Crime Suspenstories #15

In "When The Cat's Away...", Jay’s marriage is a battlefield, driving him to seek refuge with a friend—only to discover the friend is having an affair with his wife. With a cold calculation, Jay devises a plan to eliminate both the betrayal and the emotional toll, setting in motion a dangerous game where love, jealousy, and deception collide.

In "The Screaming Woman!", a young girl named Margaret hears a desperate voice calling from beneath a vacant lot, pleading to be freed. When her parents dismiss her claims, the mystery deepens after she learns of a long-buried romance between her father and Helen Nesbitt, a woman who once wrote a song for him. As haunting melodies drift up from the earth, Margaret begins to piece together a truth buried with the past.

In "Water, Water, Everywhere...", two prisoners flee a South American island prison only to be lured into a deadly trap by their pursuers. Left with a boat lacking water and barely any fuel, they face a brutal test of survival as thirst drives one man to madness. As desperation takes hold, a grim choice forces a final, desperate act—before a shocking truth reveals their ordeal might have been avoidable all along.

In the blistering heat of the Sahara, two escaped prisoners flee in a jeep, racing toward the distant sea—only to run out of gas miles from safety. With no water and the desert stretching endlessly, one man succumbs to madness, vanishing into a mirage. The other, broken by thirst, makes a desperate choice to end his suffering—only for his suicide to unleash a cruel twist, as the bullet tears through the jeep’s radiator, spilling what little water remains.

In "Hail and Heart-y!", The Old Witch introduces a chilling tale of domestic fury and twisted retribution: a woman, fed up with her husband’s laziness, uncovers a shocking truth and takes a horrifyingly literal approach to making him “useful” again—turning his remains into a tool for winter chores. The story’s icy precision and dark humor make for a grimly memorable entry in the anthology’s macabre lineup.