I live in a small town in America’s heartland where nothing much ever happens. People go to work and go to church, and everyone pretty much knows everyone else. We all shop at the same stores send our kids to the same schools. There are...
There are some things that you struggle to bring into your life. Then there are the things that you do your damnedest to eradicate from your existence. My name is Miguel Ramirez. My friends call me Chico de la Perdición. You heard that right. “Doomguy.” As long...
The screams were the hardest part. Standing on the dust-covered hill looking down to the container in the darkness, the cries rose up through the air like a sea of Chinese lanterns ready to be extinguished. They did not bring light; only grief. For Larry, this...
About three years ago, a buddy named Will and I went kayaking and slough slogging (think a combination of hiking and swimming) in the Loxahatchee remnant of the Everglades. I had just gotten engaged to my girlfriend of seven years and he was celebrating three...
Brenna had been preparing for this fight for months. She had thought she was ready, convinced herself that she could handle it. Now, as the last few miles ticked by on her car’s odometer, the leaden weight sitting in her stomach told her otherwise. She thought...
Throw another log on the fire. That’ll keep us warm for a while, keep the darkness at bay. Perhaps we should pass the time with another story by the campfire. Just long enough to see us through past midnight. I’ve told you stories before of...
It was nearly midnight when I first saw her. There was only one 24 hour grocery store in my small hometown and she looked as out of place as anyone could possibly be. Rather than wearing the old faded denim that all the townspeople seemed...
‘Down Here’. Those were the words my friend whispered to me that night, and though a year has passed, they still fester in my mind, shapeless and meandering like a blinding fog. When I entered his house the lights at the front were off. Outside, the...
Andrew wasn’t sure what his dominant emotion was as he watched the news article unfolding on CNN, but he was pretty certain it was somewhere on the spectrum between hatred and hopelessness. Probably closer to hopelessness by this point, on account of the fact that...
The police cruiser rumbled down the long gravel driveway, trailing a moldering cloud of dust that’d hang there until they left. About halfway down there was a sign nailed to a tree that said: IF YOU CAN READ THIS, YOU’RE IN RANGE. Depicted below this...
They’d stopped on Winn Street, outside St. James. Ethan hadn’t broken his silence for a moment as he parked up by the church and Laura knew better than to challenge his decision. At the best of times, when Ethan needed silence, he needed silence, and...
A legend says that on the wind of the North Atlantic, there is carried a key to a strange land. A place of unequaled beauty and unparalleled nightmare. For too long I thought those stories the product of whimsical minds. Lazy lips espousing wishful dreams...
If Yannick hadn’t been here before he wouldn’t have known what they were. The countryside that surrounded them was French; anyone could have guessed that. Flaxen fields of barely tillering wheat ran as far as the eye could see and stopped only, perhaps, where the rough...
Randy Wense had been parked on the corner of Water and 3rd for the last fifteen minutes listening to the newest reports. The radio presenter was relaying a statement that the special agent in charge of the investigation had made earlier that day. He was explaining how...
Alright, let me get straight into it. I hate kids. Like, I loathe them. My best friend has two kids, both bright, both courteous, both talented -- bless their hearts -- and both of them absolutely suck. I know that sounds harsh, but I've only had a few hours...
I know people that would literally murder me if they knew I put this on the internet. But I don’t see many other options. If I go straight to the cops odds are I’LL get blamed for what happened to my friends and get thrown...
It was a few weeks ago that the hay bales started creeping slowly away from the house. Every morning when I woke up, each had moved a few hundred feet from where it was before. I assumed it was pranksters with nothing better to do,...
Dr. Allen returned to his office and found Donald Anthony Lowe; male, 24, biochemistry student (all according to the patient profile that Allen’s nubile and exceptionally talented receptionist had insisted the man fill out in the waiting room) looking out of the 14th-floor window of...
Unconsciously, I must have seen it from the start–that run down two-story house, with its paint-peeled porch that lorded over an equally neglected lawn. The rusted, chain-link fence that bowed and dipped in places, tangled in weeds. I mean, had it registered, I would have...
Fifteen years ago, something terrible happened to my family. It’s taken a lot of therapy and drugs to help me cope with it. I still think about those days a lot. I can’t seem to get some of the images out of my mind. They...
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