Contributor: Peter McMillan

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Ashen cloud banks pile one upon the other in the darkening western sky. The setting sun manages to filter only a few solitary amber rays through the layers of thick cloud. As if pierced by countless pinpricks, the cloud canvas lets through isolated beams of sunlight, refracting the light as the clouds mass and then expand to cover the twilight sky.

The glass of the shop windows catches the rays of sunlight that find their way through the clouds and bounces them back through the sultry air into the hurried eyes of the people passing from their labour to their leisure. The eyes of the crowd do not reflect these chance glints any further but absorb them as charcoal does.

A mantle of gray-black falls suddenly, draping itself across the shoulders of the earth, and instantly there is momentary pitch-black darkness all around. The lights of the village do not anticipate the abruptness of the transition to night. Street lamps begin to hum noisily as their globes gradually brighten, the heavy clicking sound of traffic light control boxes rises in intensity directing the play of colours above the street intersections, private windows begin to emit their light soundlessly, forming rectangular patterns of whiteness on the sidewalks and streets.

The stillness of the brief eclipse quickly gives way to tempestuous gusts of wind, rushing around corners, down the corridors of streets and lanes, whipping about, scattering bits and pieces of trash, and blowing dirt and sand into the emptiness of passers-by's eyes.

The relentless winds blow in a storm of rain, driving the rain like needles into the exposed flesh of the comfort-seeking mass of pedestrians. The faces of the crowd seek refuge behind their buttoned coats and upturned collars. Hats float off into the darkness, away and beyond the village's scattered umbrellas of light. Traffic signals, regulating the movement of human and machine, blink in complete obedience to the prescribed design of their makers, while the swell of the crowd overflows the ordered lines and right angles of the streets and sidewalks. The din of honking horns and screeching tires fills the intersections with a dissonant and unpleasant noise that is from time to time joined by the loud swearing and the banging of fists on metal of pedestrians violating intersections from all directions.

The disentanglement of flesh and metal proceeds quickly and chaotically. The wind and rain and blackness hasten a resolution to the confusion. A few stragglers pass by in obscurity to one another, brushing against one another, plashing through the rivers of rainwater overflowing the sidewalks, gutters and streets. The rain becomes so dense that the changing traffic lights resemble a kaleidoscope--colours flashing, changing, merging. Red, green, yellow, red, green, yellow, flashing faster red green yellow red green, merging redgreenyellowredgreenyellow...WHITE....

One man, indistinguishable from the numbers preceding him to this corner, steps out ... into the street from his curb corner and splashes into the choppy waves of the river coursing through the intersection and is swept away into the black void.

Next morning, the crowd, returning from its leisure on its way to its labour, stops and stares with bloodshot, vacuous eyes at a hat that has found its balance on the globe of a lamppost--but the traffic light clicks and whirs to green and the eyes turn away to face the dawning of a new day.


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The author is a freelance writer and ESL instructor who lives on the northwest shore of Lake Ontario with his wife and two flat-coated retrievers. In 2012, he published Flash! Fiction, a collection of 34 reprinted stories.

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Author: Peter McMillan

Contributor: John Laneri

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Nate Carver stepped to the front door of Aunt Jillie's Boarding House, the finest establishment along the cattle trail to Fort Worth.

Nate was a scruffy character from Oklahoma where a small town preacher wanted him for soiling his daughter's virtue. In fear of his life, he headed to Texas where he had been drifting from town to town looking for action.

At the moment, he wanted a girl.

Once inside her stately Victorian, he hesitated. He had never been to an establishment with fine furniture and window curtains. He ran his hand through his hair watching the grit fall to the floor while he considered the situation.

To his left, he saw several gentlemen eating fried chicken at a dining room table. In the opposite direction, he looked toward the parlor, a large room filled with red couches and comfortable chairs. For a instant, he experienced awe, the grandeur overwhelming him.

“Well I’ll be dang,” he said to no one in particular.

Jillie’s met him in the foyer. “Howdy, mister. You've come to the right place for eating, sparking and splashing.”

“I’m here to get me a woman,” he said, as he continued to look about – his eyes darting from room to room.

She looked him over. “Our girls go for fellows like you. Yes sir, they like the lanky, eye-catching types with a powerful presence.”

