Short Fiction and Poetry

In the year 7823 AD, Planet Earth was still blue when viewed from deep space. At that time, Dracula, the Eternal Grand Master of the Undead [...]

Irritated by his son’s unexpected phone call, Karl drove by night. It was past ten. Arriving at the dark, Pasadena bus station he saw no Eddie [...]

I arrived in Los Llanos de San Juan Bautista in a time of strong, dry winds, not warm, in the time before Easter. [...]

This morning, I stepped out of the shower and felt a mild pain. A small, nagging, rash-like burning tickled me [...]

The sun’s intensity was now shifting, almost horizontal, and the noon shadows—scarce as they were among stone ledgers and sand [...]

I spent my youth running from my past. Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” became my compass, though the roads I chose often led to dead ends [...]

Somewhere from the other side of his dream, Edward could hear the ringing. It reached across the landscape of subconscious [...]

I need a final peaceful resting place, I said to God, after all these years searching. I've tried finding it on my own [...]

At the station, my friends stand in a line pretending to be clapping but using only one hand. Their hands flap silently, ridiculously. [...]

The movers are in the living room. I hear them dropping things into boxes. They’re using rolls of clear plastic tape. [...]

They rarely traveled in the same circles, having been mortal enemies for decades. Zika in South America, Marburg in Africa [...]

The moon hangs low upon the night sky, round and saturated with hues of orange, pink and red. You can see it everywhere, [...]

The machine gun fire from the drones was so intense I couldn’t get my head up to see if the enemy was advancing. [...]

Lost deep in the woods of Algonquin Park, they follow a curling thread of smoke, their last hope before nightfall. The air hums [...]

Reading the document one more time, I knew it was done. It was as good as I would be able to get it. I probably would make it worse [...]

The air smelled like rust and salt the day the storm warnings came. In Asheville, North Carolina, where the Appalachian ridges fold [...]

It didn’t happen often; sometimes a decade or more would pass, and it never was in the same location: Cold, clammy winds [...]

Berghoff’s is a great place to eat, drink and remember. I come here fairly often, usually to ogle our bartender, Jackie [...]

The three boys cycling along the bank skidded to a grating halt and threw down their bikes in a cloud of gravel. [...]

The bedroom had survived the storm, barely: sheets thrashed and twisted, lampshade on the night table askew, magazine splayed [...]