Short Stories

Stuart looked around. He was in an elevator. A large, beige-coloured one. He looked to his left and right, then behind—he guessed there must have been about a hundred people in total, all quietly stood, gazing at nothing in particular, while the lift continued its journey.

It was the right summer day for the wrong kind of romantic encounter.

The tables outside Rockefeller Center were not all filled; it was still too early, and thirty-five year old Olivia Maynard sat alone at one of them, gazing around her at the bright scene. The fountains splashed high in frothy plumes, the tulips and daffodils planted around the birches made an explosion of color, and over her head the green leaves of the trees moved gently in the soft air, their shifting light dappling her hair and shoulders.

Donald Webber was smiley.

He smiled all day, every day: morning, afternoon, and night. A happy, delightful soul living amongst the living.

With a great wife and two wonderful kids, who could ask for more?

The start of his mornings went as follows:

Up and out of the door by 7 am; driving to work while enjoying that fresh brewed cup of Joe; arriving and picking up his schedule for the day; climbing into the company truck; driving around picking up supplies and delivering them; then ending his final destination at home around 4 pm.

Mildred Simms reached for her hot cup of tea while looking out the window. She could not stop thinking about her brother Harry. Yesterday, he was home with her sitting in his chair. Today she buried him.

"I don't understand," Mildred said sobbing," Harry never moved away from the TV so why was his body found in that old garage behind the house, with all those bite marks on his face"

She continued talking while sipping her tea. "That poor excuse of a sheriff said Harry died of natural causes. That idiot calls every death natural."

Harry was surprised when a highway patrol car with flashing lights moved directly behind him.

“What’s the problem, Officer?”

“Your license plate. How come it says QWERTY?”

“I’m a writer. I thought it was cool to use the first six letters of a keyboard.”

“How did you decide to use those characters? Did you meditate, or cry out to the gods for inspiration?”

“Nah. It came to me in a dream.”

“What else was in the dream?” the cop asked.

Ben almost tripped over her as he stepped off of the ramp and on to the concrete: a white child with garden green eyes and skin pale as the piece of chalk she was holding in her hand. She had created several crude drawings on the walkway. Even though it was almost dusk, Ben could still make out that most of the crooked etchings were of bugs. Albeit the prototypical preschool rendition.

The shadow danced off the far wall. Its movements were natural, like a tree branch swaying in the wind, but still unsettling nonetheless. And unlike a branch in the wind these movements suggested life.

Ricky rubbed his sore eyes, as much to confirm that what he was seeing was real as to clear his head. Beads of cold sweat trickled down his forehead and into his eyes. The slight stinging sensation bothered him a little, but not enough to take his eyes off of the shadow. It was a strange thing that demanded his attention.

Jake slowly opened his eyes and focused on the carnage around him. The windshield was spider webbed and smeared with blood. The incessant clicking of the turn signal mated with the drums of pain pounding in his head. Jake drew in a deep breath. The interior of the car reeked of alcohol and automotive fluids. He looked at the passenger seat. Lauren sat slumped over, blood soaked hair covering her face.

“Lauren.”

She didn’t answer. Her chest heaved with labored breathing.

Jake reached out for her and shockwaves of pain shot through his body.

He looked at the photo one last time. This would be the nineth or tenth one last time he would look at it today. The photo was of a man who once took peculiar delight in stepping on people only to eventually be stepped on himself. Normally this was nothing out of the ordinary, but what struck Times-Picayune reporter Samual James Ponticliff as strange was the way in which he had been stepped on, which was to say that the man in the photo had literally been stepped on, and stepped on by something big.

The woman ran through the forest after her lover, oblivious in her lust to how far from home she was being led. Even as she fought her way through a tangled and long over-grown mass of thickets and vines her mind was fixed only on the chuckling, darting figure just out of her reach. He was being playful with her, she thought, as she burst through the hoary growth and into a garden rimmed with ancient hedges and deeply cracked stone walls.