“Most ladies can’t resist my charms.”

“I bet you court the girls right smartly.”

“That I do,” he said, as he took a closer look at Jillie, his eyes lifting a bit. “You’re a mighty fine looking lady. I've always had a preference for red hair and green eyes.”

Smiling, Jillie fluffed the hair. “I’m proud you’re pleased.” Nudging his arm, she directed him toward the parlor and continued, “What kind of darling suits your taste?”

Nate's mouth stumbled a time or two then he replied, “I want the kind with two legs and real teeth. Of course, I take a likin’ to the ones with a little meat on their bones.”

Jillie smiled and pointed to one of her girls, “I’ve got Carole Marie from Abilene. She’s a lovely girl with a solid amount of heft. And best of all, her lips can get a fellow to screaming before he's had a chance to get his boots off.”

“Woo-e, she sounds right nice.”

Jillie waited while Nate turned in circles to look the other girls over, then she pointed across the room. “If, on the other hand, you have a hankerin’ for the extras, then Frances May is your little lady. She's the one wearing the spurs.”

Nate scratched at his whiskers. “I don’t know much about spurs.”

Jillie chuckled and said, “It takes a hearty person with powerful spunk to like spurs. We reserve 'em for real men like yourself, fellows with cast iron in their spirit.”

“My pappy always said my head was as solid as a block of wood. I guess that's close enough to cast iron.”

“I suspect it is,” Jillie replied, smiling. “What brings you to our little town?”

“I've been lookin' for a place where I can find work,” he replied, as he looked away to wink at Frances May.

“How about a splash in my tub... might get rid of some of that trail dust. The girls like to splash with smooth talking gents like you, and they're mighty good at playing around underwater.”

“A bath sounds mighty good... Now, hurry up. I'm about ready to explode in my pants.”

Directing him to the side, Jillie said, “As I’m sure you’re aware, my girls like to see real money before getting acquainted.”

“I got plenty of money,” he said quickly. “But, I ain't never paid for a woman.”

Jillie smiled softly. “Maybe so, but around here, fellows get the kind of experience only money can buy.”

Grumbling, Nate reached into his pocket to withdraw a crumpled wad of bills. “Right now, I got three dollars.”

Jillie indicated across the room. “Frances May, come meet this boy.”

Frances May scooted closer and took his hand. “I’m so good with spurs you'll be blindly in love by the time we're through.”

“I’ll try anything with you.”

Jillie snatched his money, saying, “Three dollars buys you Frances May with spurs and a splash.”

Sometime later, Frances May helped Nate back to the parlor, his hand covering his eye.

After sitting him in a chair, she said, “I didn't mean to poke you in the eye with my spur. You should be careful where you put your head.”

“But, we were only playin' around in the tub when you started running those spurs across my back.”

“Maybe so, but you''re not supposed to kiss my feet when I'm wearing spurs.”

“It just so happens your feet got in the way of my lips. But, I want my money back. I ain't gonna pay for getting poked in the eye.”

After listening to both sides of their argument, Jillie drifted their way and said to Nate, “We're here to please, so, here's what we'll do... First off, since you need work, I'll hire you paint my front porch starting tomorrow morning. And when you're done, Frances May will agree to pay you with a free poke – less the spurs, of course. How's that sound? Not many fellows get that kind of opportunity.”

Smiling brightly, Nate said, “Frances May for free! Why that sounds like the best job I ever heard of. I'll be here bright and early.”

As he walked out the door, Jillie turned to Frances May. “I'm starting to like that boy. He dumb enough to paint the rest of the house before he realizes that fellows always pay for women – one way or the other.


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John is a native born Texan living near Houston. His writing focuses on short stories and flash. Publications to his credit have appeared in several scientific journals as well as a number of internet sites and short story periodicals.

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Author: John Laneri

Contributor: Rachel Scott

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Shuffling, shifting, toiling…lift grate, insert hose, wait, reverse. The Man Who Cleans Street Drains places fists on hips and contemplates the filth inhaled by the plastic elephant’s nose attached to its mechanized body. There has been the usual cacophony of degradation.

“Again? It’s disrupting traffic.”

