Until the Sun Goes Down
The door swings in when I nudge it with my toe. I lean to peer through the gap, looking for the old man. Has he collapsed? Is he on the floor in there, suffocating in the summer heat? I want to be…
Battle for Rockhold
The meek are through waiting. They're ready to inherit the Earth right now. Rockhold used to be a quiet town in its isolated valley. The people with money were the first to disappear. They vanished at the first sign of trouble. Some…
Ruination
Decades ago, in the hills of Georgia, the music of the two brothers was born from pain. That pain was inflicted on them by a demon of a man, and even after he died, he followed them. Their audience grew and the…
Stay Away
Every small town has secrets. Some secrets can kill. He’s always been there, the old gentleman in the funeral suit, hanging around the big oak tree. Even before the cemetery was dug, the natives knew about him. He was just as much…
Succinct
Decades after the apocalypse there is a new threat to the survivors, and Ashley can't convince anyone to take it seriously. Even her father, the great Robby Pierce, can't be swayed. Her only recourse is to go off on her own to…
Spores
Every hunter has a story of an expedition gone wrong. Every person who has held a gun has imagined what it would be like to point that barrel at another human being. Some decisions come down to survival. Other decisions are made…
Mumma’s House
The house belongs to them now. To provide for her son, June would sacrifice anything. She would live in fear every day and shield her son from it. She would stay, tormented, to hang onto his inheritance. This year, something is different. Forces in the family are…
Killer Savant
I pledge to yell at my parents, not brush my teeth, and tear up my homework.I pledge to steal the car, and shoplift candy.I pledge to burn down a vacant house, and stab a stranger.I pledge all these things because I don’t…
Distinct
Robby is seeing ghosts, and he’s not the only one. There are few people left in the world—many of them are thinking about how things might have been. They’re seeing ghosts of a life that was nearly reality. This new war that…
Island King
Some secrets, committed to the ground by careful hands, need to stay buried. Tien and Matt don’t care about that—they’re just fulfilling their obligations to the TV show that made them famous. They survived, vote after vote, as the game progressed. Now,…