My breath catches on the golf ball sized lump in my throat as it escapes my lungs. The health department’s been making its rounds, and we were the next bakery on the list. We wouldn’t even have known they were coming if not for that...
Outside the wind shrieked against the window pane, the news had said that there was a blizzard headed her way. Stacey had been rushing around the house since 5 pm trying to get her bags packed. She was hoping to hit the road by seven...
I used to think of Hell as a faraway place. For those of you out there who still hold that belief, this piece of my life is for you. Don’t ask me why I’m doing this; I’m honestly not sure. My therapist says writing about our...
Edward Harker waited in his office until the financial management firm of Harker, Parks & Associates was empty, and then took the elevator to the parking garage beneath the Manhattan skyscraper. He found his Lincoln Navigator and started it up for the first time in...
Walter was cool. Walter was tough. Walter was 13 years old. As the only teen on his block all the other kids that lived on Revenant Falls Lane were in awe of Walter. They were especially ravenous for the kinds of stories he could tell them that his...
I’ve been a widower for exactly six years now. I was blissfully married to a woman named Ava for fifteen amazing years. We didn’t have much in the beginning, but we were happy that way. She always said she’d rather struggle with a man that...
It was on the third day of the stench permeating the house that we decided to call the landlord. In the last month since we had moved in, there had been a lot of creaking and groaning from underneath the house. It was built sometime...
My name is Henry Himura. I work for a large law firm situated near downtown Los Angeles. We’ve handled some of the biggest, most controversial cases in the last two decades and have built quite a name for ourselves. I am using a pseudonym, because,...
They’ve called me a shit-magnet since I was a kid. It’s only an expression, sure, but I think it might also be a real thing. If a smile can attract smiles sure as a corpse can attract flies, there’s no reason a guy like me...
“Come on, Jim, you know it’s going to suck.” I didn’t nod, though I wanted to. Mark was right, as usual. Most of camp had sucked, to be honest. Tom, on the other hand, tried once more to be the voice of reason, even as he tugged...
I. From the Dark Of Herbert West, who was my friend in college and in after life, I can speak only with extreme terror. This terror is not due altogether to the sinister manner of his recent disappearance, but was engendered by the whole nature of...
As a freelance convention planner, I stay at many hotels over the course of a year. I spend about a week per trip in an all-expenses-paid suite of my choosing, doing nothing but studying the location and interviewing the staff on hand to get a...
Need a crime scene clean-up? How about a crime scene clean-up up in a hoarder’s house? Well, free-market problems get free-market solutions. It only makes sense I ended up with Cesar. I guess you could call me the President and Cesar the VP but those are...
There it was. A fragment of the universe, hurtling through the cosmos. And there I was, gazing up from the comfort of a farmhouse rooftop, built by my father’s hands smack dab in the middle of nowhere. In all the years we lived out there...
All our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. (‘Macbeth’: Act 5, scene 5) With turned, frozen earth stinking sharp on his big coat and gritting black under his fingernails, he checked the side lane was empty before clinking the allotment gate shut behind him....
The house I grew up in was right next to a set of busy railroad tracks. From my bedroom window, I could watch the trains roll by. There were three types of trains that used those tracks and still do to this day. There were the long,...
Being the divorced father of a kid can be a challenging and rewarding job all on its own. Especially when you’re running your own major business. I’ll be honest, I never wanted to have kids in the first place, and the whole married thing was...
“Holy shit! Is that what I think it is?” Brandon’s eyes widened into saucers and, despite being filled with an unabated rage towards his older brother just a few hours ago, Michael couldn’t help but smile and nod at the expected reaction. Even with everything...
As a code enforcement officer, I’m not well-liked by the citizens of Winter Garden, Florida. Most of the time people tend to get upset when you tell them something about their property violates the standards of the City. I’ve only been doing this job about...
You have to listen to me, this isn’t right. You can’t do this. You can’t let this happen! Okay...