“That smells like death.”

“Why can’t the city send him in the middle of the night?”

Out of sight, they mean, because it’s hardly respectable to earn a living through the removal of decomposing coffee cups and the corpses of vermin.

“Didn’t you go to college?” a peer with two mobile phones jeers in passing.

The Man Who Cleans Street Drains feels pity for his accuser’s manic pace and need to destroy in order to survive. There is no defensiveness, because a former CEO down the block refills soda machines, and a woman at the department store was a journalist and is now a janitor. At night, of course.

The plastic nose sniffles, and The Man Who Cleans Street Drains packs up and moves to the next metal grate. Someone approaches…a scruffy junkie with a devastated look on his face.

“Take this,” he says, handing over a yellow ticket with numbers on it. “It’s a winner. Not much, like a thousand or something. But I’m quitting…definitely. I want to quit. Take it from me.”

The Man Who Cleans Street Drains receives the yellow handout from the giver and watches him fade into the atmosphere. He glances at the lottery lifeline briefly as he thinks of hard labor and self worth. He lets it fall down the drain to join the refuse claimed by the artificial feast of his own control.


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Rachel Scott is a high school English teacher who has a deeply eccentric love of all things British, and has also spent the last three summers studying Shakespeare at Oxford University.

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Author: Rachel Scott

Contributor: James Wolanyk

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It was just a matter of time until they got him. They were weak, scrawny little things, covered in sores and clambering over one another to get a look at the prey. They gnashed their teeth in mismatched rows and giggled with horrible, slurping fits of joy. It sounded like something was caught in their throats, like undigested meat festered between their jaws.
He had never seen them before, but he was certain they had seen him.
“Believe me, I know it sounds crazy,” he would tell his wife.
For the first few weeks it was funny. She almost thought it was a scare tactic to get the kids in bed. But they were five and six years old, hardly able to stomach the details that he recounted. He spoke of nauseating things.
“And they ate everything. They save the pancreas for last because they can taste the insulin.”
He wished that he could stop hearing their cackling, and the scratching of their paws on the carpet and between the walls, and especially the screeching and thumping when they cannibalized one of their own. They were hungry, and there were hundreds of them.
“They said that my corpse could feed them for years,” he trembled that night, burying his face in the blankets as his wife lay beside him. He couldn’t turn off the light. They were there.
Darkness was where they thrived. Their best chance to get him was when he stared at the pallid glow of a computer screen. They circled in the blackness of his peripheral vision like coyotes, disguised by the light, waiting until his bloodshot eyes snapped toward them before they retreated. They would skitter along the ceiling and in the fridge.
He had to shower with his eyes open.
“I can’t take my shirt off,” he whispered, his back pressed to the sink. He grabbed his wife’s shoulders. “Every time you close your eyes, they get closer. They never sleep.”
Standing outside with his gun didn’t do anything. They waited in the shadows just beyond the porch light’s watchful gaze, snickering, taunting him to wander into their domain. He swore that beady black eyes caught the glimmer of the moon every so often, like droplets of ink among the night. Squirrels and stray dogs screamed out when the creatures became hungry.
When he ran on the treadmill, they lurked in the nooks and crannies of the basement, listening to the wheezing of the machine and the exhausted gasps of their prey. They crawled behind boxes of antiques and discarded lamps. They rummaged through trash-bags full of old toys and tore apart dolls in hopes of finding one made out of flesh.
“I don’t know how much longer we can keep this up,” he sobbed that night.
She took the children and left for her sister’s house – it was a hundred miles off, and he hoped she could make it there.
Rain streaked down the window panes. He waited in the bathroom with his shaving razor and a towel, unable to do anything but hit his head against those tiles. Nothing could overpower their laughter. The vents and ducts rattled with their presence. They tapped on windows and sliced glass with their jagged nails. Crawling, biting, snapping creatures with a constant hunger. He was safe within his bleach-white fortress.
He wasn’t the first to fall, and he wouldn’t be the last.
Thunder rattled the house.
“Please don’t,” he said.
More laughter.
“I’m begging you, please. Just stop.”
All at once, it ended. The pitter-patter of their nails against metal and wood faded away. Their giggles and shrieks disappeared. Beady eyes gave way to the night once more.
He stepped out of the bathtub. For a moment he stood still, listening, praying that their fun had run its course. It was done.
Tap-tap-tap. He undid the door locks, all seven of them, and wandered into the hallway.
It was quiet once more.
Something fizzled. Something popped and whined, and blackness filled the house. Thunder shook the floorboards. It was the first time in years that the power had gone out.
It was also the last time.


