Two cousins, bound together by the chains of poverty, happen upon something one hot summer morning that neither finds himself willing to surrender to the other. Each sees in it an escape, either from brutal squalor or crushing loneliness. They'll fight each other for it. They'll kill and die for it.The thing they happen upon that summer morning is, after all, the body of a murdered child.

I originally published the story online as a series of blog posts for verisimilitude. The blog and story both are mine.The Queen and her sister deal with the horrors in their lives differently, but their results are the same: red. Please understand that the 'Queen' seemed to have been a troubled young lady and some of these posts were very explicit.

Who is the Meat in the basement? That's the question on police SWAT Lt. Boulder Johnson's mind. The basement is in his brother-in-law Harley Earle's house and the question is important; Harley's wife Becca, Boulder's sister, was never found after the uprising that saw the dead awaken. They were known as Meats when they were preying on the living. Now that they're supposedly gone, could it really be a Meat in the basement? And if so, who? And if it's who Boulder is afraid it is, for the lov...

There is a black shark swimming through her; through the fluids of her sex and the saliva in her mouth, through the aqueous humor that fills her eyes and the blood that pounds mercilessly in her veins. Its great sweeping tail is always pushing her, driving her ever onward to hunt and kill and eat.To stop is to die and it never stops.It is always hungry.

When President Lincoln is shot dead, an apocalyptic cult worshiping in the swamps of Louisiana fears the end of days is near. When they find the apocalypse's angel buried in mud, they know it. One of them, though, has decided the angel is not theirs to fawn over, it's his.And he'll do anything at all to keep it...

They rip us apart from the inside when they flee from their world into ours.They're officially known as Transmigrating Hostiles, but people on the street call these creatures a multitude of names: screamin' demons, hellhounds, Subjekt 44s; take your pick.People exist who can see these monstrosities before flesh tears, before any blood is shed.These people are officially known as Transmigrating Hostiles Detection Specialists (T.H.D.S.). Some people call them Thuds bu...

Something stalks the inhabitants of a small North Carolina town, something with an appetite that can't be sated. Two girls are forced to help it hunt for meat so that they can save their mother. Is there enough of Mom left to save, though?

You've heard the saying 'Jesus is coming and, boy, is he pissed'. Well, you don't know the half of it.He'll start Armageddon in the tiny town of Garrett's Gap, North Carolina then take it into the world unless Sheriff's Deputy Chuck Halsey and the stranger who came to help can stop him.Jesus isn't easily dealt with, though, and he's got something going for him that Chuck and his compatriot never saw coming, something best described with four words: spinning Ginsu dick sword.

Four years ago, Belro Addison's wife betrayed him, and he found himself a slave in the city of Sera'thina because of it. He holds no ill-will against her or her lover, though; the kyronite mines are where he belongs, their endless tunnels the only home he knows anymore, their cleansing flames his only companion. But when fifth columnists, led by the Jessaret, make a pawn of him in their quest to overthrow the city's despotic Magister, they think they're forcing him to choose between fire a...

At last; Undermeat, finished and complete -- Sweetly and the junkie are in love. There's another man in Sweetly's life, though, a man named Dylan Rose, Sweetly's boss and manager, her controller and pimp. He drove the junkie away once upon a time, breaking the junkie's hope like a spine, driving him into the Undermeat, the place where hope goes to die. That's how the junkie knows all too well the mistake that Sweetly's about to make in going to the Undermeat for help. Nightburners won't do...

Better not pout, better not cry, better not shout, I'm telling you why: the Red Father's coming, and he's the thing children fear most about Christmas night. He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake, he knows when you've been bad or good, so for God's sake, run, even if it does you no good at all...The first short story I ever wrote. This is my take on the 'Santa-as-monster' idea, and it's one I'm proud of.

How many ways are there to die as you hunt out here in the icy Minnesota winter? Too many: frost-bite, wild animals, disease, starvation. More if you count the dead things hunting you in turn. The worst has to be the same people you'd hoped you could count as allies here at the end of the world. Hate, though, as blinding as the snow, has a way of making even the end of the world seem like just another day at work in years past, riding a lawn-mower and enjoying the sunshine. There and then,...