Andrew Stuchlik

Tommy Typhoon - Part Two
I stand with the glaring, beaming sun at my side. I slow my breathing to calm my body, to focus it into the actions that are to follow. I can feel the eyes of everyone around me, all of them staring at me, all of them are waiting in anticipation of what would happen in the next few seconds.

Andrew Stuchlik

Tommy Typhoon - Part One
It’s hot tonight, most like every other night here. The sweat on my head- just under the brim of my hat- is jus’ a gentle reminder that I’m home. There really ain’t more to expect from a place where rocks and cactuses outnumber the people living here by the hundreds.

Vincent J. Maranto

Every small town in the west contains at least a half dozen adventurous and gold thirsty individuals---come from the ends of the earth maybe---who, on the slightest provocation will abandon their businesses, pool their hard earned savings and brave any danger in an expedition that promises quick and large returns.

Cody Wells

In the small town of Bitter Creek, a gunshot followed by a high pitched scream echoed through the night air like a banshee taking flight. Tom McKlusky lay in dirt outside of the Red Dog Saloon on Main Street, blood oozing from a hole in his gut. A large number of the townsfolk had gathered around the dying man.

“Someone get the doc,” an old woman cried out.

“Too late for that!” another countered.

Mike Smith

Intro:

Anyone who's anyone in Branchwood know's the tale of lil' Ben Sutter. He was everone's favorite fool. All of the other children were quite cruel to lil' Ben. They'd hit and kick him. They'd even stone him with rocks. More than once Ben came home with dirty clothes and a busted lip. As far as anyone could tell, they picked on him 'cause of his weight. It went on for several years.

Jim Hanley

Tom Hayden sat in the sacristy in his t-shirt and black pants, his Mass vestments draped over a folding chair in St Michael’s Church in Brooklyn, New York. A bottle of Irish whiskey was on the floor beside his chair, and he held a quarter-filled glass in his other hand. Tom stared at a Sheriff’s badge in his hand; he kept the badge from his days in Brig County, Kansas in 1883. He contemplated how his life had gone: lawman, seminarian, parish priest; what was next? Surely, he thought, Monsignor Brenner was coming to “defrock” him.

Steven Clark

August 1864 – North of Liberty, Missouri

The devil incarnate.
At the outset of July he had been relatively unknown to the Federals, referred to in their reports simply as “the guerilla Anderson.”

By Joe Mogel

“We ought to rob a train.”

The piano was tinkling as the saloon patrons milled through the poker room. Among the tables of barflies and high rollers, there sat a group of six rumpled, middle-aged men. An empty pitcher of beer and a bowl full of nuts stood over the cards and poker chips.

“Rob a train? You can’t even dig a proper silver mine! How are you supposed to rob a train? You’re out smarted by dirt!”

“Hobble your lip!”

Raymond Maher

Ann felt the winter cold seeping through the sod house, penetrating to the very cook stove itself. The cook stove had proved to be weak and often overwhelmed by the extreme cold that blanketed the prairies these last few weeks. It was the heart of winter and the thin line between frostbite, freezing, and death was sod walls and a cast iron cook stove. The winter had proved its powerfulness by battering their sod house with cold and scorn for its meager heat and shelter.

Larry Payne

Part I

Lightning streaked the darkened sky above the solemn group around the grave. The preacher, standing at the head of the grave, read passages from his worn bible while four men, dressed in black suits, grasped the ends of the two ropes stretched under both ends of the wooden coffin. Slowly, they moved the coffin over the open grave and began to lower it. A woman’s white-gloved hand appeared from the coffin, slid the lid to the side and reached out to the group above.

“WIL, NO. DON’T LET ME GO.”