Blog > Archive for 01/01/2012 - 02/01/2012
Archive for 01/01/2012 - 02/01/2012
- By E.S. Wynn
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Posted Tuesday, January 31, 2012
at 1:33 AM
Contributor: Candy Caradoc
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The wishing well was situated, oddly, on the terrace outside the Café Voile. A shiny, gold and ivory, opulent-bordering-on-flashy attraction currently glittering in the moonlight. Also visible from the outside: crystal-clear windows (more glass than brick was that wall, and therefore impractical and wrong, as far as he was concerned), white tables with fancy chairs made of swirly-patterned metal, and the large, cursive lettering of the name above the main door. It’s all a rich-cunt’s fantasyland, he thought, what do they need a wishing well for, anyway?
He had stolen things in the past. Only minor things and only when he was in need. Apart from those incidents of mindless shoplifting in his school years, but which everyone grows out of and hardly count, he supposed. The issue was, he now believed, who...
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- By E.S. Wynn
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Posted Sunday, January 29, 2012
at 10:16 PM
Contributor: Joseph Carfagno
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We sat on the couch crammed so tightly our legs were touching, the popcorn was on the table in front of us, we didn’t touch it, our favorite show was on, live from Paris, we saw it on tape delay, each week a new remarkable guest. The host, prone to logorrhea, strode to the podium.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I have a very special show for you tonight. We’ll be talking to the smartest man in the world.”
The guest came on, he was thin, he wore a brown suit, he was a little shorter than medium height though that was probably due to the extraordinary smallness of his head, about two-thirds the size of an ordinary adult male’s. This head, in its mid-forties, had reached an advanced state of baldness, due, we conjectured, to the extraordinary brainpower it contained. Seated, he looked like a miniature. The host...
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- By E.S. Wynn
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Posted Saturday, January 28, 2012
at 12:00 AM
Contributor: Tony Rauch
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I tell ya, they buzzed back and forth - high and low, wooshing in angles, cutting tight curves, zipping across the pale blue sky - bright silver disks, big and small - piercing puffy white clouds, thrusting overhead, zooming around and around, whipping in great wide arcs above the tree line - zipping up into the atmosphere, down over the yard, sailing back out to beyond, and then looping back again just like that - with shiny blueish silver glinting off the sun, streaking bright lines and flashes in the morning sky.
I gazed in awe, kneeling on the living room floor, my hands on the picture window. “Ah, Dad,” I finally collected myself to stammer, “Ya gotta see this stuff. . . Take a look. . . You’ll never believe what’s goin’ on out here. . .”
“Yeah, . .” my dad swallowed lazily. He was lying on the couch,...
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- By E.S. Wynn
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Posted Friday, January 27, 2012
at 12:00 AM
Contributor: Troy Manning
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Tim’s house was fairly large and somewhat haunted. Most of the ghosts left him entirely alone and it is not good for a man to be that way. He would often try to talk to them but very seldom would he receive a reply.
Tim intentionally purchased a home near a cemetery so he might have company that he would neither have to provide for nor clean up after. The closest he ever came to that before were some sea monkeys he had as a child. They required nearly as little upkeep as the cactus he later was given as a housewarming gift.
The house in which Tim lived was a white North Carolinian manor. Just looking at it was enough to make one suspect it had ghosts. In the three years he lived there, Tim counted four of them. They were Kevin, Janet, Nancy, and Brad.
By far the tallest of the four was Nancy. She stretched...
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- By E.S. Wynn
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Posted Thursday, January 26, 2012
at 12:00 AM
Contributor: Gil C. Schmidt
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A lifetime… in nineteen seconds…
Harry London slammed chest-first into the rubble, his helmet flipping up and banging against a chunk of concrete as ragged as a scream. Heavy machine-gun bullets chewed the air and dirt around him as he struggled to merge his flesh with the cover he so desperately had run to.
Across the charred and mangled street, strewn with several bodies in uniform and gray tweeds, Gunther Meis swung his heavy Vickers machine-gun in a deadly spray, trying to catch up to the British soldier racing desperately across the clearing to leap for cover. The Vickers was unwieldy, the narrow tripod legs slipping on the dusty floor inside the crumbled building that once housed a druggist and his medicines. Gunther cursed as the soldier skidded behind a concrete slab, the bullets spanging to...
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- By E.S. Wynn
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Posted Wednesday, January 25, 2012
at 12:00 AM
Contributor: Tony Rauch
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I move to the south side. Mostly to try and get something done for once. Everyone I know hovers around the north side. When I lived up there, people used to stop by every now and then, which was nice, but eventually it impeded my progress. I couldn’t get anything done. I vowed to change, but eventually I had to move. I guess, for me, it just got to be too much of the same ol’ thing up there. I needed an infusion of newness.
