The annual office Halloween party was in full effect. The large, open-space office was plastered wall-to-wall with paper bats and plastic pumpkins, and every surface covered in enough candy bowls to give a football team diabetes. Dressed in their vampire capes and witch’s hats, the...
Let me start by saying that I hate Halloween. But don’t write me off yet; let me explain. Every year, my mother would sew me a ridiculous costume that no one in their right mind would think to wear. While my friends were clad in...
Seth stares out the small window into the dark night, unable to sleep. Again. Ever since returning home, his sleep patterns are a jumbled mess. Growing up on a farm turned him into a morning person and he went to bed early, never experiencing trouble...
Milton was making his rounds through the old facility, which housed the lunatics and those who were deemed too dangerous or unstable for the community. In this psychiatric hospital, this lunatic asylum, this mental institution or, as others endearingly called it, ‘the sanitarium,’ Milton was...
Winning an all-expenses paid trip without any catches is quite rare from my experience. There is something unfamiliar with awards, triumphs, and real success for most adults. Take winning the lottery, for instance; how much money does a person sink into that abyss of no...
The sun was emerging from the horizon like the head of some angry fire god awakening from its long slumber, when they crossed over the Georgia border from Florida. The temperature was already beginning to rise, and the day had yet to even begin. It...
One might say they hear the wind, but I argue the wind is silent. So, what is it that one hears? I make the claim it is the sounds of what the wind carries with it in its invisible torrent. One hears the roaring, the...
You know that feeling you get when you are deep in the forest? Like something is watching you? Maybe even following you? But, of course, you continue on, because it’s just your imagination. Except that it’s not. The feeling you have is instinctual, and you...
I am barricaded by self-design. I have enclosed myself, shut off from the world except for takeaways, home deliveries. The ugliness of sound, reverberations, noises, vibrations are a tormentor of my every nerve. Much to my annoyance, I have been unable thus far to escape...
Nearly half a million children are reported missing each year in the United States. Averaged out across all of the cities, towns and the like, that comes out to about four missing kids per populated area per year. Fortunately, all but a tiny handful—about twelve...
THE FOLLOWING STORY IS A SEQUEL TO THE STORY: "Kill the Curdler" The funny thing about problems, Ackerman reflected, was that they never went away. They just changed into other problems. Sometimes smaller, sometimes larger, but never gone. Problems fed on each other, just like everything else....
“In the desert, the voices of God and the Devil are scarcely distinguishable.” — Loren Eiseley Chapter I — The Saloon Laying in the thoroughfare outside the saloon was a pile of twenty smouldering bodies stacked on top of each other like logs. The gang of bandits that...
“Remember, the entrance door to the sanctuary is inside you.” — Rumi, 13th Century I had a wife once, aeons ago; but I can't remember her name. I can’t even see her face in my dreams anymore. I must write all this down before any more of those...
Rain poured down in unforgiving torrents. The windshield in Darius’ Uber taxi was steamy despite him setting the defogger to full blast. Visibility was nil except for the blurry blobs of streetlights that intermittently illuminated the windshield. Darius was fighting to stay awake in the...
“Alice Smirnoff quits, and Bartholomew Brown makes prosecutor.” Shirly sighed as she draped her arm around Bart’s neck. “And to think, Mother said you’d never amount to anything.” “Well, you can hardly blame her.” Bart smirked, letting his hands linger on the curve of her hips....
A poorly tied slip knot, which held the body to a sandbag on the floor of the lake, succumbed to the forces of buoyancy and failed. This failure did not happen at first, but gradually as decomposition within the torso produced sufficient gases to cause...
Shorty Small, a man neither short nor small, drummed his fingers on the ornately carved oak bar. The location being a well-established watering hole on Bourbon Street. Fat Tuesdays only entertained a handful of tourists on this early spring afternoon. With the summer vacation season...
Drew was running. It was a dark night lit only by the occasional street lamp that beamed down on him like a spotlight but left the things behind him hidden away in the blackness. They were giving chase. He could hear the pads of their...
The sun makes an unwelcoming appearance as Patrick Fitz wakes to a frozen morning. His head throbs as the first rays of sunlight slice through the parted curtains and reach his retinas, which causes him to growl and turn away. His newly found drinking habit...
Rachel sat alone amongst the dilapidated pews strewn carelessly on the church floor. It had been longer than she cared to remember since she had visited the church, and time had not been kind to the once-warming embrace of its dimly lit walls. Now it...
