My neighbors, I imagine, know me as that guy who stands in the middle of the street for no apparent reason. Is he okay? they probably wonder. Perhaps someone should call 911 Okay. It’s a little embarrassing, but I’ll take the hit Trees block our windows;...
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Stories
It was just a stupid joke. Everybody made fun of the deaf kid. He talked funny. And he did! We weren’t mean about it. He couldn’t hear us anyway, right? He was frikkin deaf. All we did was make fun of the way he talked. We said he sounded derpy. It’s not...
Empty Nest
Staring down the same wall of darknessBirdie’s son left in the Spring. She rarely saw him in that last six months he’d lived there anyway. He'd worked full time at Domino’s, came home after midnight, went straight into his room in the basement. She heard the TV. She heard the trips to the fri...
Magpie House
What is a crow that's not a crow?“I fucking hate magpies,” said Tony, passing the pack of cigarettes to his friends gathered around him in the dark of the basement. “They’re mean,” said Bobby, as he took a cigarette and passed it down the line. “I hate the way they swoop. They’re scary.”...
Ghosts of Cheyenne Mountain
They left the greatest military installation in the world unguarded?“It’s all lies,” Seth told us, as he passed the joint to Cam. “The government will never tell you anything important.” Seth and Cam and Kyle huddled in the shadows of Cheyenne Mountain military base, partying, telling conspiracy theories as if they were g...
In dream, my skin has been charred soot-black, not all over my body, but on my arms, my legs, my penis, my chest. In dream, I only notice the burns if my eye happens to fall upon that area of skin. There is no pain. No pain, but a deep, shuddering fright...
Lost and Found
Certain places in the house held shadows within them.The basement didn’t show up on John’s radar until about a year after they had lived in the house, though other spots did, and much more quickly. His daughters took note of the upstairs hallway before they even moved in. Em said it felt weird. John felt it...
Forks
More unsettling were the ragged circle of butter knives stabbed angrily into the wood ceiling.“Where the hell are all the forks?” John grumbled from the kitchen, not for the first time. “Emily takes them,” said El from the dinner table. “No I don’t!” wailed Em. El turned to her Dad. “Emily takes them and she hides them,” she said. “This is between...
Pupa and Chrysalis
She felt beautiful.Em asked her Dad to mount a full length mirror on the inside of her door when she was nine years old. The mirror whispered to her just after she turned ten. Or rather, something in the mirror whispered. She had just started fourth grade, and for the first...
Growing Old
They’d grow into old age together, all of them, the dead and the living.The girls had been getting along pretty well together in El’s room, El playing teacher, Em playing student (they always played the same roles without variance), but then Em had turned rebellious on her teacher and was threatening to not do her assignment...
In retrospect John blamed the incident on his own suggestibility, and on the scrapbook. The previous owner, Henry Stode, considered himself to be a bit of an amateur historian, at least when it came to the house. He had inherited an overstuffed scrapbook...
Don't Look
His tear was red, and spattered as it landed.Dad was at work. Mom was at the grocery store. Her sister Em was at a friend’s house. El sat on her bed, playing with her kitten, Shadow. El had a feather on a string, and tossed it out like a fishing line for Shadow to chase. Something sounded from outsi...