A U.S. Marine sniper in Iraq is troubled by the killings he has to perform, but perhaps not as troubled as he may have once been...My only professional publication credit, it was featured in last fall's Flashquake online magazine

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...

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?

Damn stupid kids. Damn these stupid-ass kids and their baseball bats and their boring-ass lives that they ain't got nothin' better to do on a Wednesday night but drive around bustin' up mailboxes. Luther Guthrie's tired of replacing broken mailboxes and isn't going to put up with it anymore, not one more damn minute, and if the damn stupid-ass kids doin' it get hurt, well, they shouldn't have started this in the first damn place. But sometimes being revengeful extracts a mighty toll, and o...

For the last couple of years I have written a Halloween poem for my daughters and read it aloud at our Halloween party. This was last year's and it's based on the premise that the Irish, before they came to America, used to carve jack-o-lanterns from turnips. It was only after they came to the new world that they found the indigenous pumpkin easier to use. I hope you enjoy it and Happy Halloween!

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is one of our most enduring stories, but what if the story hadn't always been the same one with which you grew up? Go back in time and hear about the myth behind the legend, but only if you dare...