Christopher Abel
Stories (8)
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A Light In The Dark
The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. We saw the illumination through a gap in the trees, and the three of us froze. In the sudden hush, I became aware of the proliferation of sounds in the surrounding dark; the heavy, damp air was alive with the stridulations of crickets, the calls of frogs, and the barest susurration of wind. A rabbit screamed in the distance.
By Christopher Abel4 years ago in Horror
The Fire and The Flood
There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. In fact, until quite recently, there weren’t any dragons at all, anywhere. They weren’t entirely unknown, of course; while the Valley willfully remained a stagnant intellectual backwater in comparison with the rest of the world, not everyone that lived in the shadow of the mountains was so ignorant as to have not heard of them, even if the notion was a bit beyond the strict edge of their imaginations. Before, there was no need for dragons or other flights of fancy to feed into the mill of muddy thoughts that ground through most of their heads on a daily basis; there was hardly enough room up there between the everyday worries about the mounting stacks of bills, the mines closing up, and recession looming on a troubled horizon. I couldn’t fault them for that, but it was a hard pill to swallow at my age; that eventually all thoughts of dragons, and the precious jewels they were said to hoard, got hammered away, year by year, until there was nothing left but black old coal dust.
By Christopher Abel4 years ago in Fiction
The Light At The End Of Summer
Summer was dying, and there was nothing we could do about it. The mornings had turned brisk without our consent, and the crows had suddenly become chatty, filling the chill air with their harsh caws. The last time Mom had carted me along to the grocery store, they already had a center aisle all set up, full of notebooks, pencils, binders and erasers. I avoided eye contact with the offending items, my version of whistling past the graveyard. The days had lost their feeling of blistering, frenzied activity, and now it was like we were trapped in some kind of languid purgatory, where making plans felt like effort, and executing plans felt impossible. We had almost given up the fight, succumbed to the inevitable. To this day, I don’t know if there is a more specific bittersweet illness than that inexorable summers-end malady inflicts on a kid. The thing about kids though: we are more resilient than we’re given credit for.
By Christopher Abel4 years ago in Fiction
Unrested Development
I stood on the porch in the setting late summer sun, watching the last of the moving trucks backing cautiously out of the drive. I lifted a tired hand in thanks and turned to face my new home. Truthfully, it was lovely; a simple three bedroom farmhouse, painted a faded white, hidden away on a larger parcel than I ever thought I would be able to afford. Half a century of storms and wind had pressed and ironed it into the landscape, but the bones of the house were strong, and it was new in all the ways that mattered: a fresh roof, furnace and hot water heater. It was exactly the kind of house that I had always envisioned for myself, right down to the small porch that looked out over the shady front yard. I should have been happy, or felt even the barest flutter of excitement, but standing there, as the sun sank into the patchwork of woods and fields behind the house, I felt nothing except a bemused bitterness at my very lack of feeling.
By Christopher Abel4 years ago in Horror
The Grieving Process
It was our first Christmas without her. It hadn’t been the virus, which had mercifully left our family mostly untouched, though it came to affect us in different way, heartbreaking in its own right. No, it was nothing so complex and deadly. In the end it was a rug. An ordinary, stupid, wipe-your-feet-before-you-come-inside ugly shag rug. How can such an insignificant thing, utterly forgotten since it was bought and slapped down by the slider door, how can that have ripped our lives in two? Simple. A raised corner had caught her foot. She had fallen, sprained her ankle. Then it was the boot, and lost mobility, and rehab, and then she just didn’t have the strength.
By Christopher Abel5 years ago in Families
Like Corn, We Grew In The Night
“Feels like a different world out here,” Diana said softly, and in her voice I heard the same unease I had felt since we had turned off the main road. I looked over at her. The partially open window was tugging stray strands of hair from the braid I had attempted that morning, and in the tilt of her head and lift of her chin I saw so many echoes of her mother that it caused a physical ache. She was watching the landscape flicker past with a slight frown. The corn had grown old; endless fields of it rose and fell in gentle swells on either side of the car, the stalks and fibrous leaves turned honey-rust and shivery in the October cold. Ahead, the sky was a rapidly spreading panoramic bruise: a gentle blue on either side, darkening into mottled mauve and metallic violet in the center. Hanging plumes of dust kicked up by our passage obscured the way back, closing off retreat.
By Christopher Abel5 years ago in Horror
You Are What You Eat
Of all of the abundant pleasures that this world has to offer, is there really anything better than food? I would gladly hear the arguments for all of the cases, but I could hardly proclaim myself a fair and impartial judge on the matter, at least not with a straight face. Inwardly, I would probably be dreaming of the chuck roasts my mom would make for our birthday supper requests, or the cheerful bacon and egg breakfasts my grandparents would lay on the sun-drenched table after I spent the night. The smell of food is the simplest key into the gateway of memory, each fragrant spice recalling holidays long gone, each waft of roasting meats evoking fires on summer nights beneath the stars. The simple act of breaking bread, of cooking and sharing with those you cherish, is one of the oldest and most beautiful traditions that we, as humans, have upheld and perfected.
By Christopher Abel5 years ago in Feast
Into the Grey
The old man sat on the stoop beneath the awning of the abandoned house, gazing down at the photograph in his weathered hands. The photo was four by six inches, and had been folded and unfolded so many times that the creases had become translucent, and were in danger of tearing. Two horizontal lines and two verticals divided the photo into nine sections, and the resulting pattern resembled the tic-tac-toe game that the children used to play. The old man allowed himself a small smile that reached from his dry, cracked lips up to his colorless eyes. With the delicacy of handling a precious artifact, he folded the photo once more and placed it into the heart-shaped locket that hung from a fine chain about his neck. He tried pressing the sides of the tarnished silver together with his thumb and forefinger, grimaced, then reluctantly used his other hand to close the clasp with a quiet click. He rose from the stoop with a painful deliberation, and when his knees had stopped their protestations, he picked up his bag and made his way down the silent street.
By Christopher Abel5 years ago in Fiction
