(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)So before anything else, a confession: that before the opening of CCLaP last year, I was only a cas...
Kelly Rich, long estranged from her family, is forced to return home when her sister is involved in a mysterious accident. After years of suppressing the events that drove her away she must struggle to unlock the mystery of her past in order to save her sister. But nothing is as it seems in the f...
His legs kicked out behind him and it required much more strength than he had expected to drag himself forward those first few feet. The shaft itself was about as wide as a coffin—and the comparison did very little to settle Todd’s nerves. His breath reverberated off the aluminum, echoing back in...
The deputy, an obstinate bumpkin with a faint lisp, was not too keen on wrangling together a bunch of his guys on a Sunday to wander around the woods looking for a kid who’d probably run away from home and was currently holed up in some friend’s tree house. “That may very well be,” Ben assured hi...
It was Ellie, seated in the backseat of the Cadillac, who ultimately corrected him. “Dad, it’s Gany. With a G.” Gany laughed. “It’s short for Ganymede.” “That’s a cool name,” Ellie said. “It’s one of the moons of Jupiter.” “Sorry,” David said. “My mistake.” His head hurt. “My parents were of the ...
The girl stood beside the dresser, holding one of Mike’s framed photographs in her hands. It was a glamour shot of Mike’s wife, one of those airbrushed, angelic portraits you can get at K-mart or some such place, her hair a nest of springy platinum curls, too much makeup on her face. “She’s prett...
2 BY MIDDAY I WAS OVERCOME BY A CHRONIC fatigue. Whether it was brought on by simple exhaustion, a lack of sustenance, or the middle stages of acute mountain sickness, I did not know. A deep, angry wind picked up in the north and barreled through the valley. On either side I was enclosed in tar-c...
I am a shadow, a faceless figure, shambling down the center of the roadway. A cool breeze overtakes me. There stirs an itching at the base of my skull, where my neck meets my cranium. My fingers rub at it, soft at first, then with mounting vigor. Soon, I am clawing at the scar at the back of...
The sun was directly overhead now; it beat down on him with unforgiving potency. He felt like a solo performer spotlighted onstage. The heat felt good. Despite the rising summer temperatures, the lake water was as cold as an ice bath. Alan found it invigorating. He shook his head and ran his fing...
Apparently he hadn’t known I lived here now. Cordova got out of the cruiser and opened the rear door for me. I got out, stretching my legs. My head still pounded. “You interviewed Nancy Stein the day the Dentman boy drowned in the lake, didn’t you?” I asked him. “Huh?” It was probably the last th...
With a black loose-leaf binder tucked under one arm, she marched through the house with Laurie at her elbow, examining the furniture as well as the overall condition of the house itself. When she paused to swipe a pointy little finger through the dust on the top of the piano in the parlor, Laurie...
This smartly written novel succeeds as both an allegory of smalltown life and a tale of visceral horror.” –Publishers Weekly on The Narrows The town of Stillwater has a very unwelcome resident. The Narrows © 2012 Ronald Malfi The town of Stillwater has been dying—the long and painful death...