Pirarucu. The Brazilian name for “the red fish,” known among scientific circles as the arapaima. If you’ve never heard of “the red fish” before now, then prepare yourself, because you won’t be forgetting it anytime soon. Imagine a living torpedo, pushing ten feet and five hundred pounds...
Katie Watson gazed around at the vast, opulent room. For the first time in her professional career, she felt small and vulnerable. The world had changed in the last several years, but the building they were in had remained unaltered since its construction over a...
Ford Street Bridge - Minneapolis, Minnesota Wednesday, September 10, 2021 - 11:55 p.m. EST Willis, hurry your ass up! Can’t you hear all those popping off like Fourth of July fireworks, and the sky’s a funky-ass green. Ronny told us all to leave over two hours...
Chapter 1 Tommy ruled. He was the commanding pilot you could count on when the shit went down. And believe me, it was always going down lately. We’d had more skirmishes in the last week and suffered more losses than I can remember. The weekends seem...
Chapter 1: Clyde and Rachel “Clyde, won’t you please come to bed with me—it’s late, honey.” My eyes ached from the strain of staring into the screen for hour after hour. The screen though—is my vehicle. My vehicle to the world I’d been creating and now wished...
They were never even supposed to be here. Forty-seven kilometers past the Arctic Circle, the lone helicopter neared its target. According to the classified reports she’d been graciously given, the facility wasn’t even supposed to exist. Even from this angle, it wasn’t much of a surprise to see...
The downtown library was always a comfort to me as a young schoolboy. Often getting picked on by bullies, I would hide away in the recesses of the stories I found there, imagining a lifetime of adventures I could never have. Perhaps my favorite collection of works...
I never met Charlie Bowman. Not that I expected to, in a company the size of this one; the chances of ever rubbing shoulders with the CEO are probably astronomical. Still, he was the one who always signed my checks every payday, so when the news...
The following personal ad was discovered among a myriad of others on a dark web forum. It was connected to a local string of murders by the Rochester Coast Police Department. It is being made public at the request of the Chief of Police. Any...
You probably think you’ve heard every scary “we went on vacation to a cabin” story ever told, but I promise you, you’ve never heard anything like what happened to my wife and me. There were no ghosts, no demons, no madmen stalking us through the...
I never met my mom. Not…really, anyway. She didn’t abandon us; she didn’t die giving birth, I wasn’t put up for adoption, nothing like that. We lived in the same house for 12 years. Our paths just never crossed, which, I guess, is because she didn’t really have...
I can feel it coming, slowly but surely. With everything going on, all the stay-at-home orders, I decided to go to the place in which I find the most peace. High in the mountains of my home state, I have a cabin that was left to...
In our neighborhood, in the town of Wauwatosa, WI, trick-or-treating was initially scheduled for October 27th. Inclement weather called for a reschedule, so it ended up being on Halloween night, which, as you know, was a Thursday this year. Weather again caused a cancellation, but...
Saturday, December 22nd – 2:00 p.m. Shaun Kilpatrick loaded up the trophy buck, securing it to the back of the four-wheeler. Wiping a light sheen of sweat from his forehead, he chuckled at the unpredictable Arkansas weather. One minute it was below freezing and the next,...
CHAPTER 1 Almost Free Tucker Correctional Unit – Pine Bluff, Arkansas August 15, 1995 3:55 a.m. CDT Dan Kincaid stifled a deep sigh, concerned any noise would roust his slumbering cellmates. His entire body ached from the vicious brawl hours before. He lacked the strength to withstand another, so keeping...
“I need to see the Wizard King,” I told the wraith who guarded the King’s tower. The entity observed me, standing motionless near the door it guarded. The human elements were wrapped in gray cloth that seemed to sway as though floating in water, tugged at...
Mind-numbing white light from simultaneous shell bursts scattered the men, some dead before they hit the ground others screaming for a medic. The soldier flinched and involuntarily turned his head away, using his hands to shield his eyes. Beneath him, the earth rumbled and shook....
I do not remember the exact date I started noticing the changes. At first, they were small, a missing pen, a strange fob on my key ring, a TV left on a station we never watched, and other weird stuff. The first time I mentioned...
“Forty years with the same company. That’s a long time.” Robert Harris shrugged as he pushed the soggy salad around the paper plate with a flimsy plastic fork. He looked at the young intern sitting across from him. “Time goes fast, Thomas. It didn’t feel like...
It would just be for the summer, they said. Just until they ‘worked some things out’, they said. As the TV screen turned to static again, Eli was starting to think that summer might as well be forever. “Grandma! The TV’s broken again!” Eli heard the clacking of...
