• All the Sand in the Desert

    It was sundown and the desert sand was the color of blood. Cliffton Barnes was fleeing on foot from the vengeful posse who were chasing him through the desert. He had run his horse to death the previous day. He was wanted for the murder of Jessica Smithwick. Above his head two vultures were circling…

  • My Dad’s Mask

    My dad’s favorite holiday was Halloween which was strange because he didn’t seem like the type. For eleven months out of the year he was a total cotton puff. He’d scream when he saw a spider in the house but starting on October 1st he was all about witches and goblins. I can still remember…

  • A Puppy for Christmas

    Nothing is so sweet as a child’s face on Christmas morning. Bailey was 7 years old and all year long she had asked her mother for a puppy. “We’ll see,” was always her mother’s response. Her mother, Jessica, didn’t want a dog in the house. She knew that Bailey would forget to take the dog…

  • Screaming Against the Rock

    The hunter dissects the blue sky with wings spread, gliding over trees and rock with great speed, faultless eyes scanning across the mountain and locking on target. The wings pull back and the falcon makes a spectacular dive, with a sharp black beak like the figure head of a warship cutting through the sea, and…

  • The Woodsman and the Snake

    The mighty oak had stood for centuries. Chop. No fire, no bolt of lightning, no rot ever humbled it. Chop. The tree had a diameter greater than any tree the land had ever known. Chop. Its branches stretched out even further, drenching the ground in a pool of shade. Chop. The tree was so tall…

  • Buried in a Nameless Grave

    The noose around Rebecca Myrtlebank’s neck made her breakout into a rash. The sun offered no mercy and everyone that had gathered to watch her hang had beads of sweat on their arms and foreheads. Rebecca stood on the hangman’s platform looking above the heads of the crowd, looking at the sky, looking for an…

  • The Reaper

    No one made a sound until the count was finished. Heads of households would make their counts and report them to the village minister. Once the minister had totaled the count and compared it to the count from the day before, he told the magistrate to ring the bell. The silver bell hung in a…

  • The One Page Series

    The One Page Series is a collection of stories taken from a writing journal that challenges the writer to follow a story prompt, include ten prearranged words, and contain the story to just one page. Each entry in this series is copied word for word from the original handwritten texts and successfully follows all prompts…

  • A Haunted House

    Part of the One Page Series Tabitha Winsloff has been painting her watercolors for over a hundred years, or so the story goes. When the silver moonlight shines on the Belvedere at precisely midnight, you can see Tabitha sitting at her canvas, painting the same copper beach trees she has painted since 1895. The same…

  • Tea Time in an English Inn

    Part of the One Page Series The shutters clattered and battered all night. The wind was sharp and could blow a man off his knees. I knew there was still a fire going in the hall, so I put on my robe and slippers. A little cup of tea would warm my insides. The inn…

  • Unsolved Mystery

    Part of the One Page Series The green neon sign flashed above the corpse. It made the congressman’s body look like it was beginning to rot but the body was still warm. His wallet was full of cash and his diamond ring was still on his pinky. Last week the bill this guy pushed got…