Short Stories

Tales from before I knew what I was doing (and some after)

Before novels strutted onto the scene with their chapter breaks and dramatic arcs, there were short stories—tight little punches of narrative that didn’t overstay their welcome. Some of the pieces below were first published in my early collections, The Sum of Memory and Destination Okinawa. Others simply appeared out of nowhere, much like inspiration at 3 a.m.

Are they all set in the Vinestead Universe? Not even close. Are they all brilliant examples of the short form? Let’s not get carried away. These are the stories I wrote when I was still figuring things out—which, to be fair, may still be the case. Read them as curios, warnings, or, if you're feeling generous, glimpses of a writer in progress.

Unpublished (2006 - 2012)

Silvan's Demon

It was the lamp on the corner of the desk, thought Silvan; the lamp was the one casting weird shadows on the stained oak, making each of the little pills look like exclamation points on longer gashes, black scratches on the hardwood.

Hurricane Lori

The thing I’ll remember most about Heather were her eyes. Her vacant, empty eyes. Staring at me like nothing in the world was wrong, like my questions were devoid of meaning and of answers. Hers was a face of impassivity and betrayal…

Once a Convict

They could call it freedom if they wanted to, but the truth of the matter was that they wouldn’t be undoing Pony’s cuffs until he had made his way through the gauntlet of barbed fencing and razor wire to the last guard shack on the perimeter fence.

The Litagent and Professor Kemp

Rain, for some reason, excited him. Perhaps it was the variance, the fact that no two storms were really alike. Sometimes it was a heavy downpour, other times nothing more than a light drizzle. The truth was that it operated randomly—a rarity in a world where control was the norm.

R9 at Baker Lane

It was closing in on three in the morning and Jerry the Driver along with Billy the Tech were coming to the end of an uneventful but tiring twelve-hour shift.

Well Digger

Charlie sat on a makeshift chair at the side of the well with his chin in his hands wondering what was going on down there. For several hours, he had not heard a single sound, nor had there been a tug on the rope indicating that a bucket of dirt was ready to be excavated.

The Third Option

He had shifty eyes, that Dr. Hirsch. Shifty eyes and a smooth way of talking that made Paul see him as more of a salesman than a medicine man. If it weren’t for the one diploma hanging conspicuously behind him, his office would have been indistinguishable from a marketing intern’s cubicle.

No Rewrites

“Everything is a damn challenge.” I was trying to break the moment of awkward silence in the elevator, but I realized just after saying it that it might not have been appropriate to curse in front of a complete stranger.

Nixle Recursion

Ten. Trapped, trapped, trapped. A circle within a circle within a sphere, rotating around the axis with no one the wiser, except me. A system of repeating algorithms, functions calling themselves with no end in sight, no observable delta in the arguments. It just keeps repeating, no bigger, no smaller.

From Destination Okinawa (2006)

Written between 2004 and 2006, these stories mark my first real attempts at finding a voice that felt like mine. If college taught me anything, it was this: people respond better when you're writing what you want to write—not what Professor Ghose thinks you should.

Back then, I wanted to be brash. Honest. Maybe even a little provocative. Whether I pulled that off depends on the day you ask me, but I still look back on this period as one of real growth. You’ll find the earliest sparks of the Vinestead Universe here, along with the first signs that I was interested in more than just cool tech—I wanted to explore people, too.

It’s all here. Rough in places, sure, but at least they're short.

Ride the Red Bullet

Johnny woke up that morning and on the holy name of his mother, couldn’t find his car keys. He searched the apartment frantically, even going so far as to check behind the filter in the air conditioner. They weren’t there.

Flying Car

It was his first day with the sanitation department, having been transferred as a result of downsizing in the wastewater division. From liquid waste to solid waste. Things were definitely looking up for him.

The Hair Fairy

It wasn't so much a soccer field as a sea of brown dirt with little
green islands scattered around the edges. The two goals at either end
were missing their nets and the posts were rusting through.

Cassie 3.0

What Franco realized in the twenty minutes that he spent staring at the drapes of his bedroom window was that somehow it had just passed eight in the evening and he was without anything to do. Not one thing. The house was a mess, but that was to be expected.

All by One

The steering wheel had crushed the lower part of his ribcage, had
penetrated a good halfway through his body. The bones were bent inward,
puncturing his internal organs. His breath came shallow and not without
pain. But this was not why he cried.

Grasshopper

If it was summer and if it wasn't raining and if the sun was making the
last third of its journey back towards the horizon, you could bet on
finding Calvin running though the expansive field of tall grass behind
the hospital, chasing the large grasshoppers from blade to blade...

In the Hearts of Men

The salesman's office was large and the expansive walls were filled with
silver frames. Inside each one was the vibrant image of someone's wild
imagination. Lohen had seen them all before and passed them without
interest.

Blood Money

It was a Friday when it happened, early in the morning before the outer lights had really turned up for the day. Beth was in the kitchen preparing a breakfast of potato pancakes and bacon. As the thin strips of pork sizzled in the pan, she set the table, dressed it for two.

