I’m sitting in the pub listening to Mark’s inane chatter when they walk in. She’s dressed in a tight fitting tube-top that leaves nothing to the imagination, but with a body that makes you crave a little less candor. He’s wearing a suit that you just know has an Italian name with a reputation dip-shits…
Category: Short fiction
And I Breathe Your Blood Like A Carcinogenic Breeze
A Trick of the Light
by Zachary Robert Long (2026 words, estimated reading time: 10 minutes)
The woods are darker now than they were this time last week. This disturbs her. Something she can’t quite put a finger on. The way it feels like every thing is always changing? Getting away from her? She wants it all to stay the same, her deepest wish is to freeze time. To hold her…
Whence the Rainbow Ends
by Zachary Robert Long (3869 words, estimated reading time: 18 minutes)
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…
The Crow-Man
by Zachary Robert Long (3220 words, estimated reading time: 15 minutes)
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…
Mrs. Tinkles
by Zachary Robert Long (4979 words, estimated reading time: 25 minutes)
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…
Like Any Good Husband
by Zachary Robert Long (981 words, estimated reading time: 5 minutes)
Exhibit A: Letter from envelope addressed “Stephanie” Exhibit B: Letter from envelope addressed “Police” Exhibit C: Envelope left untitled
The Discordance of Anima
by Zachary Robert Long (2153 words, estimated reading time: 10 minutes)
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…
Now You Dig
by Zachary Robert Long (3349 words, estimated reading time: 16 minutes)
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…
A Conflagration of Euphoria
by Zachary Robert Long (1322 words, estimated reading time: 6 minutes)
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 Speck of Paint
by Zachary Robert Long (2547 words, estimated reading time: 13 minutes)
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…