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Author: James Wolanyk

Contributor: Gary Clifton

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Hillary Washington had been Mrs. Clarence Washington until two years earlier. Then cancer took Clarence.  In a neighborhood where ninety-eight percent of the population was terrified of the other two percent, she was unafraid - Clarences's.32 still lay in a kitchen drawer.  She opened the door to a young white man.  The pirate-like bandana atop his head was probably a costume - it was Halloween.  But no treat was involved.  Her trick reward was rape, murder, arson.
    Homicide sent out Detectives Harper and Garnet.  Red Harper, in Homicide since before electricity, with a thin rim of red hair surrounding plenty of bald head, was big, tough, and never without a nasty cigar polluting the atmosphere.  Margaret "Maggs" Garnet, new in Homicide, was leggy, black, beautiful.   A graduate of Texas Tech via a track scholarship, she could outrun and then kick the ass of most men they encountered.
    As they examined Mrs. Washington's crime scene, a patrolman caught Harper's eye.  "Neighbors report a white guy wearing a plaid doo-rag ran from the scene."
    "White boy on foot around Fair Park shouldn't be hard to find," Maggs said. "Sure a fine day to look," she gestured to the beautiful autumn day.
    So as cops should, they cruised the area.  Harper, driving missed the light at the Grand Avenue entrance to the Cotton Bowl.  Three U.S. Marines, splendid and ram-rod straight in their dress blue uniforms were manning a "Dollars for Wounded Warriors" booth on the sidewalk.  A clown, presumably another Marine, stood ringing a bell.  Maggs winked at an African American Marine who was movie star handsome and bigger than Harper.  The kid smiled back.  
    They hadn't driven two blocks when Maggs shouted: "There, Harper."  In half a heartbeat, Maggs had bailed out and was full bore after a greasy white kid with a plaid bandana tired around his head.
    With Harper following in the car, to Maggs's chagrin, the kid went over a fence on Grand avenue and disappeared into the vast housing project behind.  She'd lost him.  When Harper puffed up, Maggs waved a shoe.  "Tennis shoe?" Harper said.
    "Christ, Harper," It's a Michael Jordan...costs two hundred.  Somewhere back in there is a white guy wearing a damned rag on his head and one shoe," she gestured, "...who just might have Mrs. Washington's piggy bank in his pocket."  They radioed a description of the suspect to all units.  Another hour's search failed to find their man.

        They'd just dropped the Jordan at the crime lab behind Parkland Hospital when dispatch advised them to look into an assault victim wearing one Jordan who'd just been ambulanced into Parkland.  In the ER they found, Jim Bob Griffin, white male 20, with two convictions for assault and robbery.  He had sustained six broken ribs, two broken arms, a fractured jaw, and a concussion   But, he'd retained plenty of mouth.  "Damned clown jumped me, them some others tried to kill me.  Ain't did shit."

