Raymond had just turned eighty years old and didn’t care, age was just a number. He sat at his computer watching an online interview of the famous author of Romance Fantasy, Leslie Sorenson. She was attractive, even sans makeup. Tall, with penetrating green eyes and long brown hair.

There was something familiar about the man sitting alone on the station bench reading a carefully folded newspaper.

I was allowed five minutes of peace after finishing my Southern Rockies report before they sent me to the Northern lakes and forests of Wisconsin for more field work. I arrived earlier this afternoon but can’t remember the name of the Podunk town I’m staying in.

They were two old friends, and they decided to meet each day in the park.  The park was not far from Stanley’s house, where he had lived his whole adult life. When his children were small, they would go down on Sunday afternoons, around the time his wife couldn’t stand them in the house anymore.

Baines had knocked several times on the mahogany door that morning but no response. You never knew with Mr. Lavery he could be a real devil, give you hell. Yet when mother was dying, he’d been so kind. You had to handle him carefully. Not everyone would suit the job.

That stupid Bulwer-Lytton was right, John Moreland thought as he struggled to see where he was going down the dark two-lane road. It really IS a dark and stormy night.

The plastic accordion curtain slid back, and he could see into the bathroom. Would it have killed them to install an actual door? Mobile home manufactures in the 1970s needed to get their shit together. Bathrooms need doors, real doors, end of story.