The Evaluator

by Premee Mohamed

There’s a dish of milk balanced on the trailer’s top step, something dark surfacing in the white like a shark. As I knock and wait, I try to figure it out: a Hostess Cupcake? A Ding-Dong? You leave your best, after all.

Inside, Mrs. Bruinsma makes coffee with the lightly champagne-coloured water from the tap. Mine cools in a chipped and faded Snoopy mug while I explain why I’m here, pushing a business card across the sticky tablecloth.

“Are you with the government?” she finally asks.

“No, ma’am. We’re a private company.”

“Do you have… equipment? Are you going to do tests on her?”

“No. She’ll be fine. You can stay and watch if you want.”

She’s not listening, and nothing I’m saying, I figure, is the deciding factor that gets her up from the table. I follow her outside, careful not to touch the teetering offering. We walk past a dozen trailers, some clearly abandoned, others more ambiguously so, and head through the fence marking the border of Meadow Hill. (Continue Reading…)

The 2023 Halloween Parade

by Alasdair Stuart

This year you pass through a stone arch to reach the Parade. The churro stand is to one side, the bouncer to the other. You can’t quite tell if the bouncer is checking if you’ve been to the churro stand or if you’ve got your wristband. You do know both are pointedly ignoring the plate of raw meat on a nearby small table. There’s a notice, the familiar bone coloured paper and Silian rail, reading ‘Please take your seats. The Parade is about to begin.’ You walk through the arch and see… (Continue Reading…)

Darke’s Last Show

by Jonathan Louis Duckworth

I’m still smiling when the rideshare car pulls up. Silver Honda Accord. Driver: Raul. 4.9 star rating, meaning some monster gave him a petty 4-star review once—there is no circle of Hell low enough. Raul’s a handsome kid, maybe twenty, lots of hair product, a fade shaved onto the back of his head, a winning smile, and soft-spoken. I take a quick shine to him.

Traffic’s light for a Thursday night in South Beach. It should take half an hour to get to where my friends will be expecting me, not that I’m in a rush. The car’s body trembles from the bass of an impressive sound system; I feel each pleasant pulse in the roots of my molars.

“You mind turning it up, kid? I like this one.”

Raul’s surprised. “For real? No offense, but you seem a little old to be bumping Shorty BoomBoom.”

If only he knew how old. “I try to keep up with things.” (Continue Reading…)

Midnight In The Southland

By Todd Keisling

“From the grim Ohio Valley to the mists of the Appalachian Plateau, this is Midnight in the Southland with your host Gus Guthrie. Now, here’s Gus…”

That’s how Midnight in the Southland always started. Back in the ‘90s and early aughts, if you were anywhere in Kentucky, Ohio, or either of the Virginias, you probably heard ole Gus. Ghosts, demons, aliens, government conspiracies—you name it, Gus talked about it. He played it straight, took every caller seriously and treated them with respect, and over the years, he built a reputation for being the “Fox Mulder” of radio. Gus wanted to believe, and the odds were good he’d believe you, too.

I grew up listening to him, usually on those late nights while camping with my dad. My old man would be conked out in his sleeping bag, and I’d still be awake, listening to the whispering trees, crackling fire, and the static-tinged yarns spun by guests on Gus’s show. “We’re all lonely travelers,” he used to say, “wandering empty roads under a weight of cosmic indifference.” I didn’t understand what he meant back then; I just knew I wanted to be a lonely traveler, a mysterious caller in the night, someone who saw or heard or felt something. That never happened. Not while I was a kid, and not while Gus was still alive and on the air.

He died sometime in 2002, just after I’d started college. The Lexington Herald gave him front page real estate. REMEMBERING GUS GUTHRIE, the headline read, and the online comments were filled with everyone’s favorite stories from his tenure at the microphone. They all expressed a similar feeling, one I had often felt while growing up, about Gus being a kind of beacon in the dark forest of the weird.

“What brings you out tonight, Lonely Traveler?” (Continue Reading…)

A Wonder of Nature, In Need of Killing

By Virginia Campen

Aunt Pearl saw the creature first, through the kitchen window. “Snapping turtle,” she said, “a big one, headed toward the cow pond.” She stripped off her rubber dishwashing gloves and shut down the hot water, twisting the busted faucet stem with an old pair of pliers. “I’ll make turtle soup, if anyone has a mind to catch it.” (Continue Reading…)