"Father, I'm scared," Charlotte said. The old man stopped in mid pull of the animals hide. He put the carcass on a log that sat beside him. Her father wrung his hands, flicking sinew and blood onto the dirt. Some flew into the fire and made a sizzling sound. The blood and flesh put off a smell that wasn’t unpleasant and made Charlotte’s stomach gurgle. She felt self-conscious as he looked at her. You never showed fear. You accepted everything on blind faith. That was the way it was as soon as you turned five years old, she thought.

"Charlotte, the way of The Leap is a good thing. Remember how happy May was just last year? She ran for the edge." Her father said. He smiled and looked off into the distance. Charlotte knew he was reliving her Aunts Leap. Not death. You never said death.

Read the rest…

Sample of Fresh, a Night Portals Short Story

There was a clear view of the door and I saw my twin walk in with two other men. They were all smiling a patting each other on the back. The breath caught in my throat and I didn’t breathe for at least a minute as I watched them all take a seat at the bar. I closed and opened my eyes and rubbed them with the back of my hands. For a second, I thought it was the lighting in the bar, but when I opened my eyes back up I saw the mirror image of myself once again. Different clothes, but everything else was the same right down to hair color and the small mole below my lower lip. He had a little more facial hair than me but the man I saw sitting not ten feet away from me…

Sample from Bike Ride

They sat there most of the day.

There were many more tender kisses and talk that Ryan had never had before in his life. The day was perfect, and Ryan knew it wouldn’t last. The sun was already starting to make its way behind the trees. The natural kid watch that reminded you it was time to get home, and that your dad didn’t care if it was summer.

“Ryan. Do you think you’ll remember me when you get older?” Jen said.

He looked at the girl he fell in love with. Her face was sad, and Ryan put his arm around her. She felt cold, and stiff against his body. “How could I ever forget you, we will be together forever.”

Jen smiled up at him. She pushed her head up to his and kissed his lips once more. The wetness lingered on his…

The storm that killed her entire family had been a freak one like most storms were now. A category five tornado that materialized out of sunny skies. The people at Earthbase said that there was no way to see it coming. It hadn’t been there one moment, and then the next it had.
Burk laid on the floor for hours hoping that maybe it had been a mistake. But deep down she knew it wasn’t. She rocked back and forth on the cold metal floor of the station until she fell asleep.
She woke up again in her bunk and looked across the tube, seeing a man sitting in her control room chair. He was dressed more for a ticker tape parade in the twenties, not for twenty-first-century space flight. He wore a pinstripe suit, and he had slicked back hair the matched his shiny black shoes. He was contemplating…

The last hours of the day that everything was normal were just like any other day. I was happy to be out of the motel office and going home to Marie. I walked a couple of blocks to our house. There was a slight breeze, and birds chirped over my head as I walked down the tree-shaded sidewalk. For a long time, I felt mad at myself for going home. If I had known I would have asked Brent for a room at the motel. But after seeing what I have seen in the last few years, I know now that Marie’s death was inevitable. Everyone was doomed. It’s funny, but I consider the rest of humans the lucky ones. I’m the one that is doomed.
Anyway, I’m getting off track. Marie and I cuddled on the couch and watched some dumb movie that I can’t remember now. I wish…

Sample from Walter.

Walter heard his mother snoring in the next room. He laid staring at the ceiling, the last bits of his dream floating away. Brian had come to him in all his bloody glory.
“You killed me Walter.” Brian said. Blood and bits of the boys brain dripped down his cheek. “You said the words, you made it happen.”
In the dream Walter sat in Mrs. Lawson’s class. Only two desks were in the room, his, and Brian’s. Except Brian’s desk was turned back around facing Walter’s. The boy’s blood dripped in slow procession onto the top of the desk, making a watery plopping sound as it hit.
“I didn’t mean it! I was just mad Brian. You have been so mean these last couple of years.” Walter said. (Not being able to meet the other boys eyes).
“You killed me with your words Walter.” The Brian thing…

Sample from, Aida. Get it in The Night Portals Boxed Set

George’s breath caught in his throat. The ad had changed once more. The lady’s face changed. It was contorted into a surprised grimace.
Aida’s face was filled with so much terror and anguish, George had to look away, not recognizing his love. His heart, as they were so apt to say on every social media site that ever was. George barely recognized her anguished face as she hung in suspended animation. She was falling. And the man in the picture knew it. George stood looking at his own face contorted in a horrible grimace that would never wipe off.
“What are you doing here George?”

Read, Aida, HERE

I remember…

I died when I was 8 years old. I drowned. It was summer and my father took me down to our dock to go for the first swim of my summer vacation. Being scared of the water for all of my short life, but having learned how to swim the summer before, fear had abandoned me to the point of blurring my self-preservation. I had become cocky. I barreled across the dock, with my bare feet slapping the boards, sending off hollow echoes across the lake that existed right outside our door. My father’s shouts to wait blew away, lost in the noise of my feet, and my shouts of glee.
I reached the end of the dock and with the summer sun on my back and sheer joy of no classrooms for the next three months, I launched myself into the air. There was a moment of…

RED HAT
Sherri glanced at the bumper sticker and had to laugh. Yes, a giant meteor might be better in this current political climate. It would definitely be better than the two bozos that had been chosen from them… Sherri contemplated a giant rock hitting the earth as she stood outside of the school that had been assigned to her to cast her vote.
She didn’t notice the man until she felt a hand on her ass. She spun around and stood staring at a man wearing one of those stupid red hats, and sporting an even dumber grin.
“What the hell?” Sherri said. She couldn’t believe what just happened.
“Get used to it sweetie. Once he’s in office things are going to go back to the way they were. The good days, when women knew what they were for.”
Sherri couldn’t stop herself. Her hand felt like it had…

The wind blows right through you late at night in the desert. It was especially bad when you had to sit on a cold metal bench at a bus stop with no barriers to block the damn breeze. I could always feel my bones chilled back then, on nights that I had no business being out. I’d go back to just being cold physically. You can do something about that. You can get warm again. I’ll never feel warmth ever again.
I was looking for revenge that night. Revenge over something that most sensible people would have let roll off their backs. But just like I had no buffer from the cold wind, I also had no sense.
He’d called my girl the C word. Yes, that one. This was after she’d denied Scott Harmony’s advances. The first offense got you beaten where I came from, and the second got…