Wednesday Autumn was Thor's favorite season; the world changed around him in an amazing cornucopia of scents. The color of the leaves meant nothing to him, but the aromas did. Fungi bloomed as quadrillions of spores feasted on decaying matter. So much of the woods around...
It ended in 2047. It was the flu or some evolution of it anyway, and when it took the world, it took it fast. Everyone forgot all about Covid. It was a distant memory, a cold in comparison to the new disease. It was in...
Takoda lifted his gaze from the burning embers of the campfire toward the sky. Tonight, the stars were brilliant in a cloudless sky. Tree limbs, heavy with unfallen leaves, barely moved. This natural stillness, normally produced a calm within him. A calmness his people expected...
Shorty Small, a man neither short nor small, entered the coffee shop, surveyed the patrons and found who he sought. Homer LaCroix sat in a corner table munching on a beignet with a mug of coffee in his right hand. When he approached the table, he...
Prologue Joie slowly opened her eyes, tingles of numbing sensations prickled throughout her body. Not being able to focus on any one thought, she attempted to squint through the foggy blurred vision at what she could make out. The color green was predominant along with hues...
Bert set his drink down on the end table beside his recliner and he stared towards the window. Without looking he lifted the remote and muted the television. He thought he heard movement on the porch. It had happened before and turned out to be...
My early childhood was spent on my father’s farm in the middle of nowhere. Literally, in the middle of nowhere. We had no hospitals or police stations near us; everything we ate, we made from scratch. It was like being Amish or something. The farm was called Beacon...
In the world of international stolen art, an individual known only as Henri, was considered the world’s most successful thief. However, friends, neighbors, and business associates, knew him as Marcel Leblanc, a polite, proper and jovial man in his late forties who owned a seemingly successful...
Ghost from the Past “You know Jake...
Chapter 1 Two Hundred- and Forty-Three-Miles Above Earth Ivan Babichev sat quietly staring through the portal, his blue eyes fixed on the distant planet he called home—Earth. His communication laptop sat blinking on the small desk next to his liquid-lock drinking cup of what I imagined was...
Dusk had only just settled over the vacant crop fields of Goochland County, a vast, rural, farming area just west of Richmond, VA. The sky was bruised in shades of burnt orange near the horizon that bled into deep reds, purples, and blacks as the...
Part 1 A single white rose quietly fell from her slim young fingers. I looked down and saw it had landed on the dark walnut top of the casket. The beautiful wooden box somehow seemed out of place in the cold contoured hole in the soil....
“In the end, people will not be judged by the darkness they lived in, but the light they rejected.” — Anthony Liccione CHAPTER 1 Dartmoor, England. 1989 The small blotches of blood on his hands had already dried by the time Martin realised he had made a grave mistake. It...
I spent my childhood in a small town. Long, winding single-lane roads with speed limits that topped out at seventy miles per hour were common. Modest-sized houses on large lots dotted the landscape, innumerable trees providing privacy and anonymity. One of those houses was mine. ...
Messes are funny things. The longer they’re around, the harder they are to clean up. That was the way it was with the Falling River Schoolhouse. It was May, the day after Memorial Day. We’d been off school for all of three days, and already I...
There are dozens of unexplained scientific mysteries. We still ponder thoughts about what might really exist in the next galaxy, or perhaps, lurking in the deepest depths of the ocean floor. Unknown diseases encircle us daily, waiting for the day when there’s an opening of...
Chapter 1 I grew up being a bit of an explorer at heart. It hadn’t exactly come naturally, but instead through my family’s forced moves from army base to army base. I turned ten this year and I was on at least my eighth adventure to...
Just looking at the faded poster-board sign made me feel sick. From the looks of their website (which looked like it had been created on a Macintosh), Mausen Hausen was a cheap, German-themed Disney World rip-off amusement park that popped up seasonally repurposing what was an...
Past As you probably know, Christmas is indeed a time for reflection. A time to revisit memory and times gone by with those you've loved and those you've lost. I should know. I am, as it happens, the ghost of Christmas past. Ugh, the ghost of...
“With how many things are we on the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries?” – Mary Shelley, Frankenstein Detective John McCarthy stood in the ankle-deep snow. Blowing hot air into his cupped hands while examining the scene. Christ. Why’d he...
