III. The Shooting

The war has ended. Months have passed and the rider, with a great sin on his back, stops his horse at the crest of a hill. It slopes down near a river and is made of mostly dirt and dried grass. He dismounts the appaloosa, and he takes his rifle out of the saddle and …

The City in the Cleft.

On a life raft in the middle of the South Pacific.  I feel my memory drifting. I can only tell you how I got here. It was in a seedy corner of the world, near the sea, where bad ideas gathered. I met him in a cantina off the Rio Chepu. He told me that …

Some Are Dead – 1. Goodbye, Apollonia

They come through us as if we were doors. They open us up, they eat and kill, and then they’re gone. Just like that. We’re left to pick up the pieces. It's turning out to be a long dream, same time every time, they walk in the hedge park and she says she's cold. It’s …

The Blacklands – First Memories

He scrambled across the sand for the music box. His fingers were red and cut and broken but he held it tightly and felt the sting of his nerves. It was one of those moments where a man stops listening to his senses. The tide rolled in and out in slow, woeful strokes and he …

I. The Rider

The rider sees the cabin; he sees the creak of its door; he sees the shadows that pour in from the lightless house astride the evening star that sets across the field. Cotton, he thinks of home and weevils, sprawls like swollen fingertips or the alien reach of the Earth in the backdrop. He hears …

The Courier – Quiet Murder

Gehinom, Ohio You know what they say, darling, there is no place like home. The night is bright with fires and they call to him. But he moves by each, garbed in black, toward a smaller flame in the distance. It's not so bright, not so intense or hateful. It’s beauty is quaint, far-away, and …