Unfortunately, after some time on the south side things began to get lonely. Sure I was getting things done for a change, but it wasn’t the same. Life didn’t seem to have that spark and flash to it. Colors seemed to fade.
I thought about this a lot, finally deciding to get involved with things on the outside more, so I started a music club, that is a group of people who get together and...
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- By E.S. Wynn
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Posted Tuesday, January 24, 2012
at 12:00 AM
Contributor: Tim Gerstmar
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The nitre oozes from the cracks of the crumbling stone. The water drips and runs along the grooves of the epitaph, life reduced to a few Roman letters and dates. The water rolls along the stone and falls into the deep puddles that drown the grass. The limestone dissolves slowly, minute by minute, hour by hour, as time has wanted it to do. Out of the cracks unnameable things crawl, slithering and sliding as the storm clouds thunder above and send the rain, renewing the land. They are the eaters of the dead, tearing off bits of flesh with their serrated mouths. However, they can only ingest solids, energy is another matter, in this case the energy of love.
A woman stands before the grave. Her long cold hands tremble. It's been fifteen years, and yet still she comes. She places the bundle of red roses wrapped...
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- By E.S. Wynn
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Posted Monday, January 23, 2012
at 3:24 AM
Contributor: Tony Rauch
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I run up to our house. There are some strangers on the lawn and my father is handing them some of our belongings. “What’s going on here?” I huff out of breath, “Why‘re you givin’ ‘em our dining room chairs and grandfather clock?”
My dad looks down to me, “The entire village has to pitch in, not just us, honey,” he holds one end of the long ornate wooden clock and helps walk it down to a waiting horse drawn wagon on the road, “We lost at something and so we have to give some things up, that’s all sweetie,” he shuffles his feet to position himself as the strangers load the chairs into the long wooden wagon, “We can get by with out ‘em,” he helps to shove the heavy clock onto a blanket in the wagon. There are some other objects in the wagon - an end table, a cupboard, a butter churn – but none of them were...
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- By E.S. Wynn
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Posted Sunday, January 22, 2012
at 12:00 AM
Contributor: Don A. Gerred
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The horizon grew dark. Across the intersection of an empty access road, in front of a lifeless shopping center, barren trees of late autumn formed a wall of black shadows against the fading colors of an early sunset. Streetlights buzzed, signaling their intent to flicker to life.
All was quiet. No engine noise, no music, no voices; silence except for an occasional chirp from a bird with no plans for winter migration.
The horse-shoe shaped shopping center faced an enormous parking lot filled with cars precisely parked between yellow lines. Abandoned, the smashed, deserted vehicles disintegrated in the parking spaces. The burned-out shell of a late 80’s Honda Accord landed upside-down; roof on the sidewalk, wheels in the air. The beaten and battered hulk blocked access to a lane of neatly nested...
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- By E.S. Wynn
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Posted Saturday, January 21, 2012
at 12:00 AM
Contributor: Cheryl Anne Gardner
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Before the killer cheeseburgers and sex toys, I was a free man, listening to my own love dirge in the wee dark hours with fatal abandon. Then it all caved in around me: crystal wine glasses, decadent desserts, and dirty pool water. That's how these things happen in the real world. It's a party -- no extra legroom and the incandescent lighting's a little weak. Glen, my best friend, wanted revenge, domination in a single drop of sweat. She'd never been his girlfriend. She had hits in the millions. She was a ghost, a construct, bountiful acres of flesh he hadn't had the sense to manhandle the way he'd wanted to. He said she was ugly, pixilated, but I didn't think so. She had small hands and big dreams. Now she was my baby strange pushing the hard edge in the periphery. Our romance was a brief and righteous...
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- By E.S. Wynn
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Posted Friday, January 20, 2012
at 12:00 AM
Contributor: Matthew Vaughn
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Fred pushed his lawn mower while the afternoon sun beat down on him. He was sweating profusely, he had to constantly wipe at his eyes to keep them from stinging. Maintaining his yard was hard work, but Fred didn’t mind, he loved to look out at the fiery orange fur that covered his lawn.
As he pushed the mower across the length of his yard from one end of his house to the other he couldn’t help but contemplate a break. Part of him thought about how nice it would be to sit on his porch swing and sip on a nice cool glass of liquefied goat meat, it was his favorite. But he wouldn’t do that, he didn’t have time to take a break, his yard needed him.
Having just completed a row and reaching his driveway he did let off the handle of the mower, but not to take a break. Fred pulled his small ruler from his back...
