24 Jul The Rougarou
Shorty Small, a man neither short nor small, sat in the far corner of the coffee shop, his back to a wall. He was, for a change, the first one to arrive for a hastily arranged meeting with Homer LaCroix. With a half empty mug...
13 May A Scream of Light
Takoda lifted his gaze from the burning embers of the campfire toward the sky. Tonight, the stars were brilliant in a cloudless sky. Tree limbs, heavy with unfallen leaves, barely moved. This natural stillness, normally produced a calm within him. A calmness his people expected...
23 Apr The Walking Stick
Shorty Small, a man neither short nor small, entered the coffee shop, surveyed the patrons and found who he sought. Homer LaCroix sat in a corner table munching on a beignet with a mug of coffee in his right hand. When he approached the table, he...
06 Apr The Bullet
Shorty Small, a man neither short nor small, sat with his back against a wall in a dingy bar several blocks off Bourbon Street. He concentrated on the front door and sipped on a half-consumed bottle of Nola Blonde Ale. The din of Mardi Gras could...
05 Apr A Howl in the Wind
Henri Greyson heard a mournful howl of wind when he stopped to catch his breath. After a harrowing dash through the forest, he rested his hand against an old oak’s trunk for support. Looking up, bare limbs swayed in the cold fall gusts. Moisture-laden clouds raced...
04 Apr The Painting
In the world of international stolen art, an individual known only as Henri, was considered the world’s most successful thief. However, friends, neighbors, and business associates, knew him as Marcel Leblanc, a polite, proper and jovial man in his late forties who owned a seemingly successful...
24 Jan No Tears for Sara
Chicago, Il. Shorty Small, a man neither short nor small, took a final drag on his cigarette. Without diverting his gaze, he flicked the butt to his right. Glowing flakes of tobacco scattered as the dying cigarette struck the neighboring building’s brick wall. The sparks triggered...
23 Jan It’s About Time
Day One: October 2069 The week started out like most, sitting at my desk in a cubicle, sipping coffee and attempting to concentrate despite the constant din of other federal investigators in their adjacent spaces speaking loudly on their phones. My name is Ryan Powers. I’m one...
25 Oct They Do Come Back
Twenty-five years ago, I became the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. Brash, arrogant, cocky and brilliant, I could do no wrong. I prosecuted organized crime figures, brought down corrupt Chicago politicians and started the first anti-terrorist department in the central United...
24 Oct A Matter of Conscious
PART ONE During the second half of the twentieth century, an observation, some called Moore’s Law, spurred the computer industry to double the number of transistors on a computer processing chip every two years. This pace continued unabated during the first third of the twenty-first century....
27 Aug The Soldier
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....
26 Aug Yesterday’s Tomorrow
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...
25 Aug The Retirement
“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...