Kel and Sidney sat in near-perfect silence, taking turns to draw from a handle of vodka that they shared between them. The bottle of liquor was one of the most expensive ones left at the corner shop. It hadn’t mattered that it was expensive, because...
“Feeling down? Have a sinister sweet tooth? I have just the solution, Cordella’s Confections! Over on the corner of Brigantine and Salado Open every Monday through Friday, eleven to four.” A woman’s smile froze on screen. Cordella Joilee appeared perfect to the average eye. A gorgeous woman, about twenty-eight...
For the rest of my life, I’ll remember Tali. I didn’t know her personally, but her art permanently changed my town. Our community never recovered and it probably never can. I distinctly remember so many of her illustrations. There was always such surreal and vivid...
Debbie Sanderson was a dream come true at five-foot-nine with a quick wit, perfect smile and the deepest brown eyes I’d ever seen. We’d met on a discord server about two months back and really hit it off. Our conversations evolved from messaging to phone...
I’m used to mysteries in my life. I never met my mother, for example. My dad used to talk about her all the time, but she always felt like a pretend character, or like maybe she was just an imaginary best friend of his. Dad...
I never quite figured out who decides which lost souls have a right to be remembered and which ones don’t. I got a phone call while I was sitting next to my dying wife. I know that the medical equipment was supposed to be keeping her...
“They say that if you look into this pond, the dead who lie beneath its surface will stare into your soul, and see the secrets you’ve kept hidden.” “They also used to say that if you touch yourself, you’ll grow hair on your palms. Well, do...
My sister didn’t come to the funeral. And I honestly didn’t blame her one bit. There towards the end of Mom’s life, things had gotten unbearably rough. I took a semester off of college to stay home and help Dad out during Mom’s last few months,...
My hands trembled as I pressed the cold metal against my own temple. I was ready to go, but I needed another minute to deal with the finality of it all. I wanted death, and I'd made damn sure the gun wouldn't jam on me....
29I leave dinner to pick up the phone, cupping my hand over my mouth in the hallway. “Who is it?” There’s a second of feedback, a high whining noise, and then a response. “Jim’s not here.” “Sorry? Who’s Jim? In fact, who is this?” I ask a flurry of questions,...
All of my life, I’ve heard people say we are heading into a new utopian age of progressive enlightenment, and while I really wanted to believe that to be true, with the things I have seen going on with the world, I’ve had to remain...
It was my fifth day in Gloaming, Nevada – an unincorporated township skirted on all sides by scorched barrenness. I had never been this far west before, and so the craggy, acacia-dotted desert was dazzling to my senses. I remember wishing that I could extend...
Let me just get the obvious out of the way first; yes, I’ve actually been to the future. No, don’t ask me about the Pandemic, or the Climate Crisis, or the next election, or next week’s lotto jackpot. I’ve been to the far future, long...
How much do we know about our grandparents? Like, I mean how much do we really know about them? It can be easy to forget that your old, withering and often wise family members had lives long before we were alive. They were kids with...
My town is in one of the northwestern states, which, if you know anything about the northeast, means snow like...
Spring and summer are Daddy’s favorite seasons. He loves the smell of freshly-mown lawns, the stroke of sunbeams on his face, the songs of crickets at night, and the painterly bloom of plants...
Hiking has always been a hobby of mine. Every year I try to find new trails, seemingly untouched by man. I’ll travel across the globe in search of the best, most scenic views you can imagine. Bangladesh, Fiji, and the alpines are some of the...
Emery let out an aching groan as she slowly ebbed back into consciousness. Squinting in the near-total darkness and coughing up dust, she scrambled to get some sense of where she was and what had happened. The sharp, uneven edges of shattered bricks and splintered...
I was just fifteen years old when I learned monsters were real. That day, a Tuesday, I recall, I was a little later than usual coming home from school, on account of joining the Science Club. I’d just recently watched Donnie Darko for the first time,...
When you’re bad, you get thrown in jail. When you’re really bad, you get sent to prison. When you’re unspeakably bad, you get sent to maximum security and they throw away the key. When you’re the devil incarnate, well, nobody really knows what happens to you. Sometimes it’s...
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