Vanishing Twin Syndrome
Some kid with a beard and a flannel, both in dire need of a wash, offered me Jungle Juice. I told him, no, I don’t want that. The stereo kept blaring that one unintelligible Nirvana song over and over, and I would have thrown my drink at the backwoods-grunge guy with the ponytail who had designated himself DJ, only I didn’t have a drink. An oversized white t-shirt containing a tiny white boy offered me an enticing plate of brownies, but I said no, I don’t want that. The music changed to something poppy, but I didn’t know how to dance to it. Everyone else did....
Read MoreThe Huntsman
An amalgam of sea and cherries filled the woods. The August heat baked the scent into foulness, and I inhaled each glob of tart cherry and bitter salt with dread. It was the scent of my sister’s blood. I sat in a thicket, next to Sharon’s body. I used to call her Shar. Used to. Her head was gashed, her chest pierced, and her hands and arms covered in a sleeve of slash marks. Her body had been stripped. Blood cascaded down her cocoa skin. I tilted inward, as if my insides were being crushed like a soda can. At eighteen, I was six feet tall with a bulk of muscle, but my voice was washed in...
Read MoreThe Basement
“This party is going to be epic, really one to remember,” said Brad, leaning back in his crackling wicker chair. He and his three roommates wiled away the afternoon on the porch of their rented brick house. The house, battered and worn from years of hard use by college students such as them, lay tucked away in a leafy residential neighborhood about a mile from campus. Brad pushed his long, black hair from his eyes and crossed a sandaled foot over his knee. “How many kegs did you say we could afford so far, Birdman?” Birdman stretched his long, lanky legs out from the...
Read MoreInfection
Sometimes, when it’s quiet, I can remember what my life was like before moving to Cedar Springs. My journal helps when I can think clearly, enabling me to record the good memories. But, too often of late, I emerge from a fugue, and my happiness quickly fades. In those times, I remember only that house and the terror I experienced one horrible night. When I first heard about the Hawthorne place, I thought it was going to be just another job. Move in, set up the equipment, take a few readings, then rationally explain the science behind bad wiring, mysterious drafts, and magnetic...
Read MoreAchilles’ Last Stand
LOS ANGELES – William “Sledge” Mitchell, the lead singer and face of ‘80s rock band Dodge City, died Thursday of complications from pneumonia. He was 49 years old. Mitchell was admitted Wednesday morning to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center with a chest infection stemming from complications relating to a 1992 gunshot wound that had left him paralyzed, his agent, Thomas Randall, said in a statement. That’s the obit they let me run in the L.A. Times today. Originally, they asked me for a feature, but that got cut at the eleventh hour in favor of something more “uplifting.” Something to...
Read MoreThe Long Walk Home
Lieutenant General David Hartley marched into his study to eye the Congressional Medal of Honor secured to its wall-mounted display case. He raised his service .45 to fill the room with a blast that shattered the case and smeared the medal beyond recognition. The General lowered his revolver to step slowly toward his desk, feet crunching through the litter of glass. He sat, setting aside the still-hot weapon. Ten years ago this would have brought his wife, Suzanne, to the door, eyes wide with terror. But he’d long since lost her to breast cancer. He’d endured it all in his long life as a...
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