Crime/Mystery/Thriller, Short Fiction

The Boy by Clayton Korson MD

Disclaimer: This story is an entirely fictional reimagining loosely based on a true case from the ER. Names, characters, and details surrounding the case are entirely products of the author’s imagination and bear no resemblance to real persons. Any similarities to true events are purely coincidental.

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Red lights cut through the night as the old man gazed ahead. He sat in his truck, staring, stopped at a traffic light. He sighed. The weight of the world lay on his shoulders. Exhausted, the man was at wits’ end. The preceding weeks were unrelenting. He couldn’t quite wrap his mind around it all. He was tired. His bones were dust, and delicate mind warped with hardly a coherent thought remaining.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller, General Fiction

Lions in Winter by Neil James

Crossing the city for a night shift was the last thing Luna wanted to do. The temperature was dropping, and a biting wind whipped through the dark streets, driving a fierce snowstorm, turning pavements white. Luna huddled in the broken shelter, but the bus- always late- was nowhere in sight.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller, General Fiction

The Lost Voice by Brooke Gilbert

It was his accent she noticed first. She was walking past, carrying a tray of drinks to a nearby table. He was deep in conversation with another woman, but she slowed her steps at the sound of his soft vowels, his rising and falling intonation. He was British, maybe Scottish, she wasn’t sure, she had never been to the UK, she had barely left Pennsylvania, but she liked his accent. It was foreign, sophisticated.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller

The Spoils by Toni Juliette Leonetti

Themes that some readers may find distressing – see tabs

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July 7, 1917, Arras, France

It was no great shock to hear of corpses rising from their graves.

Not in this toppled world, where men turned moles. Where the fresh aged fastest, stooped and wizened in their dark holes, dreading the sun. Where a man’s next breath might kill him before he smelled hay in it. Just that, no longer the searing pineapple and peppered bleach of chlorine. Phosgene suggested merely a whiff of musty hay before the man’s lungs drowned him. Drowned, with no water in sight.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller, General Fiction

Everyone Dies by Danni Meek

There’s a man in my home.

He’s staring out of the large windows, the ones that I sit by and read my books because they’re the only source of natural light on this side of the apartment. The light from the moon almost gives him a glow, making him look vaguely angelic. It’s almost comedic how ironic that is, considering the fact that he’s broken into my home.

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Crime/Mystery/Thriller, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Little Green Men by Jason Abshire

Young Toche, “the bird,” slight of stature and weighing no more than a bundle of palm leaves, was forever a dreamer. In his tiny village, deep in the jungles in Colombia, time moves slowly. He lived the life of his ancestors. Dinner came at the end of a spear, and fire and a thatch roof were luxuries. Modernity was yet to invade.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller, General Fiction

Safe House by Alain Kerfs

She holds up her hand to the bathroom window, feels cold air piercing. Early morning, still dark, the children asleep. She unspools a strip of foam, one-handed. At her feet, a diagram displayed on her mobile phone. Using a screwdriver, she pries off ragged remnants of the original weather-stripping. When she stretches to reach the top rail, her ribs ache.

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