You Don’t Belong Here
D.M. Siciliano
Publication date: October 13th 2025
Genres: Adult, Horror, Paranormal, Suspense
A girl who feels invisible finally faces her worst fear on her sixteenth birthday and hastily makes a dark deal.
An old man returns to the same place every year on the anniversary of his wife’s death, to have one last moonlit dance with her.
A woman’s health concerns are ignored, and it leads to global chaos.
A young woman goes home to bury her father and sell his house but finds that the home is no longer hers.
An old man with Alzheimer’s becomes increasingly lost in his own house, which seems to be doing its own forgetting.
Two young girls find a Ouija board, thinking they’re communicating with a deceased relative, but find something much more cunning.
A woman, grieving the loss of her baby, takes a trip to a remote cabin in Tahoe. Her worried sister goes after her and isn’t prepared for what she finds.
A woman’s drive through California’s winding roads leads her to a perilous and sinister discovery lurking in the woods.
A woman takes a job as a nanny for two troublesome kids, only to find that the children aren’t the problem.
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SNEAK PEEKS:
ROUND & ROUND
Once she was gone, the house grew quiet, the house got dark, even in daylight, even with all the lights on. He had taken to turning all the lights on most of the time, hoping it might give him some clarity, some help in understanding and navigating the house he knew inside and out. He’d flip the lights on, and then the nurse would come and shut most of them off behind him once he left the room. It was as if the house’s memory was beginning to slip, just like the old man’s. Things seemed to make less sense to both the man and the house. What might happen if the house couldn’t remember what its curving walls gave way to? What if it forgot where a door should be? Or even where the entrance and exit of the labyrinth in the backyard must be? He was certain the forgetfulness wasn’t all on him. Yes, his mind was playing tricks on him, but there was more to it than that. He played a part in it for sure, but there was something about the house. It was part of him, after all. His blood, sweat, and tears had gone into building it. The house was as much a part of him as his daughter was, perhaps even more.
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SUNNY DAYS AHEAD
Tommy took a long sip of his milk, leaving a trail of a white mustache above his top lip. “She died.” He took the sleeve of his pajamas and wiped it across his lip, removing the stain. “She got sick. Sad sick.” He leaned back against a pillow on the sofa and pulled the corner of the throw blanket up to his chest.
“Oh, I am so sorry.”
“She got confused a lot. And cried a lot. She confused me and Danny. Didn’t know who was who. Sometimes she yelled at my father for no reason. Sometimes she got so sad and nervous that she would itch her arms until they bled. That’s what Dad said.”
Terry pulled her sleeves down low, so as not to call attention to the long red marks that now plagued her arms. They began to itch and tease at her, but she resisted the urge. Instead, she locked her hands around her teacup. “That is very sad.”
“When everyone went to sleep, she stayed awake. She would walk up and down the halls. Open our doors and just stand there at the bed watching us sleep.”
A chill of recognition swept over Terry.
“If we were bad, she would lock us up in our room.”
—
HYSTERIA
If only women’s health had been taken more seriously, perhaps the invasion would never have happened. If the Earth were a woman, it would be giving the human race the middle finger and saying, I told you so!” right about now. What’s left of Earth anyway. It might as well be called something else entirely. Or perhaps that is a human ego’s way of thinking. Since human life on this planet changed, why couldn’t it still be Earth?
I’d spoken to my doctor more in the past few months than my literary agent. It was my third visit in six months for the same problem. What started with what my doctor had called vague, benign symptoms, turned into a nightmare. Even she recommended we might have to consider more invasive methods to deal with it. Hysterectomy: that’s what she’d called it. Such a strange word. Such an offensive base. In ancient Greece, hysteria was thought to be caused by the uterus, thus hysterectomy, so the removal of the uterus would cure the hysteria. If anything in life was that easy. In hindsight, I’d have preferred to have been hysterical and called it a day.
Author Bio:
DM is a lover of all things creative. From the moment she could speak, growing up in Massachusetts, she had a passion for flair and drama, putting on concerts for anyone who was even remotely interested (and even for those who were not). A storyteller by nature, she first pursued her young dream of becoming a singing diva while living in Arizona. She soon found that stage life wasn’t the only form of storytelling she craved, so she dropped the mic and picked up a pencil instead. She still hasn’t given up on her diva-ness, and hopes her pencil stays as sharp as her tongue.
A dark sense of humor and curiosity for haunted houses and things out of the ordinary led her down the path of completing her first novel, Inside. Several other projects are constantly floating around in her head and her laptop daily, and sometimes keeping her up much too late at night. Occasionally, those projects are so dark and twisted, she needs to leave a nightlight on.
She now lives in Northern California with her two fluffy furbabies, Cezare and Michaleto.
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Book Reviews by the Reluctant Retiree 