Tag: missing person

Broken Hearts by Laird Long

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The house was in the hot part of Hollywood. The part where the sun doesn’t shine tourist-bright and pleasant, but rather hot and oppressive; the part where you’d never dream in your wildest scar-dust dreams that there was a great big, cool blue ocean only five miles away. In this part of Hollywood, people were actually punished for their sins.

The house was between a pool hall on the right and a vacant lot on the left. It was a nice house — for a midget. It was bigger than a cardboard box but smaller than a coffin.Read the rest

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Death by Fiction by J. M. Vogel

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There’s a blurred line between truth and fiction that you don’t want to cross.

Alexander sat at his desk, his fingers pounding away on the keyboard. After days of trying to figure out this one particular passage of his novel, he finally knew how he wanted to end it. The theme to “The Twilight Zone” trilled from his left, startling him and effectively ending his momentum on the story.

“Dammit,” he cursed, shoving papers around the desk in his search for his cell. He snatched it and clumsily hit talk just as the phone finished its final pre-voicemail ring.… Read the rest

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Slice by Tom Barlow

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Golf sometimes spoils more than just a good walk.

He was seated on the floor, snoring softly, outside my office door when I arrived that morning. He had no appointment.

The man appeared to have at least a decade on me, mid-50’s, built like a stump with a saturnine face and hair that had no intention of obeying a comb. The tuxedo he wore had a mustard stain on the lapel, his bow tie listed to the left, and his pants were wrinkled.

Having been up until 3 a.m. myself bleeding money at a poker table in the local casino, I wasn’t in the mood for uninvited company.… Read the rest

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Loveable Alan Atcliffe by S.R. Mastrantone

Some people are so nice, it just seems too good to be true.

Loveable Alan Atcliffe: that’s what they call him.

Like Mrs. Montgomery, who waited for the breakdown people for nearly an hour in the dark of winter 2001, before Alan pulled over in his taxi and changed her tyre in just five minutes. Or Father Chase, who knows Alan was the secret donor of the final £2000 that the church needed to pay for a new roof.

Loveable Alan Atcliffe, who lives in the cottage out on the plain, behind the school and the duck pond. Some people in Blythe would go further; they would use words like virtuous, or perhaps even saintly.… Read the rest

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Inured By Stephen D. Rogers

Human beings have the remarkable ability to adapt to just about anything.

The ferry to Martha’s Vineyard was mostly empty up here on the rooftop level, the sky gray and the wind sharp, the smell of the open water different than that found on the beaches of Cape Cod.

Almost all of the other passengers were seated comfortably inside, many taking advantage of the snack bar or the free wireless. On my way up I’d passed both families too excited to sit still and business people more than happy to sit back and let someone else do the driving for a while.… Read the rest

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