crime - Stories

The year is 1891, and the Wild West is dying. Alvarez is a smartly dressed, smooth-talking bandito riding north with a stolen fortune, a lethal six-shooter, and one very spoiled cat. He travels alone, until he finds a half-frozen boy bleeding in the cold mud. Devon is an exile, violently banished from his Mennonite community and hunted by the very boys who broke him. As they ride together, Devon's cold logic clashes with Alvarez's flashy chaos. Slowly, the pinstriped killer and the battered runaway must learn to trust each other before the past catches up to them both.

The story is based off comic fans prompt # 110 - creating evil.

Griffin Forrester is a Former FBI profiler, who had struggled for the last 10 years, with both his psychic abilities, and the disgrace of living with the reality that not even those powers, allowed him to see the evil that was always right in front of him. He's tried to hide from his past, but when a child Is abducted, and her parents are brutally murdered in a ritualistic manner eerily similar to the case that cost him his career, he's dragged back into a world where belief and wishes don't always set you free to fly.

Half-elf ex-cop Flynn O'Briain is losing a war on a cellular level. His human DNA and Elven heritage are tearing each other apart.

When a murdered PI leaves Flynn a blueprint for a corporate energy project that uses magical beings as batteries, he and Poitr are pulled into a conspiracy that reaches from the streets of LA to the highest levels of power. The clock is ticking. Flynn's body is failing. And the only cure is in the hands of the woman they're trying to stop.

Prompt #265

Write a story that begins with a phone call at three in the morning.

Trevor insisted the house phone be on his side of the bed. There was one problem with that; Trevor was nearly impossible to wake up. One night, the phone rings at three AM. Julius has a hard time waking Trevor, but finally succeeds. Trevor finally answers the phone on the ninth ring. The phone call starts something they never could have expected.

Ex-Military recluse Hank runs his isolated farm with measured violence and tactical clarity. When Jesse, a 22-year-old, stumbles into Hank’s world, the "math" of the farm changes forever. Jesse is more than a stray; and his dark past is about to catch up with him.

Hank doesn't offer pity; he offers an absolute, grounding ownership. But while trying to protect the boy, he realizes he can’t hold the line alone and calls in favors.

The debt is about to be paid in lead and spent fury.

In a universe where constructs are bought, sold, and wiped clean, a repurposed intimacy model named Lukas discovers he's been many people—soldier, pop star, lab rat, cop. Now he's on a stolen ship, a hacker, a thief, and a clock counting down to neurological collapse.

Some ghosts won't stay buried. Some truths won't stay hidden. And some love stories begin with a gun to the chest.

Sam never expected to abandon his modest life as a blacksmith’s apprentice, yet the harrowing death of his parents leaves him no choice. When the reserved knight errant Ser Graeme proffers him a place at his side, Sam grasps at the chance for escape, despite having no clear destination.

With winter closing in, they aim to reach the city of Langscott before the roads become impassable. Their journey, however, is delayed by a chance encounter: an offer of coin too tempting to refuse. The task is far beyond their expertise, but to earn a living on the road, risk often becomes a matter of routine.

Mickey Ryder is twenty-three, deeply in debt, and the captain of a barely-functioning mail ship held together by salvage tape and bad decisions. When a runaway cult boy named Isaiah hides in his cargo bay, Mickey does the one thing he never does—he says yes. Now they're running from New Eden, hauling mystery cargo, and trying not to kill each other. But between a dead exploration ship, a screaming alien in a crate, and a religious mandate that just dropped a nine-year-old son on his doorstep, Mickey's about to learn that surviving is easy. Living? That's the hard part.

A runaway criminal sidekick teams up with his missing boss's monstrous mentor—a sociopath with a taste for precision and an even bigger secret—in a chase across the UK. Riley Shaw, scrawny and scared, is used to being an afterthought. But when Kieran Varys, disappears in a haze of blood, the only person left looking for him is Kieran's terrifying, obsessive architect: a man named Ben. Now Riley must navigate a landscape of motorway services, posh houses, and monstrous authority, and figure out if he's bait, a witness, or something more terrifying—a student.