It’s an all-too-familiar scene. An alienated young man named named Tyler Down approaches a school clad in black, strapped with guns and ammunition, and bent on cold-blooded mass murder. But unlike the tragedies making headlines across the United States, this shooting does not come to pass. Before he can act, some classmates learn of the […]
Jarrod Shanahan
Morbid Symptoms, Part II: Attack on Rikers Island
This is the second of six reviews chronicling the pseudonymous Fred S. Kreider’s Rikers Island Series, a horror franchise set on present-day Rikers Island. In the first installment we met narrator Nicholas Billings, a rookie guard whose scrupulous recounting of guard life at Rikers is often more grim and terrifying than the book’s horror story, […]
Morbid Symptoms, Part I: Storm on Rikers Island
“I feel a sickness deep in my stomach every time the building’s alarm goes off,” confesses rookie jail guard Nicholas Billings. “It’s always the same feeling. I don’t care what anyone says, how tough they think they are. No matter how strong or well trained; deep down, jagged butterflies begin to swirl around your insides […]
Pennsylvania Sheriff Warns: Accept No Imitation
Earlier this month a mysterious call came through to Dr. Mark Cruciani’s office in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The caller identified himself as a sheriff’s deputy from Lackawanna County and informed Cruciani that he had missed a court date, and now had two options: he could pay an outstanding fine of $1,000, or he’d face a criminal […]
Boats Against the Current
The desperate search for a bathroom in New York City teaches one much about the surrounding world and one’s place in it. With my pockets empty but my bladder and small intestine poised to burst, I stilt down 9th Avenue struggling to maintain the poise and composure necessary for the daily fight to satisfy basic […]
Editors’ Roundtable
The shooting at Douglas High School in Parkland prompted an exchange among our editors, which we are publishing here. To begin, three items: The first is from the Hard Crackers mission statement carried in every issue: American society is a time-bomb where the impending explosion is endlessly hinted at by horrifying “little” degradations of daily […]