James Pyles's Blog, page 188

Missing Her

His two grandkids laughed. Grandpa had given his coffee cup a face. “What should we name him, Shelley?” The four-year-old girl twisted her face in serious contemplation, but her six-year-old brother Riley was quicker to respond. “Harold. It looks like a kid in my class.” “What if it’s a girl coffee cup?” “How can that be, Shel? […]

Saving the Egg

The 29th Story in the Adventures of the Ambrosial Dragon: A Children’s Fantasy Series “How far do we have to walk, Gerlilanum?” To eight-year-old Landon, it seemed like he, the dragon, and the donkey had been walking for days, but it couldn’t have been more than a few hours…or could it? The old dragon was […]

Mother, What Have You Done?

Evelyn Dick was born October 13, 1920 in Beamsville, Ontario to Donald and Alexandra MacLean. She was arrested for murder after local children in Hamilton, Ontario found the torso of her missing estranged husband, John Dick. His head and limbs had been sawn from his body and—as later evidence revealed—were disposed of in the furnace […]

The Way Home

The leaves made a long-forgotten sound as she walked across the field. Danielle took a deep breath and let it out, watching the white mist sail out in front of her. She wasn’t used to the cold. She’d spent nearly a decade in the desert helping the dragons reclaim what was theirs. The war was […]

New Love

“My darling, it’s been so long.” She approached her lover near the steps of the temple. He was as she remembered him and she was also unchanged and unchanging across the vast expanse of time. “Beloved, we are finally alone, alone to love and be loved.” “They have not loved. Their world, the one we gave […]

The Very Old Dragon

The 28th Story in the Adventures of the Ambrosial Dragon: A Children’s Fantasy Series It was a Saturday morning and Landon wanted to sleep in, but his bladder was arguing with him and as usual, it won. While everyone was asleep including Buddy, Landon got up to use the bathroom. After he finished, he washed […]

The Hidden

No one believed him. He wasn’t surprised, but he was frustrated. He wasn’t some nut or UFO conspiracy kook. He was a rational human being who had been thrown into an irrational if not insane world. Architect David Vincent. 29 years old, considered reasonably good-looking, divorced for two years, no kids, a successful career but […]

The New Home

After he died, I put Dad’s old shoes in my closet and then forgot about them. Come Autumn, I decided to clean out my closet and found them again. This time, they weren’t old shoes anymore. “Grandpa, what’s that?” My six-year-old granddaughter had caught me about get rid of the infested footwear. “Just old shoes.” […]

The Visitors

The strange irony was not lost on David Vincent when his car’s GPS device failed to lead him to the all-night diner off the old state highway and instead revealed a horrifying discovery. “Damn it.” The young architect, driving through a remote area of Arizona after meeting a developer at the proposed site of a […]

Pretending to be One of You

The night. So dark, so comforting, especially in the early Autumn. But it’s too busy, too many people, too much traffic. I’ll wait until later. In the meantime, I’ll pretend to be one of them. A man going home after working late at the office. Someone commuting to her night shift job. A young couple […]