Midnight Train

In my old age I’ve seen a lot of things. Some things I’m a little more proud of than others. As a boy there wasn’t a damn thing that could sate my appetite for the world around me. Everything in reach I had to get my hands on, take it apart and study it. My natural curiosity is what got me into the many scraps and situations of my youth.

I remember when I wasn’t any older than six, it was the fall of nineteen hundred and twenty-eight, me and several of the local boys were out playing a game of hide-and-seek. Denny Louis was the seeker, and a damned good one at that, so I took it upon myself to find a damned good hiding place. I remembered the hayloft out in our barn, and figured I could hide myself among the many bales of hay up there, maybe even push some of those bales around like I had times before when I wanted to build a fort, and get myself a perfect hiding space. Denny started counting out loud from a hundred and I took off a running to the barn, the breeze tickling my cheeks and smelling like the harvest.

I ran through those big red doors and my eyes fell on Denny Louis’ mama laying on the ground, straw in her hair and her dress hiked up, with my Daddy laying on top of her, looking like he was trying to pick himself up, but he seemed to be having trouble. I had no idea what I was seeing, but I would later learn all about what my Daddy was doing when I was fourteen when me and Sandra Hannigan made our way up into the same hayloft that I had hid so many times, and made so many forts in, to get out of the rain. She shook the water from that beautiful blazing, red hair of hers and noticed my eyes stuck on her nipples poking out like little buttons in the cold, wet air. She hiked up that flowery yellow dress she liked to wear and spread her creamy white, freckled legs, revealing her sweet fire peach. There in the smell of spring rain and old horse shit I made love for the first time. Beautiful girl, she was.

“Daddy?” my little voice rung out, echoing off the dusty, wooden walls. My old man turned and stared at me, like he’d been caught dipping his hand into the honey pot, and for lack of better words, that’s exactly what he was doing. He hoisted himself off of Mrs. Louis and made his way over to me.

Unbranded Laptop

My brother moved out of the house back in 2002 once he got his job as a Computer technician, and he recently went missing. When I went to his house, it was locked, with 3 sheets of printer paper taped to the front door.

"While coming home from work one day, I noticed someone had left their damaged grey laptop laying in the middle of my driveway one day. I got out of my car to examine it more carefully.

The LCD definitely showed signs of user related damage, as there was a large hole on the left side of the screen that fit a standard Phillips Head screwdriver perfectly. There was a webcam above the display as well, and it was also destroyed with the same screwdriver. Other than those, however, everything else on the computer showed minor signs of wear, like almost all of the keyboards keys were faded, but nothing to the extent that it could be considered unusable. I looked at the back of the display to find out what brand it is, and yet, I couldn't find anything. I looked at the entire laptop's shell and there was no text or logo stating what brand it is. In fact, there was no warranty sticker, no "Proof of licence" sticker on the bottom, no text whatsoever. What's even more odd was the fact that the only ports on the laptop was a VGA port for connecting an external display and a USB port. How long could this laptop have possibly run without a charging port to recharge the battery? It must have been a very low end laptop where you had to remove the battery pack and put it into it's own charging dock. Why did it exactly have a web cam, though?

The Cabin and the Dolls

I don't know what to do anymore. I’m so scared and I can't trust anyone. I went camping about 3 weekends ago in the Huntsville national forest in Texas. Me and 3 friends that came home for the weekend, they are all in college and usually we all get together at least once a year, old friends from high school. For the camping trip we planned to go backpacking deep in the forest, live off of fish that we catch and animals that we can trap. We have been doing this for awhile in Texas and in numerous places, Arizona, Colorado (if anyone is familiar with the Spanish peaks there), New Mexico, so we‘re pretty much used to anything you‘d encounter out there. It was my turn to pick where we went camping, so I chose Huntsville (more accurately it’s Huntsville/New Waverly). So we drive up there park our car in a camping park spot and start walking off into the forest. We had some laughs along the way, everyone catching up with each other's lives. We walked until it started to get dark and set up camp where we stopped. Everyone gathered wood to make a fire and we set our tent up. And we do what we always do: try and scare each other with weird stories.

Around this time we started to smell something very faint. It was noticeable, but not overbearing. We couldn't put our finger on what it was, so we just carried on. Mike had to go piss and he walked off in the forest. A second later he come running back, piss all down his jeans like he’d missed really bad. Immediately we all crack up and throw some jokes at him. Then we noticed that he was white as snow and trying to catch his breath. He starts screaming for us to follow him, and runs off.

DO NOT TOUCH

If you go into this one tiny, dingy one-story bar in Paris, and the right bartender is behind the counter that night, you might be able to see a very exclusive gallery show of the lost works of one Henri Beauchamp. But, to get in, you have to prove you're a devotee of the artist to get in.

