I had nearly forgotten about the picture, had come so terribly close to letting it slip away from my memory forever. Weeks would go by before the amber-red flames would dance and roil in my mind’s eye once again.
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Bundled against the cold, the boy sits near the crackling fire, along the lonely edge of the wintertime woods. The silverleaf oak, juniper, and tall pines are barren. The low light of gray clouds sifts through long-fingered skeleton branches which reach to the desolate sky. He rests on the snow-dusted path with the last of the tired men along a line of similar small encampments. The trail leads down to a final valley before it meets the imposing black rock walls of the white-capped Eastern Mountains.
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He puts the cigarette in his mouth and lights it with a match, letting the match burn as he continues speaking, “I didn’t even give you a name, Inspector. What could you possibly arrest me for that I won’t deny by the time we walk out of this office?”
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The Central Pacific Mercury left St. Louis in a cloud of roiling steam and blue-gray dust before the first light of sun. The brakeman — a rail of a man with a silver-buttoned coat hanging loose over scarecrow arms, a long, black moustache, and a mop of dark brown hair under a faded blue short-brimmed hat — hung off the old mail car door and waved a dim lantern up then down three times, signalling the engineer.
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Rip Crowley in Fox Osage: The Last Train of Cash MacLeod
The Great Northern had left Grand Forks before the dry, yellow prairie was touched with the sun’s first light. By mid-day, the whistle was crying long and loud as the train chuffed out of the weathered Sioux Falls station, heading southbound towards Wichita across the dismal plain.
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Amelia Dare, Baby Girl Detective: The Case of the Creepy Crawlies
Toby Burnhouser was bigger than Brick, and he held my right arm down. Toby gritted his gums and breathed hard through his nose. He took his job as one of Jimmy’s henchmen a little too seriously. My right hand started to go numb as Burnhouser pushed down harder into the short-pile race-track play carpet.
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They had tailed Emerson and Gilley from Dr. Carter’s in New York, down to D.C. After that, they had to duck under the cover of a Miami airport newsstand to avoid them. Bought a Post and a magazine. A quick outfit change at a tourist shop next door, then hustled to the other side of the terminal. Booked a charter down to Rio via Havana.
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Amelia Dare, Baby Girl Detective: The Case of the Heavy Patsy
In this line of work, you have to know when to use the carrot, and when to use the stick. Thud was nearly twice my size though probably a month younger. All he’d have to do is fall over on me, even a little bit, and I’m pretty sure I’d break. I motioned O’Shaughnessy to watch lookout – see any of the Biggies coming back into the room, distract. He knew what to do.
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He had found it almost by accident, the strange stone monkey, an artifact worth a lot to an old guy in Chicago. Three days later he was on a cot in a hut in Fortaleza in the depths of something a lot like malaria. It was the monkey – the Gypsy Monkey, they called it – and it spoke to him in his twisted dreams. Make your choice, make your sacrifice.
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This story was one of ten selected by the readers and editors of Creative Loafing for their 2010 Fiction Contest.
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They had found him by what the notebook called the Indestructible Tree. Upon first glance, Maddy thought it looked pretty well destroyed. Then she peered closer, gingerly brushing a brown curl out of her face. The tree – a gnarled tangle of ancient roots and knots plowing through surprisingly lush earth – was bent heavy to her left, still sprouting small green sprigs along tired branches. It begged to be let to the ground.
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On the porch. With a drink and an Ybor City cigar. You listen to me, now, you’ll be fine, just fine. Listen here. I know about him. He come from out west, California. Gonna make it. Big time.
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It was the first night, Monday, when Ren knew something was wrong in the room of the old hotel. He didn’t see anything, but he could feel it. There are things that feel right and things that feel wrong. At that moment in the room, in the middle of the night, at two forty-six a.m., which he knew because the red light of the alarm was right next to his head, everything in the room felt wrong.
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benjamin j kirby 