______ sold the wedding ring for $40 and was later disappointed it didn’t go further in getting ___ drunk. The pawnbroker acted ...

Ethel knew there was just something not right about the boy, and she could never quite lay her finger on what it was. He ran around lik...

Early For The Fall by Mick Parsons

L eon wandered the dark narrow bar, telling people who didn't know him he just got out of prison – 5 months – and would they buy him a d...

After a considerable amount of groaning and several severely patronizing chastising remarks from Shakir, Stanley led the Westerner off to t...

When is it time to walk away? There is no walking away, no escape. Nada. When Harvey thought about the concept of nothing, he preferred to t...

 There was nothing at the bottom – at least, nothing that Stanley could see. He was exhausted and he could feel his bad knee swelling up: if...

Jarvis woke up most mornings with a dull, relentless headache. Aspirin didn't help. Coffee didn't help. At first, he thought he was ...

He drove through the rain and the night because he didn't want to be late. The only thing worse than being late was being later than tha...

After the call ended, Jackson sat up, turned his legs around, and sat on his bed. He stared out the window that looked down on the alley bel...

Making it as a writer is rough, no matter how you go about it. Mostly people get some kind of pointless day job, or they become college inst...

The report was a staggering one; three counties over, in a little town no one had thought about since nobody remembered when, the entire tow...

When's the last time you left the house, she asked. What day is it? She shook her head and didn't answer me. Sometimes I think she g...

Everything about her seemed deliberate. No. Deliberate’s the wrong word. Practiced. Everything about seemed practiced. Yes. Practiced. Not l...

Uriah was sure he saw Santa Claus working on a road crew; he was the one holding the two-sided sign that read SLOW or STOP. Uriah passed him...

She had managed to save enough money to get to Phoenix, and she told herself that it had to be enough. To start. She’d been scrupulously put...

S he hated the panicked feeling of gasping for air. But the pain that shook her body down to the bones whenever she coughed and spit up piec...

W hen Bill Watson spoke – which was entirely more often than most people thought he should have – every sentence that left his mouth carried...

L ili sat down with a cup of coffee after the last of the breakfast rush paid and left. They were regulars – an old married couple who didn’...