01 Apr The Storm of Tears
First, Grant Bateman found out that he had lost his job. He showed up to work and was told to clear out his desk. When he got home, he found his wife in a flurry of activity that looked a lot like packing her things. She...
31 Mar Broken Marble Cherry Bowl
Grande Nonno died making a living, like Papa. He was born with his blue denim sleeves rolled up. He and Grande Nonna are buried just a few miles south of the Apuan Mountains on the Alps’ Italian side. They’ve been rotting away in a small village...
31 Mar The Most Unfortunate Place on Earth
“Death by electrocution or hanging?” Ethan asks Garret killing time as we wait in line for the newest ride at the amusement park. “Boys…seriously. We are in the happiest place on earth, can’t you find something better to discuss?” I glance over at my husband Zack,...
31 Mar The Joker’s Wilde
If anyone ever asked me to name the best three people I know, Russell Allison would be the first name out of my mouth. We’ve been friends since high school, and in the twenty years since, I’ve never had any reason to doubt his honesty,...
30 Mar Don’t Let It In
“Please let me in. I’m so cold.” Growing up, my best friend was Matthew Ramsey. He was a year older than me but still in my grade—not because he was stupid, but his father had died when he was in the fourth grade, and for a...
29 Mar Lickety-Split
It started out as a perfectly normal camping trip. It was me, Rosie and Jonas, just like usual. The three of us have been friends since high school, and although there are often other people in our orbits, it’s always the three of us together...
28 Mar The House Without Doors
When I was thirteen, I abandoned my best friend. It wasn’t intentional, not really. I’d been the one that had been sure of what we had to do—telling our parents, convincing them to tell the police, and promising Virginia what no matter what, when it came...
27 Mar Sack of Knives
It knows what you hate. And it hates what you love. I originally heard about “Sack of Knives” in one of my medieval literature texts—the class had sounded interesting out of my options that quarter, but two weeks in I was already wishing I’d taken another...
26 Mar Why My Father Went Into the Woods
My father was a careful man, meticulous even. He lived a life that was well-measured, and if some considered him bland or dull, he didn’t seem to mind. He was moderately successful in his business. He was moderately well-thought-of by the community we lived in....
25 Mar Boneless Tide
Once a month, The Boneless arrives on the tide. It’s a force of nature—like quicksand. You can’t reason or argue with it. All you can do is barricade your home and stay indoors. We islanders know when it’s coming. We recognize the signs. Now and again,...
24 Mar Static
Part 1 The sharp click of a switch and a whirr of static on an old multi-band radio saturated a small Floridian claustrophobic one-bedroom apartment with a loud audio gradience – crawling from low to high back to low pitches of frequency. In a knee-jerk reaction,...
23 Mar What Would You Do if Your Mother Asked You? (The Cat in the Hat Horror Parody)
Lightning struck as Mom opened the door, silhouetting her in her finest evening dress and briefly hiding the scowl she threw at her little Janet and Tom, and their babysitter, Lance Fisher, the guy from next door. “Their dinners are in the freezer. You know how...
22 Mar Toast Wanted
This is the story of how a novelty toaster ruined my life. First of all, I want to clarify that I’m not the kind of guy who buys a novelty toaster. I got it at a white elephant gift exchange a couple of years back. You...
21 Mar Night Terror Tango
He makes the walk from living room to bedroom as if approaching the scene of an accident, as loath to see what waits in the bed as he’d be to discover a mangled body in a smoking vehicle. The bulges in the sheets are abstract...
20 Mar Memory, Reborn
When I drive, pell-mell, to the hospital for the birth of our first child, I never expect we’ll be leaving without the baby. I certainly never anticipate making the trip home with a doll buckled into the infant carrier, all glass eyes and vinyl limbs. ...
19 Mar The Molecules That Bind Us
A layperson might have found it off-putting, but to Dr. Ian Wessner, the sound was comforting, nostalgic. It was like something from a Star Wars movie; a combination of R2-D2 passing on some critical message and the Millennium Falcon readying for takeoff. Even a regenerative...
18 Mar Paper, Platinum, Stone
On what would have been our fiftieth anniversary, I bought you a marble headstone. Stone is the recommended gift for ninety years of marriage, but my being around another forty is a gamble for which the odds are too long. Gold is the traditional gift...
17 Mar The Peeper
7:35 pm, November 28. Sheriff Ron Ball and Deputy Ernest Dingle: On-duty. Unit 1, we got a 10-70 at Royalty Deluxe Luxury Mobile Estates. I repeat, a 10-70. Unit One, do you copy? Sheriff Ball looked at Dingle. No more than five minutes after they’d parked for...
16 Mar An Ancient Evil
The shivering Cro-Magnon man shifted uncomfortably in the dark. His back across the hard rocky surface was certainly an untenable reality for any decent sleep. He grunted and moaned and awoke with a start. Another nightmare. He wiped the sweat from his forehead. His back...
15 Mar To Forgive, Divine
Kept company by a lone streetlamp’s flickering cone of light, Donovan Clark and Ellen Cruz reviewed the facts. Unlike many of their cases, this one seemed positively packed with substance. The leads were strong, the accounts were corroborated, and the net of skepticism seemed to...