Horror and Wholesome
People like happy. They respond to happy. Sad is a different story. One that’s far shorter, with fewer characters and less descriptors. Sad is the thin leaflet you hide between the brighter covers. No one really wants to know it’s there. Not even you. Sad is uncomfortable. And so, I was “happy”. I had my... Continue Reading →
It snows at sea. Sometimes I forget that. Or, I try to, anyway. Frozen white on an endless field of black. It feels alien out there when it’s snowing. Maybe I’d feel differently if it hadn’t been snowing that night. But it was, and I don’t, and I’ll never know otherwise. Dad was a crabber.... Continue Reading →
It was the week before Christmas; the homestretch. I should have been feeling all holly and jolly, filled with the spirit of the season, but it was hard when I was stuck trekking through a crowded department store filled with other last-minute shoppers, trying to keep up with my two boys as they bounced from... Continue Reading →
Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year. Unless you’re hundreds of miles away from home with no nearby friends and family. Then it’s just kind of depressing. I hadn’t even been thinking about the holidays when I’d accepted my new job in early December. I was too caught up in the stress and... Continue Reading →
Before she was the drainage ditch Dahlia, she was someone’s daughter, a friend, maybe a sister or a wife. A person somebody had to have known. She’d been found in a ditch off a rural road a few days before by a trucker who’d pulled over to relieve himself. Naked, severed in two at the... Continue Reading →
I was being watched. At least, that's what it felt like, which was ridiculous, because I lived alone in a townhouse with my blinds closed and deadbolts on all my doors. Still, that didn't stop that cold, slow tingle from oozing across the back of my neck; the one you get when you're subconsciously certain... Continue Reading →
It wasn’t a surprise when Kaylyn started handing out invitations to her Halloween party before homeroom. What was a surprise was that I received one. I stared at the orange envelope she was holding out toward me and then up at her. “For me?” I asked uncertainly. Kaylyn and I had never been friends. Acquaintances,... Continue Reading →
Nursing is hard work for too little pay. You never feel it more keenly than when you’re getting off a double shift in the middle of the night. All the smells cling to the inside of your nose, you’re convinced you didn’t scrub your hands well enough to really wash off that last hour, and... Continue Reading →
“Be a good one.” It was what my grandfather said to me when I told him I wanted to be a cop. I promised him I would. I’d been nervous, standing in front of him and the rest of my family and saying it out loud. They were all college educated and white collared. I... Continue Reading →
Stories By S.H. Cooper 