The downtown library was always a comfort to me as a young schoolboy. Often getting picked on by bullies, I would hide away in the recesses of the stories I found there, imagining a lifetime of adventures I could never have. Perhaps my favorite collection of works...
I never met Charlie Bowman. Not that I expected to, in a company the size of this one; the chances of ever rubbing shoulders with the CEO are probably astronomical. Still, he was the one who always signed my checks every payday, so when the news...
The following personal ad was discovered among a myriad of others on a dark web forum. It was connected to a local string of murders by the Rochester Coast Police Department. It is being made public at the request of the Chief of Police. Any...
You probably think you’ve heard every scary “we went on vacation to a cabin” story ever told, but I promise you, you’ve never heard anything like what happened to my wife and me. There were no ghosts, no demons, no madmen stalking us through the...
I never met my mom. Not…really, anyway. She didn’t abandon us; she didn’t die giving birth, I wasn’t put up for adoption, nothing like that. We lived in the same house for 12 years. Our paths just never crossed, which, I guess, is because she didn’t really have...
I can feel it coming, slowly but surely. With everything going on, all the stay-at-home orders, I decided to go to the place in which I find the most peace. High in the mountains of my home state, I have a cabin that was left to...
In our neighborhood, in the town of Wauwatosa, WI, trick-or-treating was initially scheduled for October 27th. Inclement weather called for a reschedule, so it ended up being on Halloween night, which, as you know, was a Thursday this year. Weather again caused a cancellation, but...
Saturday, December 22nd – 2:00 p.m. Shaun Kilpatrick loaded up the trophy buck, securing it to the back of the four-wheeler. Wiping a light sheen of sweat from his forehead, he chuckled at the unpredictable Arkansas weather. One minute it was below freezing and the next,...
CHAPTER 1 Almost Free Tucker Correctional Unit – Pine Bluff, Arkansas August 15, 1995 3:55 a.m. CDT Dan Kincaid stifled a deep sigh, concerned any noise would roust his slumbering cellmates. His entire body ached from the vicious brawl hours before. He lacked the strength to withstand another, so keeping...
“I need to see the Wizard King,” I told the wraith who guarded the King’s tower. The entity observed me, standing motionless near the door it guarded. The human elements were wrapped in gray cloth that seemed to sway as though floating in water, tugged at...
Mind-numbing white light from simultaneous shell bursts scattered the men, some dead before they hit the ground others screaming for a medic. The soldier flinched and involuntarily turned his head away, using his hands to shield his eyes. Beneath him, the earth rumbled and shook....
I do not remember the exact date I started noticing the changes. At first, they were small, a missing pen, a strange fob on my key ring, a TV left on a station we never watched, and other weird stuff. The first time I mentioned...
“Forty years with the same company. That’s a long time.” Robert Harris shrugged as he pushed the soggy salad around the paper plate with a flimsy plastic fork. He looked at the young intern sitting across from him. “Time goes fast, Thomas. It didn’t feel like...
It would just be for the summer, they said. Just until they ‘worked some things out’, they said. As the TV screen turned to static again, Eli was starting to think that summer might as well be forever. “Grandma! The TV’s broken again!” Eli heard the clacking of...
She left me. Of course, she did; I’d have left me, too. I stared woefully with bloodshot eyes at my reflection in my rearview mirror, the cragged cracks of age as plain as the fireball red nose on my face as I drove through the back...
Holidays can be one of the busiest times of year for mental health services; but especially so for suicide hotlines. This was my first year on duty; as last year they gave me the day off. We didn’t have that option this year, too short-staffed....
Bill was carrying all of his wife’s baggage after their Sunday at the mall when she decided to have another meltdown. Something triggered her. Nothing major, something small. It may have been the tone in Bill’s voice when he absently remarked about… something. It may...
There’s one hard and fast rule about me. If there’s a new chick at school and she be hot, she’s mine. It’s not a matter of if I’m making it all the way with her. It’s a matter of when. And no, I don’t mean getting...
It was about this time last year when the first skin washed up on the shores of Lake Bidai. Death on the water was nothing new to Cliff Marten, who oversaw maintenance on the Lake Bidai Dam. It was a reservoir lake, formed back in the...
He turned away from the group and went quickly down the road and on into the woods. A voice called Bradley behind him, but he paid it no heed. He began to move faster and faster until he was almost running full-tilt through the trees,...
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