Scotty Peanut

Everyone was so concerned with what happened to little Scotty that no one stopped to wonder whether the poor boy was even dead or not.

Going Back

Claire visited the building weekly, usually on a Saturday morning when pedestrian traffic was light and the heat was bearable. It would consume most of her day, but she would return to whatever temperate climate she had left and feel refreshed and happy.

Where They Cannot Follow

The group moved as one, with individual pieces going this way and that, maneuvering through the debris in the street, keeping close to the shadows, pausing whenever the roars echoed in the coming darkness.

Flight

Frankie wanted to fly, wanted to fly so badly that he could taste it. It was the only thing he wanted to do. He thought about it all the time; during class when he was supposed to be paying attention, during dinner when he was supposed to be eating, and in the shower, when he was supposed to be washing his hair.

Slow Burn

The brick looked real enough. And yet for a brief three minutes last Friday, the brick had not existed. They had placed it on the transmission platform and thrown the switch and watched as it instantly disappeared.

Money Tree

There are always spaces in the world that go unnoticed, little areas marked off by the arrangement of houses or the arbitrary division of land. One such place existed between the playground of an elementary school and the backyards of several townhomes on the edge of a neighborhood.

Holloway

His body felt dead, heavy, and worn out. He struggled to even open his eyes. But he did, he had to, it was the only way to erase the images. And yet he saw them, obscured by the white of the ceiling, not fading quickly enough.

Destination Okinawa​

Alex had been to Narita before, twice in fact, but never had he seen it so crowded. It was as if every tourist in the world had suddenly descended on Tokyo, streaming off the plane into the city, completely unaware that it would eat them alive if they weren't careful.

From The Sum of Memory (2004)

It’s easy to look back on your earliest stories and cringe—believe me, I do—but what I really see here is chaos. Controlled? Not even a little. Just someone thrashing around in the dark, trying to turn static into signal, shadows into stories.

There’s a lot of overeager edginess in this collection. A desire to shock, to provoke, maybe even to gross someone out. Many of these stories were built from dreams, attempts to translate raw emotion into something readable. There’s science fiction here, too—faint glimmers of it. Not much of a spark yet, but I was trying.

And somewhere in that tangle of ambition and confusion, Vinestead International was born. That alone makes it all worth it.

Parlance

She was sitting in her favorite chair, holding a Corona in her hand, when she looked over at me and with all the seriousness in the world, said in a low voice, “I am eternity.” 

Mosey General

There is a store in Thurber, Maine, by the name of Mosey General.  It is on the corner of Crane and Gilman, across the street from a barbershop and post office. 

Chelubai

"I can see my back, I can see the world behind it. The ground is light-brown, like the beach. But there is no sand, the ground is hard, parched, cracked."

Midnight Playground

The watch on Ludwig's wrist read 11:57 p.m. He watched several seconds tick by before raising his head again to scan the horizon. The playground was dark; the clouds were eclipsing the moon, making it difficult for it to light the world.

Third Period

Diego didn't know what menopause was, but he knew he probably wasn't experiencing it. For some reason, every time he walked into the lab for third-period Biology, he got flashes of heat throughout his body.

Dreamlover

So close to the end, with a gun to my head, and a paper cup under attack from a colony of ants, I could only stop to think how my life had been wasted in this small apartment, alone.

Marinero

In my mind, the crowd was standing still, staring at my back, conspiring in a dissonant hum. I picked a card off the rack and ran my finger over the image of a sandy beach. The card was smooth; it didn't feel like sand at all.

Case 442

Running, running, running, circles in a dark room. Carpet worn in rectangular circle where the girl of fifteen has been running running running all night and all day for a week now.

Reflections

He sat with his legs crossed and arms folded in his lap, watching silently as the scene unfolded in front of him. His point of view moved with expert direction, making the image an almost perfect reproduction. He felt as if he could reach out and touch the world it was showing.

Spark

Near the end of the dream, locked in the sadness of a final embrace, I heard it; the grating sound of the alarm clock. It was faint, but even in this world, it echoed all around me.

Code

It slowly began to increment and as it did, the previously black dots became red, starting in the west and moving steadily across the state. Some reds returned to black but then quickly reddened again. At one point, there were only five black dots remaining.

The New Kid

The Montgomery Center for Teens was decorated in early Christmas garb. White lights were strung along the roof and doors; they blinked on and off in time with nothing in particular. A dark green wreath with three pinecones and a small red bow hung on the door under a logo that read MCT.

Shadow Beach

I remembered the precautions card from the first visit. It had all the rules you would expect at a resort of this type. No staring, no uninvited advances, the usual. What struck me as funny, as it did the first time, were the rules regarding the police.

Note: A few stories from the original print versions have been, let’s say, mercifully omitted. I also chose not to include the original The Sum of Memory story—it eventually evolved into Xronixle, and trust me, you're better off reading the final form.