Raymond Brunell

Raymond Brunell writes speculative and horror fiction that examines time, consciousness, and the paradoxes of causality. His work has appeared in Skeleton Flowers Press, The Drift, Moss Puppy Magazine, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Rat Bag Lit’, and Across the Margin, among others. He lives in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where he contemplates tar pits, preservation, and the loops we’re already trapped in. More at www.unbound-atlas.com.

Read Brunell’s short story “We Have Not Died Yet” in Horrific Scribes.

Description: An archaeologist excavating a tar pit discovers impossibly preserved remains—human bodies from eight hundred years in the future, all frozen mid-run, fleeing something. When she recognizes her daughter’s dental work in one of the skulls, she realizes the pit doesn’t just preserve the future-dead: it’s already claiming them. This is a story about temporal paradox, the futility of warnings, and what it means to see your child’s corpse before she’s born.