PAK! I opened my eyes to a sharp cracking sound. I wasn’t sure if I had dreamed it and was trying to remember what I had been dreaming when [PAK!] I heard something hit the window again. I carefully peeked out, making sure not to move the curtain. With no...
I told them I was too old to be scared. My older cousins, herded into each room of the High School of Horrors, laughed, screamed, laughed again, but the masks and strobes terrified me. Rushing from one room, cardboard coffins spilling vampires onto my scr...
Two days after a storm ripped away most of our roof, we moved into a room in the next town over at the Gardener Inn & Motel. The insurance company said it could be anywhere from four to twelve weeks before we could move home again—depending largely on whe...
“If we ever do this again,” I thought, as I scanned the lobby, “I’ll find a hotel where I can be alone somewhere other than my room.” ( . )( . ) Lillith had insisted on coming to a restaurant in a little inn in the next town over from ours. When we first...
We were on our way to see a band my wife loves. I didn't know much about this band, but she was excited and I was desperate for a night out. What with work and the kids dropping in for the odd weekend at home and all the other things that consume our week...
How are you coming along with the grading? Faith’s text floats on the screen. I debate not answering. If I get into a conversation with her about the fact that I am making very little progress on the stack of final papers...well, I will make even less pro...
The highway rest-stop looked like a polar refugee-camp. The plows had their hands full with I-95 and hadn’t been through here in several hours. There had to be fifty or more cars left haphazardly in the parking area, some partially blocking the road, many...
“Ouch! Take it easy!” Faith hissed. She reached back and rubbed the welt from the crop. Her dark nails were striking against her bare flesh. “I think you're supposed to start light,” she whined. “Now kiss it to say you’re sorry.” I did kiss it. In fact, a...
I took the elevator up from the conference level feeling pretty smug. As conference presentations go, this had been a pretty good one. I had a big crowd in my session and my paper was very well-received. For once in my life, no old guy raised his hand and...
“Don’t get mad,” was the first thing she said when I answered my wife’s phone call. That’s one command that has the certain and opposite effect. Immediately, my blood pressure squeezed up and I clenched my jaw. I had had a week. My car wouldn’t start on T...
A woman stood on a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The woman’s hands were tied behind her, her wrists tightly bound with a cord. A noose encircled her neck and was attached to a timber near her lef...
If Faith hadn't insisted on totally unpacking the car and arranging our things in the little cabin we had rented for a week, we could have at least had a half hour stroll on the beach before the storm started to blow in. It was late September and, looking...
I had never had a hotel call to tell me they were willing to pay if I wanted to switch my reservation to a competitor. It happened about four months ago. A lady named Melissa called and said that, due to a major booking, they were offering to find new roo...
The windows in the car nearly steamed over on the drive back to the hotel. I actually had to push Faith’s hands away from my pants more than once for fear that I would drive into a parked car. She finally slumped back into her seat and pretended to pout....
Only at the bar did it occur to me that I couldn't carry so many drinks at once. As I turned to bring the wine and two of the beers, I saw my wife push a card, a key card I guessed, into Ben's shirt pocket. His hand was between her legs. I acted like I ha...