    Then, E.M.T.'s wheeled a clown down the hallway, closely followed by three uniformed Marines.  The clown lay face down, a gash to his left shoulder blade.  "That's the crew from Far Park," Maggs said.  Besides the patient on the cart, the kid she'd flirted with was bleeding from his right hand.
    Harper turned back to Jim Bob's gurney.  "Mean ol' clown beat up on you, huh.  Maybe we just found this bully.  Shoulda picked on the Easter Bunny.  Heard he's a real whoosh."
    "Kiss my ass, pig.  Ast the sumbitch for a little change and he done this to me.  Am I gonna die?"
    "Absolutely, dude, and with any luck at all that would be today."   
    A uniformed officer walked in, holding up a stubby switchblade in a plastic bag.  "This jerk-off thought he could take on the Marines with a Barlow knife," he grinned.  "He...uh finished second.  After they kicked the dog shit out of him he ran in front of a D.A.R.T. bus."  He leaned close to Harper and Maggs.  "But them kids did all the damage...the bus just glazed him."
    Harper stepped into the curtained cubicle where a physician was stitching up the clown's back.  The patient was lean and muscular with a tattoo:  Semper Fi  on his forearm.  "You guys have to report this?"
    "Yessir," all four snap-answered as one.
    Harper sat down and wrote out the following report:  "Suspect, Jim Bob Griffin,  suspect in a rape, murder, arson earlier in the day, attempted armed robbery of U.S. Marine Wonski who improvised, adapted, and took evasive action.  Suspect fled, ran into the path of a D.A.R.T.  bus and sustained injuries requiring hospitalization at Parkland.  If suspect survives, he will be charged with armed robbery, assault, and  damaging a city owned vehicle."
    As he finished, his cellular rang.  He spoke briefly and hung up.  "DNA on the Jordan matches Mrs. Washington and ol' Jim Bob both," he grinned at Maggs.  "Hey, Jim Bob," he called into the cubicle where Griffin lay on a cart.  "Your Halloween treat is a needle and a three-poison-juice cocktail."
    Maggs, who'd peered over Harper's shoulder as he wrote, said:  "Only just injuries, huh?  Gotta contingency plan if this dirt-bag dies."
    "Haul the carcass to the dog pound?" he rolled the cigar stub.  He tossed a carbon of the report on the injured clown's gurney, then followed Maggs out.  As they cleared the door, Harper fished a fresh cigar from his pocket.
    "Trick or treat officers," the clown called behind them.


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Gary Clifton, forty years a cop, has over thirty short fiction pieces published or pending with online sites. He has an M.S. from Abilene Christian University.

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Author: Gary Clifton

Contributor: Shannon Barber

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“I had my hands around your throat last night while you were sleeping.”

I’ve been watching you all morning. I watched you shave and carefully put on your blue shirt with white French collar and cuffs, your matching tie. Now I’m looking at your face while you give me one of your ever-patient smiles.

“I’ll be that was a whopper of a dream.”

I try to laugh and you kiss me on the cheek, then the nose then so tenderly on the lips that I want to punch you in the face.

“Don’t forget to take your pills.”

You don’t understand and I don’t have the words to tell you. What I meant to say was that last night while you were sleeping I turned over and looked down at you and put my hands around your throat, I felt your pulse under my thumb and the only thing I wanted to do was squeeze. I wanted to squeeze until you came awake clawing at my hands trying to pull them off.

I wanted to watch the red dots bloom in your eyes, I wondered if your hyoid bone would break. I held my own breath and had to crawl out of bed, go out to the couch and masturbate furiously until I came three or four times, by the end tears were streaming down my cheeks because I felt ashamed. Beneath my shame at my arousal I felt burning lust.

Since my body began to fail I smolder inside. When I tried to tell you, when I tried with tears in my eyes and an I.V in my arm, you took my free hand and said it was cold. You said you understood that I must feel so helpless and how much you wished you could give me the strength to express my rage.

I’m getting better. I wander around in my pajamas, every morning you kiss me and tell me not to forget my pills. You just have no idea what is happening to me.

You don’t know that some days when the light of mid afternoon is filtering into the kitchen that I pull the huge sharp knife out of the block, I take my jammies off and press the cold metal to my nipple. I test the edge there, just enough to make the flesh pucker and tingle. I let the neighbor you hate watch.

You don’t know that today I will do this, I am already watching the angle of the light on the floor because I’m shaking so hard, I'm grinning and wet. So wet.

Something happened during the long pale blue hours in the middle of the night at the hospital. I spent all those hours hooked to IV’s, monitors, and the catheter I still have nightmares about. I’m not sure what it was that changed, perhaps the veneer of being nice or decent just wore away.

I had held onto this belief that I was not the kind of human being who could do something destructive simply to be destructive. Somewhere deep inside that wakeful unconscious I found my violent molten core. The nurses gave me stress balls when I couldn’t sleep and I would lay in bed squeezing and squeezing, my hands got strong while the rest of me was dying.

Eventually I realized that something in me had changed and would never be the same. After many long nights, surreptitious masturbation and violent fantasies, I am calm. I feel real.

