Story Time: The Tale of Darkness and Light

Dear guest, sit down and make yourself comfortable. Let me tell you a little story… It is about the very elements of life—of Darkness and Light. In such a story, Darkness takes the shape of a man. “Darkness,” as we shall call him, lives in the deepest depths, a place far beyond light or anything perceptible to the mortal eye. But Darkness is not content to stay within his own abode. ...

‘The Necromancer’: Reinventing a Scene in First-Person and Omniscient Narrative

My pain is immeasurable, and the lights—so bright. I’m dirty, coughing, and it feels like I’ve been suffocated for weeks. My lungs can’t seem to get any air, and my arms and legs lack any feeling. My eyes struggle to find shapes in the light, but one figure solidifies before me. It feels like ages before I can make out any details...

‘A Chance Meeting’: A Story About Accepting Fate

An elderly man with a brown sash tied at waist stooped to gather fresh leaves from the ground. The sun hung high, baking light into all under the sky’s canopy. The man wore loose-fitting garments of simple cloth, and his hair was smoke-gray. He dropped the last leaf and root into his satchel, wiped his wet forehead, and let loose a delighted sigh ...

‘Littleton’s Pies’: A Second-Person Story

You grip the wheel tighter as the street narrows to a single lane. Lin is sleeping shotgun, the afternoon sun baking her face. The sign for Indigo Place zooms by but you keep moving ...

‘The Kitchen Guest’: A Work of Dark Fiction

Lena peered out the window. Her eyes dragged the grayed cityscape, seeking but grabbing nothing, as she turned back toward the kitchen. It was inevitable. The wooden cabinet, painted a lackadaisical sky-blue, swallowed the whole room ...

Celebrating My First Published Short Story ‘A Chance Meeting’

I write this post bringing good news. After a few years of working on short stories, a particular story I wrote in 2017 was recently published. The story is called ‘A Chance Meeting,’ and it was published in Mythic Circle’s Summer 2018 edition (#40) ...

‘Sea of Diamonds’: A Mover’s Story

I never told anybody why I got fired from Mover Bees. Whenever somebody asked, I just made up things. I got tired of the moving business, I’d say. Or that I wanted to try my hand at real estate. A good one was that my back couldn’t take it anymore, and my knees were making this horrible popping noise. Truth is, my back is ...

‘Ghost in the Machine’: A Short Story

“That about does it,” Hendrick said as he shut the latch on a rusted security panel. He was standing next to a colossal machine that towered over him, which had massive arms that could be used to punch holes in just about anything in its way. It was the Hydraulic Arm Unit 3R5 ...

‘Cellmates’: A Short Story

Two men sat, divided by a row of rusted bars. They stared at the lopsided stone wall that lined the path leading out. There was rubble from broken walls lying about the room, and beams of light dripped in from beyond the pathway. The two men's bodies were naught but skin and bones ...

‘Mark of the Phoenix’: A Short Story

A globe of light emanated from Ifanco's lantern as he stepped carefully over the rocks. The cavern was dank and full of bats, but he encountered no hostility during his descent into the dark. For what seemed like days, he had searched blindly through the last known entrance to the Sleeping City, a series of cavernous veins that coursed underneath Benu mountain ...