Short Stories

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

No one lives in my house now. You can tell because, at night, there are no lights. People should have lights on at night. Not too late at night, people have to sleep, but around dinnertime or just after, when people go to the den to watch Get Smart or something...

Miranda couldn’t recall the last time a circus came through town.

The day our house burnt down, I was out fishing with my Grandad Stephen. He wasn't actually my grandad. Not blood-related anyway, but he'd married my grandma when I was two, so he felt like he was my real grandad.