The Works of Zachary Robert Long
Mason needed it to rain. Okay, need was a bit of a strong word. He didn’t need it to rain. He wanted it to rain. Not one of those massive storms that sometimes hit Atlantic Canada and lasted all day and all night. No, what he needed was for it to piss down for an…
Charlie didn’t like it when the lights went out. The bed was warm and cozy, sure, but that was just because Mommy tucked the blankets tight around him every evening when she kissed him goodnight. He didn’t have a problem with that part. In fact, he quite enjoyed it. But then she would turn the…
Samantha is going to fucking kill me, Chloe thought as she stared into the gaping hole beneath the sink. “It was just the pipes,” she whispered. “It had to be the pipes.” But she knew that wasn’t true. The pipes made tons of noise, but they never sounded like a meow before. She’d been in…
Exhibit A: Letter from envelope addressed “Stephanie” Exhibit B: Letter from envelope addressed “Police” Exhibit C: Envelope left untitled
The night held the world in a darkness that felt never-ending to Billy’s ten year old brain. Curled up in his tent with a sleeping bag and a flashlight and his Deadpool comics, the chill dark air tasted like freedom. Freedom from bedtime. The kind of freedom adults get. This, he thought, this is what…
When they got there two sets of hands were pulling her out of the black Nissan Pathfinder and into the light of the setting sun as it reflected off the shards of rusted metal throughout the scrapyard. Her pale blond hair was disheveled. Her mouth was covered by layers of duct tape. Her left eye…
The screams of the women found no purchase on the night air as they were marched to their deaths. From among the crowd that lined either side of their walk were flung insults, rocks, and excrement both animal and human. A missile would strike home causing one or another of the women to stumble, eliciting…
A river of viscous red waterfalls to an ocean of blue, green, red, and white with specks of yellow and fiery orange making themselves known. As the river runs out the red mixes into the ocean of colors with long tendrils that seemed to be reaching out into a void, this being where the colors…
The cool breeze carried with it a voice that spoke of regrets. The regret of the sun slowly whittling away the sleek ice. The regret of the rabbit as the wolf takes its life in a quick lunge. And the regret that Ash held for the way his relationship had turned out. Spring was almost…
Jacob Roebuck looked at the scab on his leg and wondered what it could have come from. He had no recollection of ever hurting his leg, yet on his leg was a blackish-red splotch that meant he must have done just that. He worked at a computer all day and then sat around his apartment…