Thriller + Mystery

It came again. That shuf-shuf-shuffle of ragged fabric on bare stone. That tapping; that endless tapping. Blackened bone on cold cement. Not his bare stone, no. Not his cold cement. Not here in his twenty-third-floor condo with the private access elevator and the floor-to-ceiling windows. All white leather and polished chrome. No, it came, again, […]

I visited the peat bog just before dawn, when the morning fog was still heavy, hovering over the carpet of peat like a damp blanket. Earlier that morning, I’d noticed peat dried and nailed to the windowsills of most of the stone cottages in town as I wandered the nearly empty streets. “Keeps the bugs […]

He passes her a turquoise paper bag, the kind you get at Watson’s, over the remains of her birthday dessert. Inside are two bottles of toner. She turns them over to read the label. It’s not the brand she usually uses, but this is probably nicer than what she can afford. “There was a buy-one-get-one-free […]

The Hunger haunts me most when I’m nauseous, which feels like it’s all the time these days. Morning sickness, my ass. I throw up at a minimum once per day, and it’s not just in the morning. The nausea is all day, every day; relentless. The Hunger is equally as relentless, though, taunting me through […]

When Crenshaw shoots Anneke, he’s within arm’s reach of me. I watch my hand grab him by the back of the neck. My body follows through, and I keep moving. He loses his balance. I feel the base of his skull stretching the web between my thumb and pointer for a second of resistance, and […]

For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror.                                     —Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies December 16, 1932 The sun was as hot as the Fourth of July, though it was almost Christmas. I ran a finger over the note in my pocket: I like what you wrote about that creep who killed the kids. Show […]

“Still got a boyfriend?” “You know you can’t ask me that.” Rochelle kept it light, her sing-song Mississippi accent adorable. She tightened the suture on Farmer’s fourth stab wound. One more to go. “I told you, though, you’d be first to know if I dump him.” A major rule – no flirting with the inmates […]

I slink down the street, rotting tot in stroller. Each clack of the wheels on the sidewalk cracks becomes a twist inside my chest. Squeals ringing from the playground. Ladies on benches in neat dresses, reading or chatting or watching kids play. I sit on a bench, soaking up all the happy around me. Wendy? […]

They gathered around the body at midnight.  All four members of Lilith Skulls—Amy, Petra, Ty, and Cat—hovered above the once pink face of their band manager, Jeff, who laid in a barren corn field outside a New Jersey dive bar. His corpse now illuminated by moonlight and the weak beam of Ty’s flashlight.   There were […]

She feeds the abdicators every morning at eight o’clock. Canned tuna or beans. She opens the cans into a few of her Wedgwood bowls and places them outside the glass doors of the Dakota.  She wishes she had better use for her fine China. She stands inside the vestibule and watches them. Like feeding stray […]

The night before Grandaddy Burl died, Colly dreamed of a flathead catfish swallowing him whole.  Summer storms had been rolling in since June; the mountain air sitting heavy like flannel on fevered skin. Splashes of sunbeams illuminated verdant pockets, but the inevitability of more rain coaxed the shadows out from crevices and caves to smother […]

The Bethmoers expected their neighbors.   Their apartment demanded guests. Meat cooked in the oven. All the lamps threw light.  The Muellers were expected at 8.   In private, the Bethmoers called Mrs. Mueller “the mouth.” Mrs. Mueller licked her lips often, consuming her lipstick through the night. Her lips, joked Mrs. Bethmoer, began the evening in […]