Prologue It had started with the funny feeling in her belly. There was a day, not too long ago, when she was just Sheila Goolsby, and her belly didn’t ache, and she weighed not much more than Tad, her husband, who was overweight but not so much overweight as Brady Berg down the street or…
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The Sideshow of the Void
From time to time, murmurs and mutterings concerning the carnival spread amongst the houses of town like an unseen plague This signals the carnival’s imminent arrival. The carnival returns to town from the shadows of the backroads in random unknown intervals, except in certain dreams. Always presenting itself under a different name. The whispers are…
Waxing Chaos
It wasn’t the time of the call; Blake was used to that, and he was a light sleeper – call it the nature of the job. When the call at 1AM is from your doctor, that raised both eyebrows. Blake wasn’t sick, and his next physical was over six months away, so obviously Dr. Miller…
Cold Hearted
1. Call from Customer WI5223 to Qualicare Refrigerators Ltd, Des Moines Headquarters, June 23, 2019. Call transcribed December 1, 2019. “This is the Qualicare Refrigerator Customer Service Line. My name is Natalie. How may I help you?” “This is Eileen Mayers. Is this who I call when my fridge acts funny?” “Absolutely, Eileen! Can you…
A Helping Hand
Panic laced its fingers through Greg Eskew. I’ve got us lost, put us in danger. He looked at his wife, Valerie, his eleven-year-old son Michael, and his eight-year-old daughter Chelsea. All three wore new hiking boots. Relax, we’re not that far from civilization. Just a day hike. We can still get back by dark and…
If I Were a Blackbird
The feathers started as the coarse black hairs that grew out of the mole between my human shoulder blades. If I were a blackbird, I had sung, the Scottish ballad about losing love to long stints at sea, but I didn’t mean it. I’d whistle and sing. I’d follow the ship that my true love…
The Implausible End of Everything
Alex DeNozia worked nights. He was a forklift driver at a warehouse in Colorado Springs, and it was his job to load up product onto trailers for next day delivery after the other guys on shift had organized the product onto pallets by type and destination. It could be mind-numbingly boring, but Alex didn’t really…
The Daughter of Tem
Creeping, October fog lay thick around the Chamberlain Hotel’s empty veranda and clung close to the windows, like fragile, but heavy hands pounding silently on the thick, leaded glass. On better days, one could have sat in a fine wicker chair, drinking strong iced tea and watching the slow New England summers roll down the…
Sigils for Bullies
Brent mowed him over just before practice started. The coaches were in the field house and other players were still suiting up, leaving the few witnesses available conveniently looking the other way. Scott wasn’t looking, he was down on one knee tying his shoes. That’s what the impending doom that was Brent did, taking his…
Lice
Elise was sitting in the rear passenger seat of her parent\’s car, and her mother was driving. She was small enough that she was not allowed to sit in the front passenger seat. Her gaze turned from her mother’s right shoulder to the window to her left, where an endless field of emerald corn stalks…