew? We’d like to continue paying authors and artists for their amazing work, so we’re holding a contest at $5 per entry (and unlimited entries!) in order to raise funds. Money raised will go […]

By Janis Butler Holm

By Alina Wahab

By Wailana Kalama You ask me what I lived on. What kind of food I ate that night I was stuck in the cave.  A granola bar, my sister’s because I had already eaten mine on the climb up into the cliffs. You ask me how I did it, survived in the dark, alone. Wasn’t […]

by Rachael K. Jones When the unexpected circus comes to town, it digs its tentpegs into the field beside Whippoorwill Elementary School just as lunch recess begins. Before the recess monitors can stop them, the kids flood to the fence to see the dancing bears file out of their boxcar as the red-and-white striped Big […]

By Dustin Mendel “Now, who would like to be our monster?” A dozen tiny hands spring into the air, their thin, suntanned arms waving and stretching uncomfortably above the sea of heads. The two men at the front of the room scan the crowd, smiling the same smile, the black thing folded over the forearms […]

By Barbara A. Barnett Reason #1: Wrong Demographic This is not a horror story. Because horror stories, Heather would tell me, are about dumb horny teenagers. If they are about middle-aged people, those people are parents with a child to protect. Or perhaps they’re a brilliant but arrogant scientist whose creation ends up biting them […]