The following is transcribed from a document located in an unmarked grave discovered and exhumed on the island of Skellig Michael. The document is of particular note, because not only does it predate the monastic orders that would come to dominate the culture of this...
Raw vulgarities and unspeakable explicatives in a seemingly everlasting anguish, embedded like a cancer in his soul. Every unforgiven man has lacked forgiveness and thus has brought the pestilence to his own door. In order for one to be forgiven, one must find it in...
Staring wildly out the window, trying to make sense of the madness swelling in my mind, I am lost in the reverie of the little I know to be true, trying to reconcile the upheaval in my soul. How I pray it were possible, in...
Abraham had concluded his business in Abbeville. He had slept extemporaneously since he had arrived, but he was anxious to see home. Home was several miles out of town, but it would be an easy walk. Abraham walked everywhere. Transportation for him had been a horse...
When we moved into the house, we called it our home. We were clueless as to what forces were living with us. It became apparent rather quickly we were not alone. All of the events I am sharing, I do with reluctance. I am not interested...
I’ll never forget the Halloween I moved to Westport. It was a rough year for me—just barely 12—moving in the hottest summer months to a new town in the middle of nowhere. Coming from the big city, the endless fields and forests were definitely new...
As a kid, I read a ton of sci-fi. Pulp stuff, real trash, most of it, but it inspired me. It told me that there were things out there to be discovered, that there were new worlds to open up. No matter how far we’d...
Today’s my birthday. That’s not generally something I bring up. I don’t celebrate it. Almost no one knows when it is, and I like it that way. I don’t like being put on the spot. I don’t like the falseness of people wishing me a happy...
I was supposed to be at my friend’s wedding this weekend. And the thing is, maybe I was there? Only I’m pretty sure it was canceled. I went to the bride’s funeral. But—let me back up. I knew both Aldin and Petra from college. They met...
I thought it was just like any other construction zone. It looked the same: same cones, same signs, same trucks. And honestly, if people would learn how to drive, I probably never would have noticed any differently. But people get stupid in the face of...
It had been a whirlwind romance. Hakamiah Morrison had been head over heels for Delilah from the moment he first laid eyes on her. He was not greatly skilled in the art of seduction, or indeed even conversation, so it took a few tries to...
Obadiah had forty different words for fog. From his fishing shack on the waterfront, he watched various fogs come and go, ebbing and flowing around the town. He needed every one of the words to describe the varied types that ran their blurry touch over...
There were three things everyone could tell you about David. The first, the one everyone noticed immediately, was that he was handsome. Like, Hollywood handsome. He had a roguish charm, too, a disarming smile that lit up his face and made everything all right. Men,...
I'm from a smallish town. In a town like that, you know everyone's business, for better or for worse. You all go to the same school, shop at the same stores, show up on Sundays at the same churches. More or less, anyway. My town had...
It was just after dark, and I was standing by myself at an abandoned bus stop on an almost equally abandoned street, waiting in near pitch-black conditions for a bus that logically would never come. Most of the streetlights didn’t work anymore, and the derelict...
Captain Saul Saline (also spelled Selene, depending on whether he was feeling salty or loony) took a pair of methodical, tottering steps out of the elevator and into the command module of his scrap trawler, the ‘SS Saline’s Solution,’ more informally known as ‘The Grimy...
The Ontological Vacuum Chamber had been intended to create a pocket of absolute Nothing, in the purest, philosophical sense of the term. It was to be completely devoid of not only mass and energy but space and time as well. This would not be like...
“So… you’re trying to cash in on this whole ‘analog horror’ fad? Is that it?” the eccentrically dressed yet curmudgeonly old shopkeeper asked as he disinterestedly pawed through the jumbled collection of off-brand VHS tapes I had brought for him. I couldn’t say that I blamed...
The stink of cigarettes and stale beer enveloped me as I pushed through the door of The Last Call. George Jones crooned from the jukebox and across the crowded room, Sherry Carter balanced a tray of drinks. She weaved between tables, her red hair like...
Chapter 1 The Gift On my eighth birthday, in 1968, I got an odd birthday gift. I was certain everything it represented was true, and I was quick to ask it questions as I awaited the triangular answer to appear in its purplish-blue form underneath its black...
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