28 Oct Don’t Wake Mother
“Come on, Sienna, hurry up! I’m gonna get drenched if I stay out here!” Even with the threat of getting soaked in ice-cold rain, I did not want to get out of the car. I didn’t even want to go out tonight, my plans were to...
27 Oct The Mariachi Man
Ellie’s morning consisted of organizing the paperwork of her first client, Edgar Zavala. She was a newly hired caregiver at Lakeside Assisted Living and had just completed her two-week training course. Edgar’s profile was unremarkable. Hispanic male, sixty-eight years old, widower with no military service. Previous...
26 Oct Eternal Beauty
Claire awakens from the dream, sheets and nightgown soaked. Yanking the covers off, she rushes into the bathroom and throws cold water onto her face to help stem the hot flash, but it doesn’t work. She fumbles down the dark hallway and into the kitchen,...
25 Oct They Don’t Always Feel Like Sweets
STATEMENT OF RYAN MILLS, SUSPECT IN THE CUTE KITTY CLUB KILLINGS “They don’t always feel like sweets.” Daddy told me that for the first time when I was seven. I guess you could say he was planning ahead. Then again, I guess you could say he was...
24 Oct The Ghost Rider: A Halloween Shorty Small Adventure
Shorty Small, a man neither short nor small, sipped coffee as he waited in a diner located several blocks from his house. Abandoning the normal protocol for such meetings, Small requested the conference. Homer LaCroix, the tall lanky Cajun, normally initiated these get-togethers. However, today,...
23 Oct Treats
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...
22 Oct Antique Costumes Make My Skin Crawl
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...
18 Oct The Caney Creek Monster
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...
15 Oct One Day
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...
14 Oct Dead is Dead
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...
13 Oct Assembly of the Dead
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...
12 Oct Look at What the Wind Has Brought
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...
11 Oct Of Emerald Towers And Crimson Children
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...
10 Oct Lost in Lovecraft
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...
02 Oct Treetops
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...
01 Oct The Hunger of Evota Falls
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....
26 Sep The Ballad of Jakob Grey
“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...
25 Sep A Dream of Tunnels
“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...
11 Jun Rain in the Witching Hour
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...
10 Jun Vows
“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....