I shuffle back into the kitchen and look at the counter where you thoughtfully put a new tin of my favorite tea next to my pile of pill bottles. You have been so solicitous and kind through all of this bullshit, nightly I want to murder you in your sleep.

I can hear your voice in my head as I make myself lunch and take my pills. The sun is almost to the right spot on the floor and as I rinse my dishes I stare at the knife in the block.

Maybe today I will draw blood, maybe today I will feel human.


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Shannon Barber writes things, crochets things and drinks a lot of hot beverages. She also is very interested in pie.

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Author: Shannon Barber

Contributor: Marie Chavez

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I have a friend who is a storyteller. Which is, in my opinion, just a nice way of saying he's a liar. The trick to being a convincing liar, I’ve heard, is to believe the story you’re telling. I always wanted to believe the stories he told. The temptation, I think, was that there was always a tantalizing amount of truth in his lies.

Over the years, the Liar has told me bits and pieces of a story. When he was a child, he lived in an old house out in the country. Way in the back, nestled along the wooded tree line, there was a shed. In the shed lived a little boy who would often play with my friend the Liar. When he got a little older, the Liar moved away, leaving the shed and the old house behind.

The boy from the shed followed the Liar, making his new home in the Liar’s closet. Though he’s moved many times and is now a grown man, the Liar still makes sure to keep his closet door firmly closed at night. Only now, the little boy in the closet is no longer a little boy. He too is a grown man.

I often wonder how much of this story was true, and what it meant to him. There is symbolism in it for sure, though I don’t know how deeply to read into it. I don't know if he has been trying to tell me something, or if it was just a tale he told me to pass the time. I’ve always wanted to ask, but considering the number of times I've caught him in lies and half truths, I don’t know if I could trust his answer any more than I trust the story itself.

#

There is a rental house situated on the lot at the back of my parent's property. Many years ago my friend the Liar came to visit. We went for a walk out to the pasture and passed the little house. He told me he had seen a face in the screen door, pressed up against the mesh fabric. It had been a woman’s face, angry and terrifying, her hands clawing as if fighting to breach the threshold.

He wove a convincing tale, his description was so vivid. When your best friend is a liar, though, you learn to suspect every word. My family had built the house, and nothing strange had ever happened there. There was no reason to put stock in his story. Haunted houses needed history, a death, something--or so I thought.

While in college I moved out to the rental house, my first taste of freedom and adulthood. I was often home alone, working late on projects. There were always strange sounds in the house coming from the crawlspace and the roof. The noises didn’t bother me, I always convinced myself of some explanation or another. That is until the couch I was sitting on while studying one night was kicked--kicked hard enough that my cat leapt from it and ran into the next room. Though I convinced myself I’d had too much coffee, that I’d imagined it--part of me worried at every sound and shadow.

Time moves quickly, and I moved on, much like my friend the Liar, leaving the rental house behind. My great grandmother lived there for many years after, growing bitter and senile. It was strange to see the matriarch of our family turn mean and angry, a woman who’d always been so full of joy and life. She finally passed away, a husk of the woman she’d once been, leaving the house once again vacant.

Pregnant and happy for the opportunity to be so close to family, I moved back without hesitation. My husband and I lived there for a little more than a year. The scampering, scratching and scraping noises along the roof at night, the rustling under the house and porch--we assumed were the activities of the herd of cats left by my grandmother. There were times, that I’d go outside to try and figure out just how a cat was making that sort of noise on the roof. It never seemed to make sense, the noises came from places that no cat should have been able to reach.

Adding to my sense of unease were the times that I could have sworn I’d seen someone in the hallway. Shadows often seemed to flicker then fall out of place. I began to have unusual, vivid, and occasionally bad dreams. Symptoms of lack of sleep and new motherhood, I'd convinced myself. Then there was the increasing tension between my husband and I. He seemed to hate the house and living there for no real reason. When we left, our marriage was in shambles.

It took nearly two years to patch things up, and we’ve lived happily since then. Though our troubled relationship could be explained away, I couldn’t help but think of that angry face in the screen, the kick to the couch, and my grandmother growing bitter and crazy.

