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As the bus squealed to a halt at the mouth of his driveway, Brian Keating slung his backpack over his shoulder, and made his way past the empty seats toward the driver.

“Have a good night, Mr. Sayers,” Brian said.

The late afternoon sun spilled through the windshield, and the driver shielded his eyes with one hand as he fumbled with the dial on his radio with the other. He cocked his head toward the loud hiss that emanated from the exposed speaker duct-taped to the dashboard. (more…)

The eyes open. It is… blue. It is blue but there is white and green… what happened? The eyes aren’t helping.

The body. There is something hard on the back. Nowhere else. Something is in the hand. Moving is… hard. Is moving supposed to be hard? The neck hurts but the eyes can’t reach the pain. There is no memory of injury. There… there is no memory at all. Something is wrong. There is pain, there is fear, there is… hunger! (more…)

Somewhere in the Middle of Kansas

[Before the Zombie War, mediums were considered con artists by the majority of society. Men and women who were the hosts of flashy Reality T.V. shows, playing up to an audience who tuned in for a quick thrill; sometimes the subject of television or film dramas, mediums have not earned much more than open skepticism and derision. I am speaking with a medium on a dirt patch somewhere in the heart of what used to be America’s bread basket in the state known as Kansas. In the days before the Panic, she was known as Tshilaba, a Romani name meaning “seeker of knowledge.” These days, she is known by something simpler: Mercy.] (more…)

The cuckoo clock
has turned quite sinister
in the darkened parlour of
your ancestors, (more…)

“Hail Mary, full of grace, thy followers are with thee–”

“Shut up.”

To spite Cort, Sandra rubbed a rosary bead between her fingers.  “Thou art first among women–”

Cort slammed a rusty lug wrench against a pipe in the body shop’s wall.  “I said, shut up!” (more…)

Spring came in with a vengeance this year. The rain hasn’t let up for almost two weeks. The wind sheared two thick boughs from my Golden Delicious apple tree, rain washed out the timbers for the raised vegetable beds, mud swamped my outdoor cistern.

The all-night roar of the thaw-swollen Pemegewesset River slapping against the underside of the cast iron bridge gnaws like the persistent scrape of fingernails on a chalkboard. (more…)

“We’ve got to find it, Rick. We’ve just got to.”

“Relax Martin, we will. It can’t be far, it was limping when I last saw it.”

The younger, stronger Rick took the lead as older, frailer Martin followed a bit behind. Rick wished the old man had stayed back at the ranger station. He got in the way more than he was of help but he insisted on tagging along. He wanted to see the thing die, if you could call it dying. It was dead days ago. (more…)