Heaven knows that working for the hotel sucks. I might as well throw hell in there, also. I never should’ve told them I could work during Fall break. I’m either too much of a pushover or a damn idiot. Only a few places are open on Sunday mornings in Blowing Rock, except for a few…
Category: Short Story
Stormstrouper Shorts: Three Flash Fiction Stories
“The Fall” “You see, there was this viral video of a smiling polar bear sliding effortlessly across frozen water that made the rounds last fall. I don’t remember who sent me the video, but that bear seemed like the happiest mammal in the world for eleven seconds. You know it snowed two days ago, and…
A Few Incidents Inside the Earl Grey Wolf (a story from the Shadow Elm Memoir)
Four of five areas split my time living in Charlotte, North Carolina. The constant four were work, home, The Immortal Elf, or the Earl Grey Wolf coffee shop. Then, my time was split into fifths when I had girlfriends. But that was infrequent because I spent most of my Charlotte living as a bachelor, which…
Broken Horses (a story from The Shadow Elm Memoir)
It picked an afternoon summer thunderstorm to finally die on the side of the highway. Sorry, that was a little morbid. I’m not talking about a person but my unfaithful Honda. Good grief, that would be grisly. I was driving back from covering a Charlotte amateur soccer league game for the paper I wrote at the…
Enter the Kilt Cat Man (a story from The Shadow Elm Memoir)
A story from the Shadow Elm Memoir. I’ve been a newshound for most of my professional career. Except for one short period, in between writing gigs, I worked a temporary office job doing data entry for some nameless national pharmacy. I’m relatively sure the only reason they hired me was because I could type and…
Larry Byrd is Gone in November (a story from The Shadow Elm Memoir)
A story from the Shadow Elm Memoir. The person I’m calling Tallulah began as a single palm reader at a traveling carnival. She used her limited telepathic and impressive precognition abilities to deliver fortunes to customers. Eventually, the psychic left the Carnie life and opened up a magic supply retail store in the southeast that…
A Game of SEAHORSE in the Rain (a story from The Shadow Elm Memoir)
A story from the Shadow Elm Memoir. People drinking and playing pool in the Immortal Elf would always go on about the Piedmont. They would have these long, drawn-out discussions about the Piedmont having the best sweet tea, southern hospitality, and tobacco. I always thought the tobacco thing was strange. I nodded, agreed, and said,…
The Girl from the Brown Mountain Lights (a story from The Shadow Elm Memoir)
A story from the Shadow Elm Memoir. The Pisgah National Forest is over 500,000 acres of ancient trees, peaks, secrets, and mysteries in Western North Carolina. The ghost lights above Brown Mountains are one of the many enigmas that are impossible to explain outside of folklore and supernatural reasons. The Lights first decided to reveal…
Prelude to The Shadow Elm Memoir (a story from The Shadow Elm Memoir)
I can’t repeat it enough. North Carolina is the strangest and most remarkable state I’ve ever lived in. Those western mountains, the eastern flat coast, and every crevice in between, is charged with fascinating and unusual things that confirm this. These things aren’t the lions, tigers, and bears from the Wizard of Oz. Oh my!…
The Demon Joke
“Turn right onto East Brooklyn Village Avenue, and your destination will be on your right,” the Map App navigation voice instructs Jim Fields and Edith Cruz toward the Westin Charlotte. Jim is driving his truck and disdains using the Map App. Because of that time, Map App accidentally directed him to a Lake Norman prostitution…