“In the desert, the voices of God and the Devil are scarcely distinguishable.” — Loren Eiseley Chapter I — The Saloon Laying in the thoroughfare outside the saloon was a pile of twenty smouldering bodies stacked on top of each other like logs. The gang of bandits that...
Rain poured down in unforgiving torrents. The windshield in Darius’ Uber taxi was steamy despite him setting the defogger to full blast. Visibility was nil except for the blurry blobs of streetlights that intermittently illuminated the windshield. Darius was fighting to stay awake in the...
“Alice Smirnoff quits, and Bartholomew Brown makes prosecutor.” Shirly sighed as she draped her arm around Bart’s neck. “And to think, Mother said you’d never amount to anything.” “Well, you can hardly blame her.” Bart smirked, letting his hands linger on the curve of her hips....
A poorly tied slip knot, which held the body to a sandbag on the floor of the lake, succumbed to the forces of buoyancy and failed. This failure did not happen at first, but gradually as decomposition within the torso produced sufficient gases to cause...
Shorty Small, a man neither short nor small, drummed his fingers on the ornately carved oak bar. The location being a well-established watering hole on Bourbon Street. Fat Tuesdays only entertained a handful of tourists on this early spring afternoon. With the summer vacation season...
Drew was running. It was a dark night lit only by the occasional street lamp that beamed down on him like a spotlight but left the things behind him hidden away in the blackness. They were giving chase. He could hear the pads of their...
The sun makes an unwelcoming appearance as Patrick Fitz wakes to a frozen morning. His head throbs as the first rays of sunlight slice through the parted curtains and reach his retinas, which causes him to growl and turn away. His newly found drinking habit...
Rachel sat alone amongst the dilapidated pews strewn carelessly on the church floor. It had been longer than she cared to remember since she had visited the church, and time had not been kind to the once-warming embrace of its dimly lit walls. Now it...
There was no coming back from this point. That was Micheal’s only thought, as he ventured deeper into the jungle. Humidity was something he was more than used to coming from Australia. But the insects, oversized trees, and bushes were something else entirely. The thick...
Roars and growls echo in the night sky from atop the peak. In its center, the two lycans lock each other in an unmerciful glare. They are both covered head to foot in lacerations. Both are exhausted, yet neither is willing to stop. One of...
“Dark spaces and long empty traces of the world I have known Hope is fleeting, and history is repeating, hearts have turned to stone Voices calling the dogs are mauling, and no one answers back Echoes are silence, tomorrow will be violent There is nothing we can do about...
In simple terms, I cannot write the story as it happened. I must dumb it down for those critics who refuse to delve into a simple dictionary. Let us move on in the simplicity of common language that we all might understand. The bar was noisy,...
I want to wake up. I truly do, but I cannot. No matter how hard I try, regardless of my manifold tactics, I am sound asleep with the awareness of a man electrified. I have no memory of ever being awake, yet I see and...
1 A loud thud exploded in front of me. The precise spot which seconds earlier would have landed my body had it not been for the fate from the faint whine in the sky forcing me to halt in my tracks and look up. I would...
Mary Wyles My name is Richard William Kinnley. I’m seventeen years old. Other than that, I ain’t got nothin’ to say til my daddy and lawyer get here. ***** I gaze down the old farm road which stretches for miles in front of me. The hood ornament on...
“Brother Vance, tell us the latest prophecy! Surely you have seen more by now?” The man before me was a wiry, tall creature with hair that seemed to be trying to run from the center of his head as though it might escape some impending...
Warrior Biting my cheek, I glance up at the clock on the wall. The minute hand crawls out from behind one of the bars protecting its face. Quarter till three. The lead ball that’s been sitting in my chest since Mariana dropped me off falls to...
On March the third, 1984, Detective Hjalmarsson of the Houghton Police Department acquired a stack of papers, freshly typed, from a deserted hotel room on the second floor of the Best Western, overlooking the canal. A thirty-two-year-old man, James H. Kowalczyk, had rented the room...
1 She stared at the detail of the concrete work. Reaching out, her fingers lightly touched the surface and found it to be very smooth. Every imperfection of the model’s body was detailed as if the sculptor knew her intimately. From the dimple in her chin...
1 My mom told me about Dad’s quirky habit of sleeping under the bed when he was young. My dad was a tough cookie, so hearing such a thing about him made it hard to believe. I guess his father had been in the Navy. Mom...
