Short Stories

At dusk, he carried a small backpack into the park, unfurled a one-man pop-up tent near the ablutions of the main camping ground. The tent screamed vivid yellows and blues—jarringly incongruent with his craggy face and deadpan expression.

Caroline nearly misses it. She would’ve missed it if it weren’t for the snow-blind blankness of her new bed set. The spot is perfectly round and rust red, the planet Mars in miniature. “The god of war,” she thinks, a bad omen.

Ten years ago, it came and unleashed hell upon my little desert oasis. When I finally confronted it—striking a deal that would end its reign of terror—the missing had reached twenty-two.

Now that he has passed from this life, I can reveal the remarkable tale he entrusted to me. With respect to this narrative, my name is unimportant. Know only that I was a close friend of Ian Bellairs for many years.

In the far stretches of Taraba State, where the savannah breathes in long sighs and the earth blushes red beneath bare feet, there lies a land shaped more by stories than by time. The wind there is not just wind.

Emily remembered long ago when her parents found her in the backyard as a child, knees in the mud, digging in the dirt with her bare hands. She looked up at them as they loomed over her…

Our high school rose above Istanbul like a mausoleum, and its corridors steeped in mildew and silence.

It could be a shed for livestock, or farm equipment; anything except kitchen supplies. The dark green paint job looks fresh, trying to blend into landscape; an attempt to appear inconspicuous. Eyes of greasy men watch from across the road, cigarettes dangling from their bearded mouths.

The front door slams downstairs. If I hear whistling, it’s dad. If not, it’s her. I count my heartbeats in my throat. The sun has started its slow descent.

Russell Hastings checked his wristwatch. It was a few minutes past eleven p.m. Central Park was cloaked in the darkness of an unseasonably warm October. He had just under seven hours left on his graveyard shift. A bag of sandwiches and a large thermos he stole from his grandfather