Latest Stories
Most recently published stories in Criminal.
Joe Vs John
Who doesn’t clutch their pearls when the main hottie in a movie or tv show is handsome, charming, flashes a big smile, and pushes his hair back like Uncle Jesse in Full House. Can a hottie also be creepy ? If so can you be attracted to someone and also scared and or perplexed by them ? If you get the hots for real bad boys, meet Joe and John in THIS, Then THAT.
By Shalasha Deese5 years ago in Criminal
Secrets
Tears streamed down my face as I kneeled over the bedside of the man that I loved. Every breath he took, I feared, would be his last. I begged the doctors to be there with him. They insisted I stayed home because the disease was deadly, contagious, and there was nothing I could do. But I promised him I would be there to do his one last request.
By Katrina Olutimayin5 years ago in Criminal
My little black book
My little black book of prison horrors. Jail was a cold and eerie place for me. Days turned into nights, while nights seemed to never end. My so-called bed was a metal sheet, propped up on rickety, galvanized, legs. “Oh, you hoped for some quiet solitude?” I would often think to myself, while the creek of the bed pierced my inner eardrums with each and every toss and turn. My pillow was non-existent, my cell was rat- infested, and the smell of bleach and sewer filled my olfactory receptors.
By Ashley Tillinghast5 years ago in Criminal
The Thief of Fire
I am a fundamentally flawed person. Most people are – but there is a limit to the depths of their own personal corruption, whereas the limits of mine are unclear and are, in the best of all possible worlds, subject to the limits of my appetites, which are immense.
By Samuel Wilson5 years ago in Criminal
The Thief
The Thief WL1964
By Eudell Watts5 years ago in Criminal
Dark Fortune
It’s a hot Summer night, the ones that are hotter than when the sun is overhead, as Marcus sits on the front porch swaying back and forth in a rocking chair to kill the last remaining hours of the night. Trying to sleep at this point would be futile with the stifling heat of his bedroom on the third floor of his mother’s house. The feeling of being nearly forty and again living back home is depressing in every way possible for him. Everything he worked for, fought for, planned for, and executed, all but disappeared in a flash of a moment when his, now ex, wife decided to empty their accounts and vanish into an unknown existence. That day, the day, one he can’t forget, one that is burned into his frontal lobe forever more, he pulled into his driveway, slipped his key into the lock on the front door and it wouldn’t turn. He stood there confounded with questions. More than he possibly could compute in the seconds that led up to the following events.
By Jeremy Moran5 years ago in Criminal
There Once Was a Young Couple
Isn’t it funny the perceptions we create of our neighbors? We wave to them each day, engage in small talk, and casually watch over them, their homes, pets, and children without a clue who or what they are. We believe the lives we pull together of them in our heads. There is the young couple two doors down awaiting the birth of their first child. The older couple across the street who putter in their gardens, and so on. We believe the myths we contrive as fact. Never questioning that they could be more than living a typical middle-class life.
By Tersa Morris5 years ago in Criminal
The Selfless Man
Nolan stood as he had every morning, on the street corner of his favorite downtown block, begging for money. He was not panhandling. He was quite literally begging. Panhandlers often provided some sort of entertainment for passersby to engage in and be entertained. Nolan felt he had no talent worth showing off and simply begged. It was very cold this morning. Winter had just begun, and this was a frightening time for those who could not procure a proper shelter. Since programs had been defunded, Nolan and many like him were limited on resources. Shelters were overflowing and most were prioritized for battered women and children. COVID had even affected those programs since shelters were not easily able to practice social distancing. Shelters in general were scarce for all these days.
By W.S. Klass5 years ago in Criminal
The Man in the Kitchen
Detective Riley stepped into the house. He’d been pouring over leads for the missing woman case when they’d gotten the call to the residence, and it was nice to have a change of scenery. Taking a seat on the small wooden bench near the door, he slipped off his shoes and replaced them with the thin plastic crime scene booties. The tile was cold beneath his feet and his toes curled for a moment in reflex. The house was quiet — he’d asked for some time alone, it was part of his process.
By David Filla5 years ago in Criminal
The Hidden Trunk
The big red For Sale sign caught my eye as I drove past the unkempt property on Daisy Avenue. The old red brick farm house looked as though it begged for new life. I imagined the stories it had written within its walls, begging to be told. I made a mental note to call the realtor on lunch as I took the next right. The idea of a fixer upper appealed to me. This just might be the kind of therapy my own soul needed and searched for. Perhaps it was fate that led me down this wrong-turn journey on that bright and sunny day in June.
By Laura Lockridge5 years ago in Criminal
