I was just a kid. I didn’t know any better. Even if I could go back, what would I have done differently? Could I have changed what happened? Could I have done anything at all? Probably not. Even so, I can’t help but dwell on...
“Do not go outside! Ignore all cries for help, no matter how human they sound!” shouted Alex’s dad. He pulled the cellar door over and paused to look back. “And lock this door behind me.” The door slammed shut. Alex locked it, walked down the stairs...
Tom Strand had to pee. Sixty-four ounces of gas station root beer sloshed in his gut, disrupting the constant thoughts of his mother. The problem was Tom hadn’t seen a rest stop for nearly an hour, and dusk was beginning to settle over the Louisiana...
In places where the very old traditions still hold, August is known as “the ghost month.” Hungry ghosts are said to roam the streets and hillsides, especially at night and especially when things are quiet. Some say that hungry ghosts are created when someone innocent...
Henry never believed the stories. A marketing trick, that’s all they were, meant to lure tourists who wanted to be fooled. That’s what he told the curator, in so many words, during his job interview. The curator gave Henry a tour of the museum just after...
An old man lived alone in a house by the ocean. Every morning as the sun rose, he walked down the forest path to the beach and enjoyed the salty air coming off the water. Every evening, he returned to the shore to watch the...
A man awoke to find himself laying on the floor. Dazed and confused he was somewhat relieved to see that he was not alone. At least a dozen more people were waking up as well; women, men a few children, including a little girl perhaps...
From the moment she learned to walk, little Myrtle dreamed of becoming a tap dancer. She would totter through the house, her chubby bare feet slapping arrhythmically on the hardwood, her squeaky voice calling out “Ta-ta-ta-ta-ta!” like tap shoes on a stage. When her second-grade teacher...
The road is a light brown path of dirt that stretches up and down the shallow hills, running straight from end to end before becoming serpentine at its eastern end where it meets the main highway. Blades of grass struggle to break through but soon...
I sat down on the padded stool. It was cushioned and made of black leather. As I lifted the sticks, I couldn’t help but shake the feeling like I was being watched. Like there was some sort of audience staring at me just outside of...
“My god, boys… will you just stop?!? If you keep messing around you’re going to miss your bus and I can’t afford to be late today.” My spirits far too defeated to attain the authoritative tone needed for the situation. Stewie and Collin are still...
I opened the back door to my house, without bothering to put shoes on, and walked towards the line of trees that stood at the entrance to the forest. It was summer and the warm breeze carried with it the smell of nature, thick and...
I’ve been a widower for exactly six years now. I was blissfully married to a woman named Ava for fifteen amazing years. We didn’t have much in the beginning, but we were happy that way. She always said she’d rather struggle with a man that...
It was on the third day of the stench permeating the house that we decided to call the landlord. In the last month since we had moved in, there had been a lot of creaking and groaning from underneath the house. It was built sometime...
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...
The house I grew up in was right next to a set of busy railroad tracks. From my bedroom window, I could watch the trains roll by. There were three types of trains that used those tracks and still do to this day. There were the long,...
Being the divorced father of a kid can be a challenging and rewarding job all on its own. Especially when you’re running your own major business. I’ll be honest, I never wanted to have kids in the first place, and the whole married thing was...
“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...
I had just moved to my current flat in Raynes Park, Southwest London, and was still fairly unfamiliar with the area. Now my current bosses and supervisors know that I am still fighting a losing battle with the underwhelming reliability of Southwest trains and as...
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...
