It started out like any other work day. I had houses to sell and people who wanted to buy them. Honestly, I’ve always found being a realtor embarrassingly easy. People seek you out and ask you to sell them incredibly high-ticket items. I’ve done other...
“Look, Daddy! An airplane!” my son Sedrek pointed up at the sky at the brilliant metallic dot cutting a white line across the clear blue sky. This was something of a family tradition. When I saw airplanes as a little boy, I had to point them...
The circumstances in which we found Ms. Kerry were unpleasant. She had been dead for just over a week by the time we were called out, though how much of the smell came from her decomposing body and how much was from the house she had...
I know someone that works for NOAA. The disclosure rumors are 100% true, and the species in question is aquatic. I don’t expect anyone to believe me, and that’s fine. I know a lot of B.S. gets posted on the Internet for shits and giggles. I’m...
Not far from where we’re sitting now is a pool of water no bigger than the width of a car. It lies stagnant, the breeze never touching its surface, as it is surrounded on all sides by large grey rocks that jut nine or ten...
It was a favorite spot of mine. I would happily sit by the clear water and look out to the surrounding hills as the sun peeked out from behind them. Each summer had been bliss there, but by then that bliss had turned to terror. For...
From the diary of Jake Sato: Dated: May 11th, 2019 I’ve always tried to rationally think through how we got here. What happened to lead us down this path? Why did life turn out like this? When I do, my mind always comes back to that summer’s...
Youth is forever entwined with adventure. The vast horizon speeds away from a young mind into infinity. A world to be discovered. Possibilities waiting to be made certainties. Out there, beyond. Not far from where we now sit, two teenagers propelled by that hunger for...
He liked to kill animals. It was a game he’d play during the longer drives. Jones wasn’t a bad guy entirely. He wasn’t particularly rotten, at least not to the core. He’d never kill a dog, for example, that would of course be wrong. Dogs...
I was but a boy when I first discovered the grove in the wood, or, perhaps, when it discovered me. I came across the path leading to it down from my grandparents’ house where I would often visit in the summer months, wild and free...
This is a true story. I know that’s cliché to say. In this day and age, claiming something incredible happened without video proof is a surefire way to make certain people won’t believe you. Everyone does it, though, especially in the realm of the scary...
There was once a farmer who lived outside the city of Erie, Pennsylvania. On a small hill overlooking his fields he built himself a little wooden house with thirteen steps leading up to it and a barn for his horse and tools. He was a...
I try to live my life without too many regrets. I’ve had highs and lows like everyone else, sure, but I do what I can not to worry too much about what could have happened if I’d made a different choice, if I maybe hadn’t...
Asphalt tires glided us along the black sea of the Interstate. My vision had become blurry, tired from the constant repetition of the white line, a dotted Morse code along the center of our path. We’d spent several days in Memphis: tourists indulging in the...
A curious case emerged in the fall of two thousand four. A man, aged nineteen, was found dead of an exhaustion-induced heart attack. The man, believed to be a casual user of methamphetamine, described his gradual descent into mental instability due to chronic insomnia, suffered...
If one were to drive southbound from the historic city of Durham, following the winding roads through the old pit villages, you would eventually come to a quiet road, shadowed by the presence of trees. Before long the road will widen to half-reveal a turning...
When I was a kid, I used to love it when my granddad came to visit. He was a big man, tall and stout and loud, with a huge bushy beard and a booming laugh. He wore an eyepatch over his left eye, and in...
I’m an EMT in my childhood hometown of Hillhaven, Montana. There’s only one hospital worth the name in the whole county, Hillhaven General, so when I moved back into town after ten years living in Helena, that was the only real choice for a freshly-licensed...
I had my first trip to the dentist last week. I do mean first, too. I don't think I ever went growing up. Mom said baby teeth didn't matter since I was going to lose them anyway, and the little dentists would protect my permanent teeth...
I bought a new house last month. It’s a lovely little place. It’s rustic, homey, remote—everything I wanted. The man I bought it from built it himself forty-five years ago. He told me that. He told me everything about it, from the depth of the...
