Border, KS

Images swam before Siobhan’s eyes. She saw and did not see, comprehended and did not comprehend. The raven spread its wings and took to the inky sky, a thousand stars looking down in judgment. A pool as still as the sky reflected only the black above, and the face that peered down in wonder and […]

The forest was larger than Antigone had expected, a dense verdant mass almost dripping in the late summer humidity. The cicadas were deafening at first but once they were into the forest proper they dropped off significantly. It left the woods with a faint buzzing in the distance matched by the shuffle of their feet, […]

Very few things can drown out the concentrated musical explosion that is a high school party in a house absent of parents. Antigone had to admit that a Kansas summer with a bumper crop of cicadas was doing a rather good job of it. It had taken them twenty minutes to walk to Lacey’s house, […]

Antigone was waiting for her nails to dry when Siobhan padded in to her room. The house had an interesting floor plan, with two rooms in a hallway behind a door that made it seem like another wing. The rooms also shared an interior door, like two hotel rooms in a suite. They had unilaterally […]

Walter killed the engine to his bike and swung himself off of it, rolling his neck around as he shoved his keys in to his pocket. The house he had found, with the help of the Marshal’s office on one of the many trips to and from Kansas City in the months before the move, […]

“I didn’t know Border had seen any of the Three Stripes killings.” Walter said. It was closer to four than three, and it had taken them that long to get back to the station house. They were once again in the Marshal’s office, all five of them now—Alexander, Andre, Leah, Morgan, and himself. With everyone […]

CHAPTER 3: THREADS   Walter hit the ground with Doctor Winters underneath him just as the shot flew where her head would have been. Each of the others—Alexander, Andre, and Leah—had gone to the body and come back to stand next to the doctor. So they had all been facing away from the darkest corners […]

Inside the warehouse was cooler than the warm and sticky outside, although it was still a thing of relativity. In a few minutes the cool was going to be worse than outside simply because the air was still, where the hot at least had a breeze. And with the corpse lying there, the stillness was […]

Thousands of strands of emerald ivy crawled up the fronts of crimson bricked buildings, all rolling by the tinted window of the Ford Crown Victoria. It gave the world a muted look, like a documentary about crumbling facades. The heat and humidity of late summer beaded the plants with what looked to be water and […]

Siobhan watched the group of girls warily as they approached. While they had all sorts of looks there was a general peppiness about them that made her nervous. She wondered, briefly, if they were like Tyrannosauruses; if she stayed still would they not see her until the bell rang? She was prepared for a lot […]