Monthly Archives: July 2026

Poetry

The Breeze & The Black Door

Have you ever lost someone to themselves? Watched slowly as they slipped away from you, despite everything you’d been through? My latest poem in Deadlands Issue #41 is about the ones we love and how they can change right before our eyes, day by day, until all that is left of them is a memory. Read the full poem here along with the rest of the issue for FREE. But here’s an excerpt to get you started:

I heard some movement at my front door
but it was just a storm.

Drank my beer over the sink
so I didn’t stain my shirt anymore.

Fixed the leak
and found a place on the floor.

Wife’s been leaving the back door unlocked.

Not every night,
but enough to raise the question.

She bought some paint and a brush home
from Benny’s Department Store.

Had me paint that old back door
as black as a raven.

So I stripped myself to the waist
to feel the Halloween breeze
and did as she pleased.

I heard her unlock it
last night in her sleep.

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Short Fiction

The Halloween Man

Last fall, I was happy to be a part of the Rooted in Rite Halloween Anthology from Rooted Literary Magazine. You can buy the digital or physical edition of that anthology here, as well as their latest Rooted in Home anthology. Here’s an excerpt from my story, “The Halloween Man”.

He’s haunted me since I was a child, fumbling with a dull kitchen knife against the pumpkin fat. He is the stomachache of sneaky snacks, the guilty thrill of Jolly Ranchers popped quietly at midnight. He’s what you light the jack-o’-lanterns against, the costume you’re too scared to wear, the horror they don’t show, the gore you can’t explain away with latex, corn syrup, and movie magic. If Halloween is a white sheet, then he is the two black holes, sightless and unseen. I’ve felt his presence as far back as I can remember, but I didn’t see his face until I met him, one lonesome October, in the back of a haunted house.

I was almost thirteen and tired of hearing, Aren’t you getting a little too old for this, Will? You can have all the candy you want at home! I knew my trick or treating days were numbered, but each year I wished more and more that Halloween would never end. I was obsessed with horror movies and would rent successive sequels from the video store downtown. My favorites were the slashers, Halloween and Friday the 13th, anything with screaming girls and gleaming knives. Like a lot of kids that year, I was going as Ghostface, while my little brother Nick was going as a cowboy (he’d hide under his blanket for any scary movie that wasn’t Hocus Pocus. We’d already carved our pumpkins and

watched Linus wait all night in his empty patch. I had convinced my mom to show me The Silence of the Lambs, the only horror movie she could stand, and had seen every movie they played on TV that month, carefully recording the ones I didn’t already own on VHS.

One night, during the commercials, I saw an ad for the promised land.

Coming this Halloween weekend to the Marblemount Community Center: A spine-tingling experience not for the faint of heart!

Thrills! Chills! Tricks! Treats!

Dare you enter…The Macabre Manor?

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