I know he is there—the man who lives in the forest. I am yet to see him directly, but I feel his presence nonetheless. He flows as a shifting shadow between the boughs and branches of the trees — a dancer in the darkness unheard...
“Hey, what’s the difference between a graveyard and a cemetery?” “What?” Togs looks at me, irritated. “You heard me, pal. What’s the difference between a graveyard and a cemetery?” I grimace. “I don’t know, Togs. What is the difference between a graveyard and a cemetery?” He grunts with...
The Crocodile House stands alone in the scrubland; old, abandoned and overgrown. And I use the term ‘stands’ in the loosest possible sense. It must have been a grand place, once, but the building is now a dilapidated wreck. The council put some fences up around...
There was always a pretty big homeless problem where I grew up. You’d see them with signs near off-ramps to the highway that asked for food or money, sometimes even in exchange for work. They’d rove in small gangs downtown, picking through dumpsters, begging for...
I’ve seen a lot of things these last few years working security for the Twin Valley Behavioral Center. For all its fancy wording, it is a long-term mental-health facility. It’s not maximum security or anything, but we still get our fair share of crazy moments...
I sat alone on the rocking chair I set up on the front porch of my new cabin the other day, just reflecting on life for a while. Ever do that? Just sit by yourself somewhere and think about all those little moments? It’s a...
When I was young, I spent a few years volunteering for a local natural science museum. I worked my way up from general volunteer to reptile handler and eventually to the chemistry department doing all sorts of amazing experiments in live shows geared towards children. ...
When there was a chill in the air and there were more jack-o-lanterns than plain pumpkins on every doorstep, I got called out to investigate a fresh crime scene. Somebody thought that it would be real cute to firebomb a Catholic church. Now this wasn’t one...
It was my wife Marion and I’s first Halloween season without our son, David. He passed away unexpectedly at the beginning of February. We had been married for most of our adult lives, and David was born right at the start. He was our baby,...
Let me start out by saying that I am not a people person. When the pandemic hit North America it was probably the best damn thing to happen to me. Most of my time is spent online anyway seeing as I work in data collection for an...
Nicholas Grime looked at the window at the neighbor’s house, watching the twitching form dangling from the rope in the tree, the smiling figure holding the axe, and the bloodstained plastic sheet covering the front door. He sighed and looked at his own front yard, where...
I watched the back of their feet as we all walked into the woods together. Trailing behind and looking down to watch my steps, I could see their shoes leading the way. Three sets of different colors pressing the forest floor. For some reason, despite...
Like everyone else, the pandemic had me sitting inside, bored out of my mind. My job was considered non-essential, so for a while I was just sitting on the couch watching videos or playing video games. I think what makes those activities so enjoyable, though,...
Have you ever laid awake at night, staring at the ceiling wondering what your life would be like if you had made different decisions? If you had gone left instead of right, if you had said no instead of yes. Do you wonder how big...
I was always so afraid of the dark as a kid. I used to think that there was something wrong with me, the way I would tense up when I could no longer distinguish my bedroom’s wall from the floor, when it all became a...
There’s this little flower shop on the way home from the office. At least, I thought it was a flower shop. The sign on the window says, “Granny’s Yarbs and Apothecary.” I wasn’t sure what to make of a name like that, but since the...
Mom always loved Jesus more than she loved me. She told me so herself, over and over again, when I was growing up. Every morning she would say to me, “Jimmy, you’re my only child, and I love you more than I love myself. But...
My culinary misadventures into inadvertently assisting in the summoning of what I can only assume is a demon began innocently enough. It all started just over a year ago with one of those meal box subscriptions. Learning to cook for myself after Mama died wasn’t hard,...
There’s this joke that old-time musicians used to like to tell, but maybe now it’s only popular amongst us fiddlers: Q: How do you get a banjo player off your porch? A: You pay for your pizza. It’s just a bit of good-natured humor, but I don’t think...
I am the one that the world left behind—at least until you finish reading this. It wasn’t that I was unremarkable. Everyone has something about them that is uniquely their own. It just so happened that my thing was floating through foster families, schools, and social...
