27 Nov Once Was Blind
I awoke to a knock on the door. I’d been out drinking the night before, had a few too many, and was sleeping it off. I turned over to face the clock, and its stark, red numbers read 8:19 AM. I got out of bed slowly,...
27 Nov Good Vibrations
The screams were the hardest part. Standing on the dust-covered hill looking down to the container in the darkness, the cries rose up through the air like a sea of Chinese lanterns ready to be extinguished. They did not bring light; only grief. For Larry, this...
25 Nov SpiritHoods: The Long Lost
Brenna had been preparing for this fight for months. She had thought she was ready, convinced herself that she could handle it. Now, as the last few miles ticked by on her car’s odometer, the leaden weight sitting in her stomach told her otherwise. She thought...
25 Nov Play It Again
Throw another log on the fire. That’ll keep us warm for a while, keep the darkness at bay. Perhaps we should pass the time with another story by the campfire. Just long enough to see us through past midnight. I’ve told you stories before of...
21 Nov The People of the Sea
A legend says that on the wind of the North Atlantic, there is carried a key to a strange land. A place of unequaled beauty and unparalleled nightmare. For too long I thought those stories the product of whimsical minds. Lazy lips espousing wishful dreams...
19 Nov Lover
Randy Wense had been parked on the corner of Water and 3rd for the last fifteen minutes listening to the newest reports. The radio presenter was relaying a statement that the special agent in charge of the investigation had made earlier that day. He was explaining how...
17 Nov What’s Inside the Witch Coffin
I know people that would literally murder me if they knew I put this on the internet. But I don’t see many other options. If I go straight to the cops odds are I’LL get blamed for what happened to my friends and get thrown...
15 Nov When the Hand of Glory Rocks the Cradle of Doom, Everybody Sleeps
Dr. Allen returned to his office and found Donald Anthony Lowe; male, 24, biochemistry student (all according to the patient profile that Allen’s nubile and exceptionally talented receptionist had insisted the man fill out in the waiting room) looking out of the 14th-floor window of...
14 Nov The House in the Rearview Mirror
Unconsciously, I must have seen it from the start–that run down two-story house, with its paint-peeled porch that lorded over an equally neglected lawn. The rusted, chain-link fence that bowed and dipped in places, tangled in weeds. I mean, had it registered, I would have...
12 Nov A Form of Malice
Hugh stood at the pulpit, his hands loosely holding each side. Beads of sweat stood out on his wrinkled forehead despite the chill seeping into the old church. Errant drafts of winter wind entered from beneath the eaves and sporadically flowed over his balding head. “What...
10 Nov My Girlfriend is a Cannibal
A horrible curse befell my girlfriend and now she can only eat human meat...
07 Nov The Old Horns
When you have been a priest for as long as I have, you start to notice patterns in people. When a parishioner approaches, I can already guess what they want to ask me by their body language or the way their eyes flicker to meet...
06 Nov The Ocean Is Much Deeper Than We Thought
06“They told me you were experienced in harsh waters,” James said, as he pointed out the pearls of sweat that had formed on my forehead. “Yeah, I do,” I replied, moments before hurling the remnants of a less-than-appetizing lunch, off the side of our ship. “It’s just...
05 Nov An Illness in the Water
Part One: The Beginning I’m calling it Black Vein Blues. It makes sense if you think about it. About a month ago it started, slow and quiet. I had just come home from school to find my father prodding at the corpse of a gator that washed...
04 Nov Every Year on My Birthday, I Have to Die
I died for the first time on the 18th of August, 2006. It wasn’t a particularly pleasant death, nor was it one that I expected. It was simply the random act of violence that destroyed my life...
01 Nov I Found a Lump on My Arm, Now We’re All Going to Die
Mortality is a weird thing. It hits you like a bag of bricks once you make it to your late twenties or early thirties. It’s about the time when your family starts getting diagnosed with all kinds of disease, heart attacks, strokes, cancer… For me, facing...
31 Oct My Job Is to Watch People Die
Once your time on this Earth ends, Death will greet you like an old friend. Whether you embrace it with fear, hatred, or acceptance, is a question that cannot be answered before you stand at its door. I can’t tell you what comes next, nor can...
30 Oct You’ve Seen the Butcher
Hello. If you’re listening to this then I’ve been found, and there will be questions. Oh yes, questions aplenty. I’m sure the first of which will be ‘Why?’ And that is a great one to start with but it’s also the one which doesn’t have an answer....
28 Oct Death Before Disco
“Hey, Red. Bum a smoke?” She was standing by the vending machines, so still I almost walked right past her without noticing. Blame it on highway hypnosis; I’d been driving for hours with nothing to focus on except miles of cornfields and the pavement ahead of...
26 Oct Sweets
When I was a kid, my mom thought the world was a very dangerous place. It wasn’t just her, either – all parents seemed afflicted with this strange mania that made them believe around every dark corner, in any shadow lurked something unspeakable ready to...