This is a continuation of The Fort, so please read that story first! Ryan opened his eyes and squinted against the brightness of the hot, desert sun. He was dazed, and for a moment he struggled to remember where he was. Lifting his head slightly, he groaned as a trickle …
A tropical retreat in Cozumel full of sun bathing or scuba diving? Kayaking with the whales, or sky diving in Nova Scotia? Or how about that eerie and highly illegal trip into the Paris catacombs where Holestead paid the fine eagerly without batting an eyelash almost as if he had …
When hiking alone in my twenty-fifth year in the southwestern barrens of the Newfoundland interior highlands, I found myself lost for three days in which events took place that disturbed me in ways I thought not possible. In those seventy-two hours I wandered aimlessly but not without purpose into what …
“Look, Tony, just get outta town. Let things settle down. I’ve got connections in Iliad, they’ll rent you a place to lie low.” A phonograph played jazz music, adding a modern ambiance to the otherwise rustic lobby. Tony shook his head and leaned over the hotel counter, slipping a twenty …
The tropical waters were warm, even on a night dive, but Aaron still wore a wetsuit. He switched on the video camera attached to his mask, then pressed the start button on his waterproof wristwatch. 70:00 popped up in black against a staunch grey background, and quickly turned to 69:59, …
There’s a concept I read about once online, on a forum that discussed Artificial Intelligence. A user known as Roko theorized a possible future where mankind creates an extremely powerful AI that comes to run the planet. It would be, for the most part, benevolent. It would advance technology, keep …
Note: This is a sequel to Rose – Part 1 – please read that story first! The weather that day was not fitting for a funeral. Especially a funeral as sad as this one. It should have been rainy and gloomy but there was not a cloud in the sky. …
As I lay awake tossing and turning in my bed I kept thinking about how stupid my co-workers were. Thanks to a few choice idiots screwing up a report I had to stay past time and consequently couldn’t get to the pharmacy to collect my sleeping pills, plus since it …
The early 80’s. A military outpost in a small northern town surrounded by endless snow-covered flatlands. In the summer, the white nights would start, the snow would thaw, and the flatland would turn into a mossy slough where you couldn’t make a step without a pair of rubber boots. Even …
A few months ago one of my closest friends at work and I realized our feelings were growing into something more than just a friendship. In our company it’s frowned upon to date coworkers. Technically not against the rules, but frowned upon. When we decided to take our relationship to …
The night of July 13 is one I will never forget. I was seated by the campfire, staring into the bright dancing flames surrounded by darkness. My two friends, Dave and Chris, were sitting across from me, all of us sitting in those cheap fold-up chairs that you get at …
The Carpathian mountains cast a long shadow as the Sun set. I was in this God-forsaken place for my brother. He had left three months ago, leaving a voicemail before vanishing. He said he was on to something, that it might take some time, but that when he returned, we …
I thought it was a great house and at a price we could afford, despite being laid off after ten years of steady employment and a new baby in my wife’s arms. The area was rural, the nearest neighbors not even a sight from our kitchen window, and the previous …
I had been in the apartment about 6 months when I started to see them. They should’ve scared me but they didn’t. The only thing I felt at first, as I recall, was fascination. To me it seemed as though it were happening to someone else. It was as if …
Sometimes I’ll just stare out the window and think about it. I’ll think about it long and hard. While it happened decades ago and I have moved on with my life, I still get the biggest chills when I remind myself of it. I tell myself all the time that …
I stood where the bronze sand and blue water met, creating a seamless border that extended south for as far as I could see and on the north side disappeared beyond the formidable sandstone cliffs. The Sun on the horizon of the ocean was setting quickly, tinting the water a …
I stand at the top of my stairs, socked toes curling into the carpet as one hand squeezes the door handle and the other hovers over the light switch, trying to decide if it’s safe to turn the lights out. It’s nearly seven at night, I have about an hour …
I was ready to die. It’s funny; we, as human beings, like to imagine ourselves as fighters. We like to think that when death grips us by the throat, prepared to drag us into whatever beyond awaits us, that we’ll instinctively resist, either out of desperation to live or even …
This happened years ago, but it is still something that sticks with me. This all happened like a sequence. You never know if things are supposed to happen for a reason or if some unknown outside force influences it. But first, a backstory. My friend, let’s call her Jenny, was …
My family visited my grandparents’ farm every summer, where my mother and my aunt Bernadette grew up when they were children. It was roughly a four-hour drive from the city we lived in, and we would pass other small villages, crop fields, paddocks with cattle grazing, and birch and pine …
School camp. This is one of the things I enjoy most about being a teacher. Each term at Hamilton College, the students are taken to a different camping location that enables them to bring the content of their studies to life. For this particular camp, the other teachers and I …
There are things in the dark and ancient corners of this world that nature should never have allowed to exist. In spite of the decay of millennia they live on, the last remnants of the world that should have been forgotten. There was much that I sacrificed to learn that …
Publisher’s Note: This is a companion piece to Slum. I never liked Rustic Gables Skilled Nursing Facility. Years ago, I worked as an EMT for MediTrans Ambulance Service. We did inter-facility transports, mostly dialysis runs and hospital discharges, so I spent a lot of time around crappy nursing homes. But …
In any city, in any country where free elections are routinely held, go to a place of voting during that city’s Election Day. Walk up to the voting stand and tell any election official “I seek the Holder of Democracy”. If the official laughs or looks bewildered, then you will …
