The fire was everywhere.Lena gripped the steering wheel, though the car had long stopped moving. Smoke coiled into the cabin, thick and furious, choking her breath with every gasp. Outside, the night had cracked open—glass scattered across the wet pavement, the hushed aftermath of screaming brakes and shattering metal. But inside, all she could hear […]
It was just supposed to be another demolition.Dust hung in the morning air like a veil, catching the slant of the sun as men in neon vests moved across cracked concrete with the weary rhythm of routine. Jack, the site supervisor, stood near the chain-link gate, coffee in hand, already shouting over the diesel growl […]
The fire started in the middle of the night, when most of the town was still sleeping. It caught first in the corner of the old wooden church, the part where the roof sagged with age and the eaves had grown soft with years of summer rain and winter frost. No one saw the first […]
The boy didn’t speak for a long time.He stood in the hallway, one sneaker halfway off, backpack sagging from one shoulder, staring at the pale outline just above the baseboard. The house was quiet—his mother still at work, his little sister upstairs humming tunelessly to herself. Outside, the late autumn wind knocked the brittle branches […]
Eli Jenkins had never been one for nonsense. The land was hard, the seasons were short, and talk didn’t feed the cattle. His boots were older than some of his neighbors, and his faith, if you asked him, was “between me and the good Lord—and not the shouting kind.”He lived alone on seventy-two acres just […]
Margaret never imagined she’d still be working past seventy. Her hands were slower now, her steps more careful, but there was something in her that wouldn’t let her stop — not yet. Not while people still died alone.She arrived each morning at the hospice before the sun rose, the scent of lavender oil already clinging […]
The emergency room was quiet for a moment — that kind of silence that only settles after chaos has passed through like a storm. Nurses moved softly, their faces heavy. Dr. Alvarez stood by the wall, gloves dangling at his side, eyes locked on the smallest bed in the corner. The code had been called […]
The water was cold—just a trickle from the cracked sink in Cell B17—but to Marcus, it felt like the Jordan River.He cupped his hands beneath the stream, his fingers trembling. It had taken him weeks to find the words, longer still to believe them. But tonight, those words would be spoken—not by a preacher, not […]
She always sat at the corner booth of Miller’s Diner, just beneath the humming neon sign that blinked “Open 24 Hours,” as if the night ever truly ended for her. Most people didn’t notice her, not really. To the waitresses, she was just the woman with the paper napkins and black ink pen, the one […]
The first time Marcus noticed the cross, he was just trying to get to school without getting jumped.He walked the long way, past the broken swings in the housing complex, down the alley that smelled of rot and gasoline, past the dumpster that always hummed with flies. But that morning, something different caught his eye […]