“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...
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....
“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...
There was nothing strange about Amber. She wasn’t too tall or too short. She was of average height and weight. She wasn’t ugly but she wasn’t pretty either and her grades, although passing, were never top marks. She lived in an average house, with an...
Roxy’s Lounge. It was the sort of dimly-lit, mid-century styled bar that was too classy for me by half. In the real world, it’s the kind of place I’d have gone to get shit-faced on overpriced cocktails at a Game Developer’s Conference after-party. But that was...
The house sat empty at the top of the hill. Its security lights were a beacon in the night, like a lighthouse alone in the mist, warning ships away from the kiss of sharp shores. The closest neighbor was further away than a man could...
I left the university campus behind to do fieldwork in the Deep South. I was studying folk songs from southern states that had neither a time or place of origin nor a known composer. Those old songs that just seem to rise out of cultural...
“Man, that shift sucks!” I hear it all the time. I can understand why people say it; I used to think the same thing. I still do some days. I’m one of the lucky people that go to work while everybody else is...
Jake Thomasson pulled the sleeve of his sweatshirt down, covering his hand, and wiped away the condensation from the window. It was the third time he had done this in the past ten minutes, but he didn’t want to miss seeing if any cars drove...
“Christ,” I muttered to myself, as the first flakes of snow started to fall. They gathered in fuzzy clumps over the windshield before my wipers cleared them away. I’d been waiting for fifteen — no, twenty minutes now — in my sister’s driveway. Had I...
Moving day. A chance to start fresh in a new place. New opportunities, new community, new home. Home. Not just a house. To Eric Sherman, this was a place he could finally call home. No ex-wives to hound him for alimony. No disapproving parents to...
The anniversary of Layne’s death wasn’t for another three days, but when “Cochise” came on the radio as I approached that curve, I took it as a sign. Layne’s favorite song. I pressed the gas and shifted gears as Chris Cornell began to wail. The...
My daughter Hannah had always had a fascination with bugs of all kinds. She collected them and kept them in a terrarium she insisted I buy for her when she was six. It was on a constant rotation as her interests changed; when she was...
My life hasn’t been what most would consider to be… great. As you will read, I have always had terrible luck. I was an infant when a drunk driver decided one night that he wanted to drive on the wrong side of the road at...
My name is John Dawson, and I was a beat cop for twenty-two years for a small town in rural West Virginia. People talk and stories get passed around, especially in small towns with few ears but big mouths. Sometimes, the people knew a crime...
Teddy Wilson rapped one knuckle against the smoked-stained glass door adorned with the worn, white letters that announced, “Martin Croker: Editor” before popping his head into the room. “You wanted to see me boss?” The man who served as his immediate supervisor for the last decade...