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- By E.S. Wynn
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Posted Thursday, January 19, 2012
at 12:00 AM
Contributor: Douglas Polk
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November 3, 1989 was the day I was born. My Dad had three car wrecks that same day, all with the same pimply faced kid. The day was a Friday, and the next day, the Nebraska Cornhuskers lost to the Colorado Buffaloes 27-21 at Boulder, for only the second time in 22 years. That is the way my Dad remembers my birth was a Friday, because his beloved Huskers lost a football game the next day. It was the only loss of the regular college season for the Cornhuskers. Colorado was the ranked second in the polls and Nebraska was ranked third before losing to the Buffaloes. The Huskers later lost in the Fiesta Bowl to Florida State 41-17 to finish the season 10-2.
My birth was an emergency c-section and I went right from the delivery room to the intensive care nursery. After nine days I was finally able to come...
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- By E.S. Wynn
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Posted Wednesday, January 18, 2012
at 12:00 AM
Contributor: David Macpherson
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The knuckles crash my cheek and one of my teeth loosens. Later, I will spit blood. But now I swing from my side and connect with somebody’s ear. My shoulder twinges from the compression of the impact. I hope I didn’t hit one of my own. My bros: Joey, Mac and the other guy. The guy whose name I don’t know. He sits by himself most nights at the end of the bar. But when the swinging starts, he usually swings for us.
Mac clobbers the bearded dude with the frosted beer mug, clubbing him on the top of the head. Joey takes an elbow to the chin. We are all backing up to the fire exit. We’re not surrendering, its just that we can see the bouncer heading our way and its best to take it outside then to be taken.
I aim my foot for the little guy’s knee and I get nothing but air. I can’t do any of that karate...
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- By E.S. Wynn
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Posted Tuesday, January 17, 2012
at 12:00 AM
Contributor: Matthew Vaughn
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I walked into my local Marketplace and stopped near the entrance to look at the DVD’s in the DVD Machine. I had been dying to see that new Johnny Depp movie, but the last three times I looked for it, they didn’t have it. Scanning through the available movies it seemed this time was no different.
I thought about kicking the machine, but I knew that wouldn’t get me the stupid movie, if anything it would probably just hurt my foot. I tried cussing at the machine a little, but all that got me was some funny looks from people passing by.
But then, like being open handed smacked in the face, an idea popped into my head. I decided I would climb into the DVD Machine and just wait for somebody to return a copy of the movie.
It was a perfect plan, but squeezing myself into that little slot the DVD’s slid through...
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- By E.S. Wynn
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Posted Monday, January 16, 2012
at 12:00 AM
Contributor: Chris Griglack
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His shadow stalks swiftly from tree to tree, though the man is little more than shadow himself. The dark cloak weighs heavily on his shoulders, bound with a duty black as night.
They scream when he cuts them, but this is good. A silent harvest is a poor one. He whistles a tune as he works, and the wind whistles through their branches with him, a tune of cold, slow, remorse that no words can convey.
His sickle flashes, and for a moment the wind stills as the willow's hoarse, ethereal scream fills the air. He gathers the freshly cut boughs and moves along the river bank to the next tree, whistling the song of lament known only in that grove.
The moon hides her face from his work, but the stars look on with interest. Too distant to hear the screams, too cold to care. He continues harvesting as they watch,...
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- By E.S. Wynn
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Posted Sunday, January 15, 2012
at 12:00 AM
Contributor: Linda Garnett
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“Mitch, can't this car go any faster? We’re not going to make it."
“We’re almost to your house, Jackie. You’ll make your curfew.”
“We should've left the dance earlier. I told you what’ll happen if I’m not home right at midnight.”
Mitch laughed. “You didn’t need to make up a stupid story so I’d get you home on time.”
“I didn’t make it up. Drive faster!”
A few minutes later, Mitch parked outside her house and glanced at his watch.
“Not bad, it’s only one minute past midnight. How about a good-night kiss?”
He let out a blood curdling scream as Jackie the werewolf lunged at him.
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Linda Garnett is currently editing her first novel, a science-fiction comedy. Her work has appeared in New Flesh, Flashes in the Dark, Static Movement, WeirdYear, Flash Shot and The Short Humour Si...
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- By E.S. Wynn
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Posted Saturday, January 14, 2012
at 12:00 AM
Contributor: Phillip Donnelly
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In the dream, he was a she.
He had the frame of a young girl, thin and fragile, but the body had no face. He, or rather she, or it, or whatever, was walking along a rocky beach in late Autumn. The sun set, turning the sky a dark red, like the embers of a forgotten fire.
She knew she was looking for something but did not know what. There was a dreamy emptiness to her quest, but also the will to continue.
She could make something out near the water's edge and cautiously approached the bobbing figure, wondering what it could be.
The sound of the waves washing against the shores grew. It became magnified and distorted and each wave began to cry. Each wave was soured with the bitter spite of all little girls, each wave's curl was twisted by the crashing malice of a child’s hate.
The sun, which had been setting,...
