Category: Teardrop Road

  • Smilin’ Jack, Part 2

    I had forgotten, but my senses hadn’t. When he showed up again, I felt him stalking me. It started as a tickle, as if a dead finger scratched along my spine. I rose from my bed in my dorm room and dressed. The room was hollow. My roommate moved out long ago to other rooms…

  • Smilin’ Jack, Part 1

    I spent the morning with my love, and when afternoon came, I sent her away with a few regretful kisses, and curled up in my bed to sleep. Night shift called for me to go to sleep late on Sundays. Darkness often greeted me. I tumbled and rumbled across the landscape of my bed, fleeing…

  • The Lost Soul

    “Did you hear that?” I asked. Heart had heard it. It was the meow of a kitten, couldn’t have been a cat. The sound was soft and low, a murmur, a sigh of a call. Not for help, maybe for food. “Poor baby is lost. Where is it?” I was losing interest. I would not…

  • The Horror

    I sat on the balls of my feet on the edge of the bed, looking into the moonlit cage at the small, furry creature that shrank back in terror at the sight of me. I was not me. I was something more base, something less complicated and wholly scarier than a man in his underwear…

  • The Man on the Bridge

    There were about seven of us that night. Chanel, Katty, Walleye, Jammy, Ty, and Harvard had brought me to the bridge, to let the night envelop us and to get away. Back then we just parked on the bridge itself, blocking traffic and not caring a bit about it. The door to Harvard’s car was…

  • Shush

    He was keeping a secret, and it didn’t take long to figure out what it was. We called him Shush. Every now and then we caught him out and staring. We talked to him and tried to get him to respond before we realized he was mute. We gave him a piece of paper and…

  • The Sacrifice

    I love you and I can’t live without you. I love you and I can’t live without you. I love you and I can’t live without you. On and on, I had done this one time before. When I was in fourth grade, I had written I hate Dan Demit over and over again. He…

  • The Heart of the Shadow

    Guardian opened the door for her. He walked to the booth when led there, and he waited while she sat, before taking his seat across from her and smiling. Regina was taking him out to eat again. She did it often. All her money was spent entertaining us. Dinners, movies, all sorts of things were…

  • The Hanged Man

    I was out again. This time, it was many things. A new obsession had come to me, a girl who seemed higher and brighter than possible. She was beautiful and powerful, tragic and complicated, and I was ill prepared for her level of manipulation and intrigue. She was teaching me things I never imagined I…

  • Pain

    “So what do we know?” I asked Job and Regina. We were at an Chinese restaurant. We were full and smoking. “Shadow, Guardian, Shush,” I said. “Servant, Teth, and Assassin,” Regina added, “and that one who came out last night that we couldn’t get anything out of, do you remember that?” “I do,” Job said.…