The bush blazed with fire but did not burn up.           Maggie paused mid-step on the road, peering through the darkness at the ignited bush. It stood alone in a field, sharp red and orange tongues licking at the night sky. The crackle of flames, the shimmer of heat, yet the bush did not burn. No branches curling and blackening. No leaves shriveling and evaporating into tiny, bat-like embers that darted off into nothingness. The bush just stood there, awash in flames.           Maggie gripped Bird’s hand tighter. Surveyed the road ahead. Only darkness. A partially concealed moon offered just enough light to distinguish road from wilderness. They really should…

          Michael never heard the man approach. Just turned and there he was. Standing beside the ladder.           “You’re Michael.”           A statement. Not a question. “Yes,” Michael wiped his hands on a paint rag and dismounted his stepladder. “How may I…” He stared at the man before him—six feet, maybe a little shorter. Sandy blond hair. Strong chin. Well-developed shoulders. Those were insignificant details though—it was the eyes that threw him. Hazel eyes, belonging simultaneously to a child and a wise old man. Eyes that watched a thousand generations without ever losing their purity.           “I’m sorry.” Michael laid down his paintbrush and extended his hand. “Michael Freeman.”          …

          “I need your help, Mike.”           “Who is this?” Michael shifted his seat on the park bench, pressing the phone closer to his ear.           “Mike I’m—is it okay if I call you Mike? Or are you hard-set on Michael?”           “Who is this?” Michael repeated.           “Right. Sorry.” A high-pitched giggle. “I’m nervous. Fletcher. My name’s Fletcher.”           “Okay, Fletcher,” Michael set his briefcase on the seat beside him. The voice on the phone was young—just a boy. Maybe sixteen or seventeen. “What can I do for you?”           “You’re a lawyer, right? Good one I hear. That’s what I need, Mike. I need a—are you good with…

By Kyle R. Keenan           “They should never grow up.”           Michael looked up, heart skipping a beat—I thought I was alone. A woman stood in the office doorway, tall with a long red trench coat and matching fedora pulled low over her eyes.           Michael checked the grandfather clock in the corner. Almost ten PM. Why would a stranger come to a pastor’s office at this hour?   The woman entered, confident strides, trench coat swishing around her. They should never grow up. She nodded to a photograph on Michael’s desk—his three sons. “How old?”            Who is this woman? He glanced at the photo—himself and the boys up…

“I’m dying.”           The whisper slipped from Michael’s lips, floating up through darkness and disappearing into the dry-rotted rafters of the empty church. He shifted on his sore knees, wooden floorboards squeaking beneath him. The metal folding chair wobbled beneath his clasped hands. His fingers had numbed from cold as afternoon dissolved into evening, the little church chilling with each passing minute. I hate this place, he thought. He hated the rusty furnace that broke down every winter. Hated the rattling air conditioner that gave out every summer. Hated the hissing water pipes, drafty windows, flickering lights.           But most of all, he hated that it was dying. And it’s…

“What a perfect night for the world to end.” Ava looked up from her coffee. Black, of course. Had to be black. Anything else was a milkshake. The man who’d spoken stood beside her booth, hands jammed in the pockets of his trench coat. His mouth sloped in a lop-sided smile as he stared through the rain-streaked diner window. “Listen to that rain,” he said, his voice Morgan Freeman-like—slow and pondering. “Not pounding or driving. Just warm, drizzling static. Like that crackly white-noise you hear when old movies fade to black.” He shook his head. “Perfect way for the world to end. Fading black to the sound of rain.” He…

Jeff stared down at the cassette, the one labeled “DAD’S MIXTAPE” in thick black marker. To this day, he couldn’t remember who’d put the tape together. Probably Mom. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he had it now. Today.           He placed the tape carefully in the dusty cassette player which had lurked on the cabin’s back porch since the first Bush was in office. He pushed the deck shut with his thumbs, checked that the volume was set to the right level, and hit play. The two knobs of the cassette carriage began turning like twin wheels of time, and Jeff heard the static nothingness of blank…

I started fading today.           It started in the corners, then ran up along my edges. A fading of my colors. A muffling of my sound.           If you were to turn this way, glance my direction for even an instant, you might bring me back. Might return me once again to all my sound and color and glory.           But you won’t. I know that. And that’s okay. I want you to know that it’s okay if I fade.           It was one of the last nights of summer. The night you made me. You were out on the lake in that old yellow kayak, the water smooth as…

For just a moment, as we lower your pine box into the wet earth, I’m convinced we’re burying you alive. You’d laugh at me, standing here all damp and matted and wrinkled in my fancy suit as we place you in the ground, in amongst the tangled roots and skipping stones and fishing worms. You’d laugh at the city boy, come back home like the prodigal son himself, clutching a leather wallet crammed with cash and empty plastic sleeves where family photos are supposed to go.  The first shovelful hits the lid with that lifeless ‘thud’ you only hear when dirt strikes a coffin, and I’m once again convinced we’re…

John squinted out at the horizon. Far beyond the endless pines, the sun was just beginning to set over the mountains, painting the heavens with that peculiar light that exists for only a few minutes at the end of the day. It was the sort of perfect evening that made this both the best and the worst time to finally end things with Ariadne Adams.             Across the glass patio table, Ariadne took a deep sip of water. “Oh!” she said, setting down her glass with a determined thud. “And don’t forget about the time you left me stranded on that boat in the Caribbean with a bloodthirsty killer. I…