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- By E.S. Wynn
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Posted Friday, January 13, 2012
at 12:00 AM
Contributor: David Macpherson
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Two days after my grandmother died, we were in Neptune, New Jersey, where she was spoken about by people standing behind a podium. My father's best friend growing up was there with the wife he was soon to divorce. He spoke of the importance of family, God's ever loving gaze. Things like that.
Afterwards, we grandchildren were deposited on the Ocean Grove boardwalk, while the parents went to handle the paper work that survived the old lady. We talked for a while about college and work and things we did. The wind did not allow such autobiography and we walked down a frigid December gang plank in silence, heading to the Playland we went to when we visited as kids. It was shuttered closed. Not for the season, but for the ages.
We spoke about the funhouse we loved. The tilting room, the hall of mirrors....
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- By E.S. Wynn
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Posted Thursday, January 12, 2012
at 12:00 AM
Contributor: Stephen V. Ramey
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A boy stood in dappled sunlight, blocking my way. He was bone thin, all arms and legs. His expression reminded me of a clown's face. Not the garish white makeup and oversized nose, but the way his lips curled into a goofy smile even as his gaze violated me.
"What do you want?" I said. I had some change in my purse, but he should at least have to ask before I offered it up.
He laughed a child's laugh, unpracticed, full of noise. He raised one hand. In his fist was clutched a hand grenade, oblong and dimpled, grayish green in color.
"Where is your mother?" I said.
"Here," he said.
"Where?"
"Dead," he admitted.
"Your father, then." What a crass woman I must seem, not to offer sympathy for a dead mother.
"Hell," the boy said. He lowered the first hand and raised the other. It, too, held a grenade. The pin...
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- By E.S. Wynn
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Posted Wednesday, January 11, 2012
at 12:00 AM
Contributor: David Macpherson
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Rob was this roommate I had in college who had slept hard. He'd be asleep and not wake up even when the phone was ringing, but he would get up, answer it, and have a conversation, all while still being asleep. You would be on the phone with him talking and suddenly you would realize that something wasn't quite right, the way the conversation was going was off and you would ask, "Rob are you asleep right now?" And he would say, "Yes." So you would say, "Now Rob, listen to me. Hang up the phone and go to bed." And that’s what he did. He had no memory of any of this. Not even a dream memory.
We would have him write down phone messages when he was like this. He would wake up and see a note in his own hand that said, "I was asleep when Pete called. I will call him in the afternoon." That was a nice message....
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- By E.S. Wynn
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Posted Tuesday, January 10, 2012
at 12:00 AM
Contributor: Nathaniel Tower
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A puddle of goopy pink blob greeted Marty Cooper when he woke up one Sunday morning. He'd been dreaming about his wife being angry at him for some reason or another.
When his alarm blasted him out of his nightmare, he tried to spring his head off the pillow and silence the buzzing, but the thick sticky substance clung to his head and pillow like gum to a shoe and asphalt on a hot day. The further he pulled his head away from the pillow the further the pink gelatin stretched.
Despite the force pulling Marty's head back to the stained pillow, his head felt significantly lighter. Staring at the goop, it didn't take long for Marty to figure out what was happening. His brain was leaking out of his ear.
While trying to gather the strength to lift his leaking body from the bed, Marty tried to remember what...
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- By E.S. Wynn
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Posted Monday, January 9, 2012
at 10:26 PM
Contributor: Chad Stroup
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Do not attend class; it is a construct.
Cross the revolving threshold with a malleable mind.
What you absorb may or may not affect you profoundly.
You may think the man next to you is corporeal.
Caress his well-worn sweater.
It is the dressing of a corpse.
You may know in your mind's eye that the woman across the room is breathing.
Crumple a piece of paper and softly toss it at her.
It will bounce off her face as if she were made of wax.
You may believe that your professor is planting seeds in your mind.
He or she is digging shallow graves.
Determine for yourself what will be engraved in your headstone.
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I am an MFA Creative Writing Student with a focus in fiction at San Diego State University. I enjoy twisting the possibilities of the darker side of fiction. I also run a blog at http://subve...
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- By E.S. Wynn
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Posted Wednesday, January 4, 2012
at 7:56 AM
Contributor: Ward Webb
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The gash in my forehead stung like a bitch. If it wasn’t so dark I’d be able to check my fingers to see how bloody it is; but it’s too dark in here. Dark and stale and hard to breathe. I don’t feel a lot of wetness on my fingers – so the cut shouldn’t be that bad.
The tire iron is wedged under my ribs – pressing into my side with each bump we hit. He was on paved asphalt for the longest time, but somewhere in the last five minutes he must have turned off. Now it feels like we’re on some kind of unpaved dirt road - one with an obnoxious amount of potholes. His speed is reckless. I can tell from the roaring thunder surrounding me. If only it wasn’t so dark...
I never saw him approach me. June and I had just checked out and were heading back to the car when she told me she’d forgotten to pick up her pads (the...
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