You'll be asked, in clear and perfect English, "What would like to partake of this glorious night?" Answer "absinthe", no matter what. Any other drink, from whiskey to water, will kill you as you sleep.

The next question will regard the type, and you MUST answer one of two things: "The stuff that Man himself could not bear to take," or, "The good stuff. The best stuff." If you ask for any other absinthe, in any other way, you will be plagued by nightmares for 13 days. Each night's dream will be more horrible than the last, until, upon the thirteenth dream, your nightmare will follow you, every moment of your waking and sleeping life.

Die Before You Sleep

You ever wonder what happens to you when you die? Well, I have a little idea of it. People die at all ages, and of all types of causes. Sometimes it's by injury, sometimes it's by disease.

But sometimes, old men and women just die in their sleep.

Hunted Hunter

My name is Christopher Beck.

I’m a hunter, and I lived in the state of Colorado before . . . Well, before my life changed forever.

I hunted almost every day. I didn’t need to go to grocery stores or supermarkets, I needed only what I caught. Hell, I even stopped using guns at one point, and made myself a bow and arrows to hunt with.

I lived alone in the woods, with the nearest town being at least two hours drive away. It was better this way, I preferred being alone and at peace. I entertained myself by creating arrows when I had the time, or writing to relatives who were “concerned” about me spending all my time alone. I used the mail to write, I didn’t have a computer or a TV or anything “luxurious.” The mailman was the only person I saw regularly, and we didn’t speak often, which I was perfectly fine with, and I assumed so was he.

One day, I got a letter from my grandmother, who hadn’t written to me since a week after I left my city home. It was an invitation to her 90th birthday party. She was having it in Atlanta, where most of my relatives lived, and I was slightly torn over whether to attend or not. On one hand, the brief time in my childhood when I was close with my grandmother, she had been sweet and loving to me, and I would definitely feel guilty if I didn’t attend. On the other hand, Atlanta was a big city, filled with a lot of people, and at her party there would definitely be a lot of people.

I decided that spending some time with my grandmother on her birthday would be worth shifting through crowds, and I went to the town nearest to me to buy some nice clothes.

When I got back to the cabin things seemed off.

“We have a right to know”

“We have a right to know,” said Dallas.
The men were standing out on Bergeron’s front porch, smoking cigarettes, with the exception of Dallas, who had taken up smoking a pipe after garnering a subscription to Playboy about six months back. There were four of them: Frank Dallas, John Kelly, Alan Gottfried (whom the men referred to playfully as “Gott”) and Nathan Bergeron. The wives were inside Kathy Bergeron’s kitchen, playing bridge and gossiping and listening to the news on the television.
It was what happened every week. It was normal.
John Kelly and Gott said nothing, simply looked down at their feet and smoked a little quieter, somehow. Kelly was a contractor, and the only bachelor in the group. He was perhaps the most-well-liked man in the neighborhood, by both the men and women, but he was a simple man, and not prone to abstract thought. Still, he was kind-hearted, and that meant more than brains in a lot of ways. He had nothing to say to Dallas, not because he agreed or disagreed, but because he was not sure.

I'll never forget that night...

You know with Halloween just passing, it reminds me of three years ago. I'm a stickler for nostalgia, and I usually all it takes is for some small reminder to get me into one of those moods. Of course, it'd be hard to forget the Halloween of 2008. It was a typical Halloween, everyone was out gathering candy, and I was out for a stroll. I live in a small country town, but it's right down the road from a major city, so it's not all cows and chickens, but not all paved roads either. I had been walking down one such paved road when I stumbled upon it. I think it was eating someone. I was never really sure, because it only took my brain a split second to tell my legs to leave regardless of whether or not the rest of me was coming along.

The road wasn't far from my house, so I knew that if I continued to run I could eventually reach at least relative safety. The creature was huge, so it wasn't like I'd be able to escape just by some small wooden door. However, I had a big katana inside my house and I thought that I'd at least feel better if I could hold onto it while cowering in my room.

I never made it passed the edge of the road. The creature was upon me before I could even cry for help. It knocked me down and I rolled over on my back as I raised my hands to defend myself from it. In response, it bit my right hand, right between my thumb and forefinger.

I had only a passing glance to look at this creature before as I had attempted to flee, but now that it was sitting ontop of me, I got a REAL good look at it. Besides, my hand was still in it's mouth, so I had little choice.

It wasn't as huge as I had originally thought, only a little bigger than a man, but still big for an animal. The creature was wolf-like, that's the only way to describe it. It had the eyes of a wolf and was very furry, but it's face wasn't right. It looked almost human.