Brian Kenneth Swain

Tonight’s top story – after a month-long manhunt covering five southwestern states, alleged serial killer Shane Boswell was taken into custody early this morning at a convenience store outside Abilene, Texas. He gave himself up peacefully to two Texas State Police officers, and is now awaiting arraignment in San Antonio district court. Boswell is expected to be tried on at least nine separate counts of capital murder – cases extending from last December in Santa Fe to as recently as this month in Odessa. He is expected to plead not guilty by reason of insanity, and the San Antonio district attorney has ordered a preliminary psychiatric examination in hopes of countering this strategy. *         *          * “Shane, ...

My name’s Josh Faulkner and I’m sittin’ here in a hard oak chair at Huntsville prison, waitin’ on my pa to come and pick me up. This chair they set me in to wait is pretty unusual, now that I get to lookin’ at it good. In fact, I ain’t never seen one quite like it. My Uncle John used to build chairs once in a while, but they was always thin and light, and the wood was golden and smooth as a baby’s backside. My mom used to love them chairs too – even had some of ‘em in our kitchen a long time ago. But this one here ain’t nothin’ like what my Uncle John used to make. This one’s real big and heavy and rough. It sure ain’t made for sittin’ comfortable’s what I mean – not a place I’d care to spend a long time ...

The day after it happened, I awaken to find the bedroom window slightly ajar, the narrow gap admitting, like jelly oozing from the far edge of a child’s sandwich, the distant melancholy croak of a morning jay. And through the wavering glass panes, to whose dust and grime I have already grown accustomed, there struggle beams of sunlight, not in that abundant all enlightening fashion that embraces morning people, but rather in individual streams, each gasping to find its own path through the relentlessly advancing opacity of decades, and each bearing with it a cargo of motes and other weightless impurities that dance and swirl with grace belying the utter lack of circulation in the room. Slowly, like burglars, a select few of these rays ...

I’m telling you if he fires up that goddamn French horn one more time so help me I am going to personally walk over there and stuff it up his ass. We’ll see what kind of noises he can make on it then, by God. Couldn’t be any worse. Now Red, what other way could you do something like that that besides personally? Don’t you give me none of your uppity lip. Save it for those second graders of yours. You know damned good and well what I mean. It wouldn’t be so bad if the kid had a lick of ability on the thing but Jesus H. Christ, what’s it been—three years—since Peterson bought him that thing and hell if it don’t still sound like a cat being fed through a wood chipper every time he touches it. Shit, give the boy a job as some ...

Turns out the global warming crowd was right, but for entirely the wrong reason. Truth of the matter is it never had anything to do with carbon dioxide or greenhouse effects or any of that crap. It was just the engine coming on-line. All I remember is one minute I was sitting there on the couch, snarfin’ a bag of Doritos and watching the game on ESPN. Next thing I know, one of those Breaking News things comes marching across my screen just as Bagwell is about to come up to bat with the bases loaded and only one out. This had better be damned good, I’m thinking, but I honestly expected it to be just another plane crash, or civil war in Botswana, or some other crisis about which I could care diddly-shit. Well, for a change they came up ...

I’m Bud, and I live in Endicott Village, which is this no-account little town up in northern Vermont where not one goddamn thing ever happens. Years ago they’d have called it a one-horse town, except we ain’t got no horses I ever saw. Truth is, I been meaning to get my skinny ass (ma’s words) out of this place for ages. Only it ain’t that simple, on account of Mirabelle. She’s this girl who used to live a little ways down the road from us when we were growing up. I guess you could say we really spent a lot of time hanging out together back in them days. Now we only manage to get together once in a while, but I really like talking to her whenever I can. I still drop in on her mom once in a while too, seeing as how she pretty ...

Hanan had already arrived. As Avi walked through the front door into the restaurant, he glanced about uneasily, eventually locating the man he had agreed to see. The two had never met before this evening, and they were, even now, separated by more than thirty feet. Still, Avi had no doubt this was the man. Hanan was sitting alone in a booth in the dim light of the back corner, motionless, staring straight ahead into the empty seat across from him. Avi remained for a moment just inside the door, nervously wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead as he surveyed the newly rebuilt establishment. Warm oak wainscoting surrounded the roomful of matching tables and arch-back chairs. A half-dozen ceiling fans swung slowly and silently overhead, ...

Every metal has its melting point. But for even the most malleable of alloys, that point is far higher than the flash point of paper, fabric, or human flesh. This happy thought springs to mind as my tiny Mercury space capsule, code-named ‘Annabelle 1’, hurtles toward the sun at nearly forty times the speed of sound. Well, not exactly towards it, but in an inescapably declining orbit whose destination is, nonetheless, that most sweltering of destinations. It’s been twelve hours since the capsule’s retrorocket system failed – twelve hours. Hell, by now I should be aboard the carrier – cleaned up, sipping champagne, and on my way home.  Instead, the engines failed to slow my momentum enough to allow reentry into earth’s ...

I am Bennett. I’m twelve already and feeling every year of it. Slouched, at the moment, in the back seat of ma’s old Ford Pinto, I slurp the last of a Mountain Dew and stare senselessly at the never ending pine trees that speed by as we make our way up the Maine Turnpike. My one-year younger sister is up in the front seat. If she doesn’t get the front seat, she always pitches a fit and says she’ll get car-sick and puke and so I usually just give up and sit in the back. It is November. Winter is here early and it’s pissed. Before the first week of this month was even over, an eight-incher had already dumped on the whole state, catching everyone, even the old timers, with their snow shovels still stuck up in the garage rafters. ...

Our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Vladimir Nabokov Where am I? Why is it so dark? Jesus, my head hurts. I hope I haven’t overslept again. Weathers’ll have a conniption if I do. I knew I should’ve stopped at two glasses of wine last night. Now I’m gonna’ be miserable all day. Why the hell is everything so dark? Wake up, Rachel. C’mon girl, get with it. It is morning, early morning, or at least it feels that way insofar as it feels like anything, absent nearly all external cues. Rachel awakens after what feels like a fitful night’s sleep. A very dim gray light bathes her, the sort of light familiar to those who arise before dawn. Its source cannot be determined directly, yet somehow ...