Turner’s Folly

It’s all that Al Kennedy can think about. Not the break from work or the time spent building memories with his wife and kids. Not even the scenery was distraction enough. The view - most of it is flat and featureless - gave little else but did provide great sunrises and sunsets. Still better than …

Xia Montgomery

Photo by Elu012bna Aru0101ja on Pexels.com The sunlight on her face feelsglorious, and everything like what she had imagined Heaven would feel like. Or would if she believed in Heaven, Hell or any of the other horrors the modern worldclung to.  Heaven - yes, she is sure that this is what it would be like.  …

Available now

Get your copy of The Monster in Number 4 now on Amazon for Kindle https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09X4KJMXF             La Casa on Main is a well-kept secret unless you are aware. The complex is like so many others, unassuming and cut from the same cutter that they used for every major city across North America. A cute little …

Cold Doors

No man or woman born, coward or brave, can shun his destiny. Homer, The Iliad The wrath of the Gods rages outside the window, making the glass panes rattle in their sturdy frames with each clap of thunder and each lightning strike. Unbearably, the air is full of electricity, making it difficult for her to fill …

A Peephole View on Death

                The hallway is full of the dead, wandering about with their faces glued to a screen with some slightly talented banshee screaming into their ears. The dead, with their heartbeats and the blood rushing in their veins like hot chocolate on a frigid night, living their insignificant little lives like any day they draw …

The Devil You Know

The sun hangs in the sky between the mountain peaks, glowing like an amber pendant caught in the cleavage of some forgotten Goddess. It stains the Celestial space a beautiful, if brash, orange.  Breathtaking under any circumstances, but tonight, a woman stands in the deepening dusk, literally panting with her eyes full of the diamonds …

Teething – Logical Circus

AN EXCERPT FROM THE LOGICAL CIRCUS OF THE SECOND-HAND REAPERS http://tiny.cc/ih91qz There was a strange wailing sound coming from somewhere up the road, past where he could see. It was unpleasant, but not as unpleasant as the whining it was creating from the backseat. Wailing wasn’t quite the mot juste, but it was close. Somehow, …

Harry Boyle

Harry Boyle was a normal kid when he was eight.  He liked baseball and played catch with his dad in the yard after dinner and before bed - young but old enough to remember the happiness it brought him.  He recalls that feeling with the same clarity as it does the scent of his mother's …

Wings – An Excerpt from Hunters + Humans

It’s been an unsettled day.  Nothing exceptionally wrong but not right, almost as though things are being moved behind the scenes, those set-in-stone pieces that we perceive with our souls.  I’m catching glimpses from the corner of my eye – don’t look. don’t stare, there’s nothing there.  There is, but it’s nothing to put a …

The Zombie in 4B

No one knows it, but there is a zombie that lives across from me, in Apartment 4B. Not your Night of the Living Dead kind of zombie or even one of those slow as fuck ones from that TV show. No, 4B looks just like we do, for the most part. His eyes are more …

Jimmy Moon

My Mama named me James Andrew Moon but she called me her Jimmy Angel. My real Mama, not the one who pretends to be. I remember my real Mama. I am 7 years old and today is my birthday. The Mama I have now is mean and not at all like my real one. My …

Yzabel

Most people complain about Mondays, and rightfully so, but for Yzabel, it was Wrenched Wednesday. Wouldn’t you know I, she thought, today is no damn different. The one day she didn’t want to be late to an appointment, and there is an out of order sign on the mirrored doors. “Jesus, I hate elevators,” she …

Wallflower

Dressed in my best casual “I barely care wear,” I, the perpetual wallflower, do what I do best I decorate the bleachers with all the other grapes dying on the vine. Some are small, grown sour and bitter, while others are soft and complacent, nearly dead but clinging to hope. Still others, the rare ones, …

Lonny

The sky was bluer then, when we were kids, and everything seemed bigger, like anything was possible.  We flew like the birds on our bikes down the dusty lanes of town, hooting and hollering like wild-boys on the full moon.  We met our friends at the mall and hung out at Klingman's Taste Supreme and …

Opal Kettle

Jackson’s daughter loved Frozen and at age 4, could recite every single word to that stupid movie about an enchanted whiner who couldn’t deal with her shit and froze everything’s script including the snowman. He liked Olaf in spite of himself.  The reindeer too.  The fact that Opal knew every single wasn’t the worst of …

Satisfaction

I hit him. I balled up my fist and hit him square in the sniffer. I've always said that if I had the chance,  if I were ever in the perfect time and at the perfect place, I would punch Billy Sharp just once and make it count for everything.  It didn't happen that way, though, …

For Glory

Midnight has passed and the moon is just a sliver in the sky above her.  At Glory Nobel's feet, a man lays naked and unconscious, and she nudges his still toned ass with the tip of her bare foot. Once upon a time, Theo had brought her here, and she fell to his romantic gestures and …

Sweet Recollections

“Your name tastes like spun sugar on my tongue,” She said with a smile that lit up her eyes The fireworks behind her made her glow My heart nearly exploded and then it did Until then, my whole world was a circus And I, the silly fool who stuck his head Deep in the lion’s …

Prophet

I swear this is mostly a true story.  I’ll leave it to you to decide which part is fact and which is fiction: I’m standing in the kitchen, washing dishes, and there’s a man standing on the back lawn. He shimmers, shivering, doing nothing but standing on the lush green grass, watching me with a …

Breaking Silence

What's this … I changed? And what exactly do you know about change? This from someone who is still so tied to apron strings That you play frog to the command to jump every single time And from someone who has no right to ask you to do anything Oh sure, make everyone and anyone …