Detroit Stories Quarterly

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Detroit Stories Quarterly Detroit Stories Quarterly assembles science fiction, fantasy, horror, nonfiction and experimental narratives based inside (and around) the Motor City.

It celebrates history and future-history. The timeless journey of discovering and rediscovering Detroit.

27/10/2025

Although shaken by the fearsome touch she had experienced when reaching out to her husband, Eretha nevertheless remained determined to get an answer that would instruct whether to go through that door to another world or turn around and take her chances trying to find her way back home.

“Do you trust me, Simon?”

The persistent silence, which snatched each of their words from the air with a hunger as soon as they were uttered, was growing more intense and more threatening. Eretha felt her heart beginning to beat faster, not in response to the quiet, but in growing fear of whatever had the power to make that silence so absolute and so immediate.

“Death is a choice,” whispered Simon.

“Yes, you said that.”

Another long pause.

“But if you don’t choose death, then death chooses you. And that is so much worse, Eretha. So much worse.”
https://open.substack.com/pub/afrofantasydetroit/p/the-black-box-part-11-do-you-trust?r=4bk73a&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

24/10/2025

To Faye, Simona’s mother, the creatures gathering in her backyard were something that should not exist anywhere outside of a bad dream. She felt herself begin to tremble as she held her daughter close, determined to protect her only child however she could. But then Simona tilted her head to the side as she leaned forward.

Simona was seeing something else entirely. What she saw were large, multi-colored parrots with feathers so brightly colored they seemed electric. Parrots had always been Simona’s favorite bird, but she knew enough to know they didn’t belong in Michigan – and parrots never grew that big. She started to raise the question, but then…

20/10/2025

“And we have been waiting so long.”
Those were the last words Simon said for a long time as I followed the pale glow of his image through the twists and turns in the dark as we kept going down, always down; sometimes feeling my way around tight corners with what felt like a cold rock face to my left and a sheer drop to my right, other times picking my way down steps that I could barely see. Every so often he would turn to look back, I guess to make sure I was still following him (where else would I go? I was lost), but then he would just turn back around and keep pushing forward at a pace like he was late for something.

https://open.substack.com/pub/afrofantasydetroit/p/the-black-box-part-10-eretha-goes?r=4bk73a&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

17/10/2025

But the flock of raggedy-winged creatures that were now crowding into the backyard just beyond the porch didn’t look like any sort of bird that Faye had ever seen. They were all a dirty grayish black, with eyes that were as black and soulless as those of a shark. Measuring a head taller than Simona, their deformed bodies were semi-transparent, flickering erratically in and out of being like a broken electric sign. None of them made a sound as they continued to land on the grass, staring hungrily through the glass at Faye and her daughter as the two moved closer together.
But then Simona did a funny thing.
https://afrofantasydetroit.substack.com/p/the-egg-part-viii

13/10/2025

Ever since the death of his wife Mary, their mother, a woman whom he had loved more than he ever thought he was capable of, when the twins were just toddlers, it was the iron cord of that connection that had bound their family. It didn’t matter wherever they were, Nathan could always feel them, sense whether or not they were all right.

Only now he couldn’t feel a thing. Nothing.

But it wasn’t just the twins; he couldn’t feel Eretha either. That’s when he decided to call his sister, because maybe…

The phone stopped ringing.

“Hello?” he said, his voice unusually cautious. “Ree? That you?”

The sound he heard wasn’t Ree. No. That wasn’t Ree at all. It was the sound of a distant wind, a wind that sounded more like a painful moan.

“Ree.”
https://afrofantasydetroit.substack.com/p/the-black-box-part-9-nathan-bohannon

10/10/2025

Why would the birds leave us now? Was the question no one asked out loud, but that was etched onto grim and pained faces drawn tight, working to resist the temptation and familiarity of failure.
But when the birds returned, sounding like the clarions of an undiscovered hell, their grotesque and twisted forms defining the winged shadows of a rage long-suppressed, that was no longer the question. Now the question was simple:
Why?
https://afrofantasydetroit.substack.com/p/the-egg-part-vii

03/10/2025

“The birds are back, but they’re not the same birds,” is what Jason told me when he called back 15 minutes later.

“If they’re not the same birds, then how can you say they’re back?” I asked, wondering why he sounded so scared but also, as his editor, wondering how such a good reporter could be telling me something like this without realizing how it sounded.

“Because they’re coming out of the egg, George. So it’s gotta be them. Ever since all of them disappeared inside of that thing they’ve all been gone. But now there’s hundreds of them. Hundreds. But the way they look…something’s not…”

“What? Jason, when you say…”

“I gotta go. I gotta go now.”
https://afrofantasydetroit.substack.com/p/the-egg-part-vi

29/09/2025

Hey guys, get ready for part 7 of The Black Box, a horror story that will haunt your imagination. In our last chapter Eretha saw what she thought was her dead husband Simon beckoning to her inside the box. But how did he get there, and why? Find out what Simon saw on the last night of his life before being lured into another dimension.
https://afrofantasydetroit.substack.com/.../post/174716152

26/09/2025

The Egg continues with Part 5! A Detroit Free Press reporter has been assigned to find out what is the story with this mysterious egg trhe size of a building that has been hovering over teh Detroit River. Just when he is getting bored and starts to think the assignment may have been a bust, something happens. Something he can't believe. Part 5 of The Egg captures the tension, fear, and hope of a world on the brink of the unknown.
https://afrofantasydetroit.substack.com/p/the-egg-part-v

22/09/2025

Hey guys, step into part 6 of the chilling world of The Black Box, a horror story that will haunt your imagination. Find out what happens when Eretha is lured to step inside the dark mystery of the box…and is reunited with her dead husband. Or is he…?

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