The house has had many tenants over the years. From time to time I’ve asked if the animals seemed to make an unusual amount of noise--if they’ve noticed anything odd while living there. No one else has noticed anything out of the ordinary, or at least haven't mentioned it.

So now I wonder, was the house haunted by some angry spirit, or just a story told to pass the time? Is my friend actually a liar, or does he have a gift to tell the stories of things unseen? The skeptic in me will continue to wonder, while the dreamer half-believes.


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Marie Chavez lives in Seattle with her husband, son, her furry daughter(a mutt of a little dog), three cats and six chickens. When she's not tending to any of the previously mentioned beings in her life, she tries to find time to write.

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Author: Marie Chavez

Contributor: Erik Storey

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Mike stumbled down the dim corridor. He couldn't remember where he had been. He knew he was headed somewhere, but couldn't recall where. The distant lights above him were dim, making it hard to see his shuffling feet as he watched himself put one in front of the other. He abruptly fell when his forehead smacked into something solid. Somehow he managed to get to his feet and stared in awe at the shimmering portal before him. It glittered and waved, weaved and shined. It seemed to transform every time he looked at it from a different angle. There was a white aura surrounding it, and around that was nothing but darkness. While standing on his left foot, it seemed to be round, and started to split into two, but when he shifted his weight to his right, it became a rectangle and, amazingly, solid. But if he leaned back and closed the other eye, it changed again into a glowing yellow sliver that was wide, then smaller, and then suddenly disappeared. When both eyes were open it came back. Now it was brown, a rectangle, and had something glowing in the center, near the side. Mike tentatively stepped up and touched the glowing thing. The portal moved away from him slightly and that yellow sliver of light came back. He wanted that light. It summoned up some deep need in him, something just remembered. Stepping away, Mike thought that somewhere, at sometime he had seen something like this, but it seemed so fantastic that it must have been in a dream. Suddenly the portal vanished and two human shaped, ghostly phantoms crept past him. He shuddered in terror and disbelief, as the portal rematerialized. Mike decided to steel himself and enter through this gateway to nightmares. He ached for the light. He took three deep breaths, sighed, rocked back and forth, then pushed on the portal with both arms. It moved quickly, and Mike flew through, stumbling up to the wooden bar. The last thing he heard before the darkness took him was the bartender asking him, “What'll ya have buddy?”


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Erik spends most of his time outside. If he has to be cooped up, he spends it reading and writing. He lives in Colorado with his wife, daughter and three dogs in a very small house.

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Author: Erik Storey

Contributor: Jesse Campen

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As a retired man, the thought of stealing someone’s car never even occurred to me. That is, until the doctors said that I only had six months to live. Since then, I’ve taken walks every day just to take the suburban neighborhood in. Five and a half month’s later, I was there, in the suited man’s sixties hot-rod.

Nearly every day I took a walk, I saw it parked just a few blocks between my place and Shining Grove Hospital. The suited man always had a dark, strictly business style about him. To be honest, I was always looking at his car more than him. It was sleek, black, and souped up. It roared louder than a panther, and went from zero to sixty in less time than it’d take you to say “black mamba.” I’m not exaggerating when I say I was actually scared of it at first, but when I had three months, I realized something about the car.

One time, when I took a glance into it, I saw that all the doors were unlocked. Not only that, but the man left the keys in the ignition every time. I never knew why he would do that, but it bugged me.

Could I take it for a short drive around the block without him noticing? I began thinking with every passing day.

My conscience always told me that I couldn’t. Even before I was diagnosed with cancer, my license was revoked.

The thoughts became even stronger.

Do it! I’d tell myself.

Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore.

The doctor gave you two weeks to live. What have you got to lose, anyways?

Then one day, after the dark suited man had went into his house, I ran back a block to his car. Quickly, I grabbed the ice-cold silver handle to the car and pushed the button to release the door. I threw the door open, and sat myself in the car. After I shut the door, a shiver ran up my spine from the chilling air that filled the car.

A feeling of worriedness filled my mind just being in there, but soon I grabbed my wits, and turned the keys to the ignition. Just as before, it revved louder than a thousand wolves howling at the moon. If the suited man didn’t know someone was going to steal his car before that day, he knew now.

