Takoda lifted his gaze from the burning embers of the campfire toward the sky. Tonight, the stars were brilliant in a cloudless sky. Tree limbs, heavy with unfallen leaves, barely moved. This natural stillness, normally produced a calm within him. A calmness his people expected...
“Fine day for a trek through the mountains,” Richard said as his fixed stare burned a hole through the mountains that lay ahead. He and his men had just broke camp and were venturing into the unknown. They were following a crude handwritten map from...
We met as we always did when Dr. Victor Monier returned from one of his grand adventures. Our congregation was small yet fulfilling. He called them sabbaticals or short excursions. He never failed to bring back something tangible along with the most unbelievable stories. But...
Rosa lived alone. Rosa had always lived alone. Rosa had become late middle-aged; she never had a cat, though by looking at her, one would think that she had many cats. She loved plants and gardening. Rosa was not only an outside gardener; she prided...
What awaits, is waiting for us all along. There’s no changing that. The dug bore well had been on the property for 200 years, they said. It had been dry for over half of that, but folks would come by, toss a coin in and make...
We sat stoned out of our minds. Dewey was seeing the ghosts of ancestors. He wasn’t sure if they were actually his ancestors or not, but he was wild-eyed and making cooing sounds like a dove. He was no dove, but he was tall and...
I am as accurate as a bullet without discrimination. I always have been. I am the unpretentious sort with calculated intent. I use big words, little words, sometimes no words at all. I am not the type who likes a face-to-face chin wag. Working the...
The night brings its phantasms, its lucid dreams and devilish nightmares, but it can also wake a sleeping man to sheer terror and mounting confusion, where reality is suffocating and the man prays it is a dream. Delusion; that is what it must be. Peace was...
In the place unseen by the living lies a world so deep that time is forgotten and years are not measured. No longer in the terrestrial, in this existence, it doesn’t matter how badly one behaves; as a matter of fact, bad behavior is readily...
Aldous Woolfe was a man of means. He was a doer and never procrastinated at anything. If he was supposed to do something, you could depend on him to do it. He prized his job as an accountant. He always loved numbers because numbers do...
On Gallows Hill, that overlooked Witches Valley where the verdant Whispering Forest spanned the horizon, Delbert Denton lived alone in a very modest house in a cul-de-sac called Snake Den Road. Delbert was a bachelor, never married and seldom, if ever, dated. No woman had...
Evan Burr found himself out late sauntering down the sidewalk on a night where the weather couldn’t make up its mind if it wanted to rain or not. A light drizzle just made being outside without an umbrella an unpleasant stroll. He spotted a bar...
No matter where I go, there is always fright. Like an alcohol burn in my throat, like an acid that burns like hell. No matter where I run, I race into the cold iron bars of a closed prison gate. I am then isolated, segregated,...
“There must be a God.” I have never been a religious man, yet this, I found scrawled on the top line, several pages in my legal pad. It just appeared - following nine blank pages. The broken parable is in my handwriting, but to be honest,...
Business was slow at the Tavern last night. Now, that wasn’t REALLY anything new (especially with this past month). Unfortunately, that didn’t keep my nerves from essentially spiking all night. Of all nights, this was the worst one to have no patrons – bar none!...
“We got a serious unnerstandin’ gap here.” Joe shook his head, fishing out a Marlboro from his shirt pocket. “I don’t need th’ money that bad.” The shiny quarter gleamed in the late morning sun, “I give you quarter,” the Asian man insisted. “Nope,” Joe lit his...
Tobey glanced around the bar with a drunken agenda clearly reading across his unshaven face. At this time in the morning, only a few regulars were left in the Painted Quarry Saloon and none of them sober enough to care what burly Tobey had on...
Have you ever woken up from a dead sleep in the middle of the night with a crushing obligation sitting on your chest like a bull elephant? No? Me neither. My sleep is never clouded with vivid dreams or horrific nightmares. To me, it is...
I light another cigarette. My lips, pursed upon the filter, draw the tobacco to ignite as my lungs crowd with smoke. I had quit the habit some ten years prior due to health provocation, which may explain why I choked and wheezed through the first...
Early morning mist wraps the Texas highway like a burial shroud. A red BMW emerges from the fog behind us. I hold my breath and squint to see the license plate in the vanity mirror. It’s from Colorado. I breathe out and lean back in my seat. “So...
