Portland Horror Stories

Eight chilling tales to share as genre authors descend on Portland for the World Horror Convention.

It's a rainy night. You're trying to turn left off Burnside and find that you cannot. You're forced to ascend into the West Hills, where you're finally able to turn around, in the driveway of a creepy old mansion. Your car breaks down and you're taken in from the storm by a weird family. They give you dry clothes and a place to stay for the night. Then, for dinner, they taunt you with a pizza that is not gluten-free. You run screaming into the highway and are hit by a Car2Go. There are no survivors.

You buy a six-pack of Ninkasi seasonal beer to bring to a party. You arrive at the party to discover that everyone else has brought the exact same Ninkasi seasonal beer. You begin to question your status as a cutting-edge beer monger. You begin to calculate the hours you've wasted trading rare small-batch saisons via online message boards. You spiral into an existential crisis. Then you are ax murdered.

You grab one of the free weekly papers in a bar, but discover it's actually just a fanzine filled with reality TV recaps and Game of Thrones jokes. If you'd grabbed the right paper, you may have known about a ravenous horde of the undead who've overtaken the city. Instead, you're distracted by a 4,000-word cover story about a local artist who inserts Star Wars characters into Renaissance paintings as a zombie rips a chunk out of your neck from behind.

You're waiting for a very attractive Tinder date to show up at Tom's on Southeast Division. After ordering the most expensive thing on the menu, your date goes the restroom and never comes back. All of your other Tinder dates mysteriously cancel. You discover that you've been erroneously listed on the sex offender registry. You're fired from your job. Your mother won't take your phone calls. Then you are ax murdered.


You're very hungry but the only food cart keeping its posted hours is cash-only.
The pod has an ATM but it's not working. You have to walk several blocks to find another ATM…and the fee is three-friggin'-fifty. Ugh! Then you are eaten by a Sasquatch.

The forecast said it was going to be sunny, so you rode a bike without fenders to work not wearing rain pants. On the way home, it begins to hail. You take cover under a bridge. A police officer mistakes you for a street kid and begins to shoo you away. You try to tell him you're just waiting for the storm to pass so you can get home in time for the re-airing of Think Out Loud. He tells you to stop resisting. You say you're not. He ax murders you in "self-defense."

You agree to meet a friend for tacos at ¿Por Qué No? You arrive at the Mississippi location and wait in line for 20 minutes, making it to the front just as your friend calls to say they're at the one on Hawthorne. You're so hungry by that point you decide to just go through the Muchas Gracias drive-thru. You die of shame.

You arrive at a bar to watch Euro League soccer only to find it full of Timbers fans. You ax murder yourself.

GO: The World Horror Convention is Thursday-Sunday, May 8-11, at multiple locations in Portland. $175-$200. worldhorror2014.org.

WWeek 2015

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