Tag: Mystery

Short Fiction

The Other One by Richard Leise

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The woman at the door stared at the children.  She was pregnant.  Seven months low to the ground with what she knew to be a boy.  She ran a hand up and down her stomach.  It had snowed overnight, and it was snowing still.   

The boy and the girl were sixteen or seventeen.  Maybe younger.  Neither was dressed for the weather.  Blue jeans and black t-shirts.  Black sneakers. 

“They want to come in,” she said. 

“Who did they say they were, again?” 

The woman looked through the glass eyehole, past the strange children.  A white horizon absent direction.  There were no tracks in the snow.  It was windy, and the wind pushed and pulled the fallen snow.  Still, it would have been nice to see tracks.   

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Lone Inheritance by Tom Sheehan

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Henry Searles, once an unknown character in this business, did not imagine what the insides of Ted Gentry’s house looked like because he had no idea where to begin his search for furniture, trinkets, odds and ends, lackluster fragments of Gentry’s past, lost articles in a blindly-kept closet holding piled up clues. It all appeared pointless and highly impractical, just a guy he met on the corner where the river slips under the bridge, had a drink with him at a bar, like they were old friends suddenly rejoined rather than new acquaintances, but Gentry, sort of mystically, left a note with the barkeep to deliver to Searles if anything ever happened to him, as though Doom itself had made the call.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The White House at the End of the Lane  by Tom Sheehan

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Dimac looked again and the white house at the end of the lane was pale yellow. He tried to find a simile, then a metaphor, and was lost in the miracle before him. The change had happened in the blink of his eyes, and it unnerved him so that he closed his eyes, waited for the white shingles to settle back into place, become their proper selves, as if he could say that about shingles, and opened his eyes.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller, General Fiction

The House Across the Street by Robert P. Bishop

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Harvey looked out his front window, saw the real-estate lady pull into the driveway of the house across the street and get out of her car. She walked to the For Sale sign with Sale Pending pasted diagonally on it.

Another victim is moving in, he thought.

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All Stories, Fantasy, General Fiction

Awaken the Forest of the Gods of Torn Jaws by Daniel Newcomer

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The forest of the gods of torn jaws? Sure, I know it. And it’s pretty easy to get to — once you’re out of Bismarck here, jump on the I-94 and head west. Drive to the sun.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

The Sea by A. M. Smythe

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There’s a heap of luggage unceremoniously dumped on the floor: a heterogenous mix of rucksacks, coats, shoes haphazardly placed into order. The clickity clack of a moving wagon indicates that arrival is imminent but not yet achievable. The window pane thrums with a barely concealed impatience for the wild swishing-night of the seaside. It’s an unplanned trip and everyone knows that all unplanned trips have a different sort of underbelly. And if time passes differently, if the group feels that they just rushed in when they rush out again, then that’s just part of it.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

V for Victor by Tom Sheehan

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I saw it all, from the very beginning, heard it all, too, every word rising on the air … in our first classroom, in church, everywhere it happened, you name the place and I was there. Unannounced it came. From the heavens it must have come, taking over his soul, his body, his mind for a few bare minutes of magic. Once, and once only, every five year like clockwork, it came on him, as if grabbed by the heavenly spheres or ignition itself lighting up his lungs from the inside. My pal Victor, classmate for 16 years of schooling, teammate for 8 years, inseparable companion, fifth year custodian of miracles that made him, for the nonce, an extraordinary singer without explanation, an indescribable tenor so gifted I have to place the cause on an element beyond us mere men.

V for Victor, dit dit dit dah, dit dit dit dah, dit dit dit dah.

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All Stories, Fantasy

That, Which Was Bought by Noah Lemelson  

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Know this, what I tell you is not true. It is just a story, just words. It is important that you do not forget this.

First, there is a forest. Or a jungle. It does not matter. It could be a town, even, abandoned many years before. But it is not, it is a forest.

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All Stories, Historical

The Vanishing of M. Renoir by R.L.M. Cooper

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The last time I saw M. Renoir, he was sitting beneath an umbrella at a sidewalk cafe in Paris, leisurely drinking coffee and glancing through a newspaper. M. Renoir, every inch the French gentleman with closely trimmed mustache and beard–gray streaking at his temples–was usually impeccably dressed, his hat and cane placed casually upon the seat of an adjacent chair. I say “usually” since, on this occasion, he appeared not altogether unlike a much poorer and less refined version of himself. I was, I confess it, rather taken aback at his appearance.

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