The Dogs: Not Exactly Night - Episode V
West Virginia around October - Halloween - cloaks itself with an eldritch and primeval majesty: every forest shaded night-black with phantasmic ghouls that lurk by every shadowy tree; all the melancholy places - the overgrown railroad tracks, the...
The Dogs: Not Exactly Night - Episode IV
The Sun was in the last throes of setting, throwing ancient, sacred fire onto the horizon in vermillion exquisiteness - Andrew and Bligh stood watch outside the gas station to see it, the same place where Andrew had met Cody, in almost the same...
The Dogs: Not Exactly Night - Episode III
The next day, Thursday, Cody and Andrew waited for Bligh on the balcony of their apartment, seated in two plastic patio chairs they had bought together some months ago. The evening was very slowly setting in, the Sun's glorious performance earlier...
The Dogs: Not Exactly Night - Episode II
The morning after, Andrew awoke, as he often did, to the sensation of warm, smooth skin pressed his against his mouth. As he opened his eyes slowly, he moved from Cody's shoulder to nuzzle his ear. "Good morning..." he whispered gently. "Mmm...?"...
The Dogs: Not Exactly Night - Preface
This book could very well be real - and you would never know it. The places in it are, with one salient exception, true - the people are people you've probably met. It does not take place in some faux-Florida, some faux-America - not at all. Read...
The Dogs: Not Exactly Night - Episode I
The night before everything changed, Andrew Lightfoot once again could not sleep - he sat, curled against the arm of his couch in his living room, staring into the dark half-mirror of his flatscreen television. It was some ungodly hour of the...
Depths, Parts i-iv
For whatever we lose (like a you or a me) it's always ourselves that we find in the sea_________ E.E. Cummings, "maggie and milly and molly and may" i. Every beach in Florida has been mercilessly colonized - every beach in Florida is...
The Dogs: Maketh the Day Dark
_One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the life of an individual. There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pin-prick but wounds still. The marks of suffering are more...
The Dogs: Before Thou Camest Forth
_May you live as long as you want to, and then pass smilingly into the darkness - the good, good darkness._ \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ Ambrose Bierce How long had he been here? He had been here a long time. Sometimes it was hard to tell because this...
The Dogs: Hath A Familiar Spirit
_Anyone who has ever lived in West Virginia, or even travelled through the state, can easily see what an ideal place it would be for ghosts._ \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ Ruth Ann Musick, _The Telltale Lilac Bush_ Moonshine is the drink of the mountaineer -...
To Your Grave
No doubt you have read of the Witches' Sabbath, and have laughed at the tales which terrified our ancestors; the black cats, and the broomsticks, and dooms pronounced against some old woman's cow. Since I have known the truth I have often reflected...
Sic Itur Ad Astra
And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath Of moonlight vapour, which the cold night clips,It flush'd through his pale limbs, and pass'd to its eclipse._________ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Adonaïs The North Carolina highway, the one that led to the...