Rolling the window down to let the warm afternoon breeze in, I shot five blocks ahead before both of my hands were on the wheel. I can say that it was the first time a natural smile came to my face in half a year. I was laughing out loud. Cackling like a hyena on rollerblades as I flew by Shining Grove Hospital, the place I was born.

I placed my right hand down to the stick and shifted gears. I felt so glad that I had made the right choice, even if I was scared at first. Coming up was Shining Grove Elementary, my stomping grounds. All of the children stared at me as they shuffled out of the school.

“Have a good day, kids!” I shouted as I waved out the window.

Most of the kids stopped to wave, with big smiles on their faces. I couldn’t help but feel that some of them looked familiar.

I rushed past more places: My high school, my college, the church my wife and I were married in. Eventually, I raced past my old veterinary practice on the edge of the city, Shining Grove Animal Care.

My assistant who died a year before I retired is standing there. She smiles wide and waves. All of the animals that passed away that I knew are there too. It filled me with joy to finally see all of them again.

Now, the sun is at the edge of the horizon as I drive through rolling farmland. Dogs, cats, and animals of all kinds ran at my side and played in the fields, filling the air with their voices. Even though the sun was going down, the light seemed to have become brighter and brighter with time. Joyful, nostalgic tears came to my eyes as the light immersed me and the car drove me slowly into the roads of the afterlife.


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Jesse James Campen is a working student from Maryland, and likes to write specifically to entertain. He is currently attending Full Sail University to get his Creative Writing For Entertainment BFA. Jesse likes story telling in all forms, including stories from video games and themed music albums.

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Author: Jesse Campen

Contributor: Victoria Elizabeth Ann

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Palliative care.

She read it again. That couldn’t be right.

Patient is receiving palliative care. Terminal renal cancer. Metastasized. Lymphatic system.

The words jumped off of the page. Her father’s cancer was far worse than he had admitted. He had entered the final moments of his life and it was a surprise.

Last winter, he called her at the start of her final semester in college. He let her know of the diagnosis, assuring her that they had caught it early, it could be easily treated, and that she shouldn’t worry about him. Focus on her life. Enjoy her last few months before the “real world” roared into focus.

“Michelle,” he had chastised her, “This is the spring of your life. Everything is open and blossoming for you. Don’t waste it worrying about me. Enjoy the last bloom of your adolescence – it goes so fast.”

And so she did. Parties, classes, the beach. All spring, all summer; she lived for herself. Stopping home to visit only every few weeks. Calling her father to complain about her problems. Boys, teachers, shoes. A solstice of triviality that only immaturity can permit.

And now here they were. Ten months later. The feathery petals of the dogwood trees were falling outside the window of the sterile room. Was it October already? Had autumn, with its promise of cold, bleak days to come, filled her world with its ominous presence again? How did it sneak up on her so fast?

Her father, lying in the hospital bed, an IV filled with morphine going drip, drip, drip. Her, a diploma on the wall, real life going knock, knock, knock.

Why didn’t he tell her the truth? How much differently she would have lived! Winter, spring, summer, and fall – she would have given them all to him. Weekly visits, heartfelt conversations, a semester off from school. What’s one more season? Graduation could have waited.

A completely dissimilar existence she would have spent. The guilt of selfishness, the superficiality of youth – they weighed down on her as she watched the gentle rise and fall of his chest.

She pulled a CD player out of her book bag and placed it on his bedside table. The CD was old, scratched. She hoped it would play.

“Let me tell you a secret, about a father’s love. A secret that my daddy said was just between us. Now daddies don’t just love their children every now and then. It’s a love without end, amen.”

Their song. His promise. Her life.

She watched the bluest summer sky in his eyes, his hand held tightly in hers, as the time between the beeps on the monitor grew longer. Longer. Stopped. His chest didn’t rise again.

The hibernation of her youth had started. In the spring, she would be reborn again, an adult. The real world would blossom in front of her, offering with it the sweet petals of opportunity, of challenge, of pain, of joy. But for now? Now, it was her winter.


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Victoria Elizabeth Ann is a lifetime student of the arts, literature, and life as a whole. She is currently studying Creative Writing at Full Sail University and aspires to publish a novel in the near future.

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Author: Victoria Elizabeth Ann