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...
Kevin felt the all the air leave his lungs; somehow every time it happened it caught him off-guard. He had been going to school with Aria May Pearson for nearly four years now so it wasn’t like this was the first time he had ever...
“Fuck you!” Nathan Keene screamed at his grandmother. Her quivering lip stiffened and sucked in a gasp. The widening sclera of her aged vision looked as though they’d pop out of her skull. With all the strength his little hands could summon, Nathan slammed the...
I rested my arms behind my head, skim-reading the credits of a movie I’d just watched. After seeing them through about halfway, I lifted myself from the sofa and walked to the kitchen, stretching my arms out above me. I opened the fridge door and...
Richard Mayes had done well for himself. He and his wife had raised three beautiful boys, and they owned the biggest farm for miles around. No one had so many horses and sheep as he did. Each day he watched over his hundreds of chickens,...
Heather was at her friend Jenny’s house one afternoon. It was just after school and Jenny’s parents hadn’t arrived home from work yet. It was just the two of them, and they were engrossed in a board game. Heather was having a good time, except they...
The boy heard the soft tinkle of a bell as he entered the shop. It was cool and dark inside; not at all what he had expected. Scattered around the small store were all sorts of items. Everything from teddy bears to cuckoo clocks could...
“The year is nineteen-ninety-nine.” That sentence brings me back to my senior kindergarten class when I was five years old, where we used to read out the date on the blackboard every single day. The year 1999 exists as a stain in my mind, however, as...
