When it comes to getting rid of your wife and best friend in one night, timing is everything. So many things can go wrong. So many threads need to align. But the truth is, I could have been an actor or director in another life. I recognize, unlike most, that everyone has their roles to… Continue reading Excuse the Outburst
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Things that Live in the Walls
There are things that live in the walls here, but they don’t tell you that in the welcome tour. Well, they don’t tell you about a lot of things before the state abandons you here for ‘defiance’. Twenty girls jammed in a too-small room. Clothes folded in the lockers but with no locks to keep… Continue reading Things that Live in the Walls
The Shadow and the Wolf
When my campfire died, the darkness rushed in to devour me like a starved hunter. Scrunching my knees to my chest, I defensively pressed my back against the trunk of a gnarled oak tree. I could no longer feel my feet. “Be brave,” I whispered in my mind. I hated the thumping heartbeat in my… Continue reading The Shadow and the Wolf
My Brother
Life had never felt the same since the murder of my father. He had been a cruel and wretched man—harsh, loveless, and incapable of seeing me as anything more than his second-born and, therefore, unworthy of much regard. I had no illusions about his feelings, and yet, in the wake of his death, something restless… Continue reading My Brother
Southeast
It’s gone, I think. I can no longer hear the clicking sound it makes. Others like it chitter and call to others of their horrid kind. I have been hiding in the collapsed marquee of a theatre (Waiting for Godot was showing here in the before times, the lettering reads) waiting for the thing to… Continue reading Southeast
Vacancy
Ethan nearly drove past without noticing it. The directions the man from the gas station had given him weren’t very clear. The gravel road off Highway 22 was unmarked, veiled by a dense thicket of dark pines. His headlights skimmed an old, weather-beaten sign hidden behind the brush; gold letters too faded to make out.… Continue reading Vacancy
Hollow Faces
Mile after mile of Texas highway thundered away beneath the navy blue Mustang. Jeff pushed the muscle car into the far left lane and dropped the hammer. Sara’s hair flew back. The high southern sky stretched blue and clear over the bone-pale landscape opening around them. Scarred by dry arroyos, the land was dotted with… Continue reading Hollow Faces
Jack
I never understood my father. It might sound clichéd, but it is true. My father had been in active service during the war, fighting against tyranny. I was still in the womb when he departed, off to some foreign place, danger waiting for him on muddy fields with gunfire acting as the song of a… Continue reading Jack
A Little Bad Luck
On Thursday we killed everyone, and it was every bit as wonderful as she had hoped. But on Friday, the first day of our perfect new life together, I woke up with a bad feeling. Late morning sunlight slanted through arched balcony doors. I blinked at Marcia, sleeping next to me on a massive mahogany… Continue reading A Little Bad Luck
Root Work
Google this shit if you want to, but the park is a death trap—and no one seems to give a damn. Governor Healy proposed a “statewide resource” to improve coordination in missing persons cases. That’s it. A resource. Like we haven’t been losing people for decades in the same places, with the same unanswered questions.… Continue reading Root Work