I spend most of my Thursday nights driving. I drop the girl off at home and then I go, I just go anywhere. I need those few small moments where I can feel completely free from everybody. There’s a road that stretches around an old garden shop that my friends all worked at for a…
I don’t know whether anyone will ever read this account which I’ve scribbled on loose sheets of paper using a leaking biro pen. I intend to stuff the papers into a sealed bottle and toss it out to sea in the remote hope that it will reach someone who knows of our disappearance and is…
When I was a young kid, there was nothing bigger than Bingo’s Circus Extravaganza. I grew up in the Cleveland area during the ‘80s. While some of the larger television markets were featuring national children’s programming in the afternoons, we didn’t have more than one or two of those types of shows during the weekdays….
You’re speeding down a country road late at night through a slowly building fog, speeding because you’re tired and want to get home. Normally you wouldn’t even be here, but a colleague suggested this shortcut. You’re a lawyer at a firm that deals with work injuries, involuntary manslaughter, car accidents, and the like. Despite having…
I’m writing this as some sort of vain attempt towards a personal closure. I’m not entirely sure what’s going to happen to me, but considering the current state of events, I’m almost positive that I don’t have much time to get away. I’m sure that I’m not in any immediate danger, but instead of procrastinating…
April 11th Rose Hill Place was a rather indefinable place, all things considered. Nothing about it made it stand out to passersby, nothing in its halls to make it appeal to those who came and visited. It was exactly what it appeared to be: a single-floor complex with over a hundred rooms and three dining…
Marnie strolled right into the woods and never came back. We waited for her. We could have just left the second she disappeared between the trees but she seemed so damn confident that we waited. Nobody wanted to say it but after two hours we knew that was it. Sure, we felt bad for Marnie…
I didn’t want us to move, but my parents didn’t give me a say in the matter. My father’s new job paid much better than anything he could have landed within driving distance of our home in the city, and the new company agreed to hire my mother, too. Not only would she have the…
January 21, 1922 I reached the farm just a few hours ago, and it is more than I could have possibly imagined. I knew as soon as I arrived that I had made the right choice. I was so uncertain about leaving the Thompson’s home; I had been there for so long, but the allure…
Focus on your breathing, silence your mind, drink warm milk, stay away from electronics, keep the room dark, take pills. All the ways the internet had told me to fall asleep. All bullshit. For most everyone else sleep is simple, really, just lie down and suddenly eight hours have passed. Those people don’t need to…
I had always made it a point to avoid that isolated stretch of road like the plague. I’d heard so many stories about it, and even though I was certain that most of them were untrue, my disbelief did not squelch my fear of driving it. Urban myths and rumors emerged over the course of…
You’re probably like me, skeptical of all things unexplained. Never in my life have I believed anything that doesn’t have a logical explanation, even if it means I have to string together the most tenuous logic just to make something reasonable. This is me. Why then, do I sit here by this shimmering lake, desperately…
“Oh thank you so much for coming at a late notice,” the woman said as soon as she answered the door. “No problem, miss. It’s my job. What can I do for you?” I replied naturally with a smile. “Well my sink’s been acting up lately. I’ve tried fixing it myself but it’s no good….
Hello there, friend, and welcome to Bradshaw, Texas, where the steaks are bloody, andthe trucks are muddy. I wonder if I could invite you to join me as a fly on the wall this evening… Me? Oh, flies have no names. I’m just an old soul in need of a little company and a good…
I’m about to do a very stupid thing. I know it’s stupid. I know it. But I don’t think I have a choice anymore. And I have to do it now, while I have the nerve and the will and while my hands are still steady. I’m sick. I’ve always been sick. Some days are…
I’ve thought about telling this story for quite a while now, and first and foremost I want to inform you from the very beginning that everything I am about to write is true. I will not be adding anything for the sake of the story, nor will I be using stupid stereotypical buzz words to…
One call. Years of service with the police and there was one call that I’ll never forget. The shift started like any other. Nine PM start and I was in for the long run. It was a cold, Monday night so I expected a relatively quiet shift. After the evening briefing, I grabbed a set…
* Writer’s note – Originally published 2006 in Dark Fire Fiction. I am the author and own the story rights. “It’s time I told you about loss, boy.” We sat, my Pa and I, beneath the old great willow that marked the end of our property and the beginning of God’s country. It had been…
One of my first memories as a child was a funeral. My uncle’s funeral. He was my mom’s half-brother and considerably younger than her as he was from her dad’s second marriage. I think he was in his mid-twenties and he was addicted to ecstasy. Of course, I didn’t know that at the time. Since…
“But Jesus said, Suffer the little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me.” After a job-related relocation to Indianapolis, my family and I were given an allowance to rent a home in the city in order to give us some time to look for our “forever home.” That rental – a hundred-year-old house…
I find myself speeding down a road that is, for some reason, both familiar and unfamiliar. The sky arches above me like an ancient and angry sea, grey and melancholy, reaching down to the horizon to kiss the earth. I’m going to fall into the sky, I think to myself. My car will sink down…
I went camping about 3 weekends ago in the Huntsville national forest in Texas. Me and 3 friends that came home for the weekend, they are all in college and usually we all get together at least once a year, old friends from high school. For the camping trip we planned to go backpacking deep…
“There are winds of destiny that blow when we least expect them. Sometimes they gust with the fury of a hurricane, sometimes they barely fan one’s cheek. But the winds cannot be denied, bringing as they often do a future that is impossible to ignore.” ― Nicholas Sparks, Message in a Bottle Do you remember…
You’ve made a lot of them. But you’ve always managed to escape the consequences so far. You know that flash out of the corner of your eye, like picking up some peripheral movement just out of sight, and then you turn your head and there’s nothing there? That was one of the times you’ve made…