See, I told you I had a lot going on behind the scenes!!!

Billy February 6, 2019 209 Comments
Click on the picture to buy it!

Hello everyone, when last we spoke, I told you I had a bunch of stuff going on behind the scenes and that it was difficult to keep all the balls in the air and keep churning out new stories for the website all the time.

I know that sounds like the typical blogger excuse for scrolling mean tweets, but in my case it was the truth.  Now I can share all the stuff that’s been happening.

In late January, Tavistock Galleria came out. This is a collaboration among 14 authors centered around a dying and haunted shopping mall. Response to Tavistock has been overwhelmingly positive and we’ve hit #1 on Amazon (more…)

New Orleans

Billy January 8, 2019 79 Comments

Please get my permission before adapting or reposting any of my stories. 

New Orleans

I pulled into the driveway at about 3pm that Friday. My birthday was the next day, so I had cut out of work early so I could catch up with friends and drink beer on a patio somewhere. When I drove up, I saw my girlfriend, Michelle, getting out of her car and coming to meet me.

“Hey, what’s going on?” I asked.

“Nothing much,” she said, a bit of a smile belying a secret she was trying hard not to tell, “How was your day?”

“Not bad,” I offered, “Ready to shut it down and get the party started.”

“Where you wanna go?” she asked.

“Surprise me.” (more…)

2018 in Review and a Peek into 2019

Billy December 20, 2018 4 Comments

Hello there, hope everyone is doing well. It’s been a bit quiet around here lately and with the New Year approaching, I thought I’d take a moment to let you know what’s been going on. I know you may be thinking I’m over here wasting time, but I assure you I am not. Let me tell you how 2018 went for me:

In January I made the resolution to finally, after 35 years of dicking around and telling myself I should, get serious about my writing. See, I’ve always been able to turn a phrase, and I’ve always know I had a talent for it. But you know,  writing is hard. It really, really is. Even when you have a knack for it, (more…)

The Dust

Billy November 16, 2018 4 Comments

–Please get permission before adapting any of my stories. Thanks!

The Dust

It drifted in chaos and misery, birthed of hatred, mired in rage. There was something. From the nothing there was something, as in the beginning. It used whatever spark of fury that remained within its confused and swirling existence to try to find purchase, but all it found was dust. Yet there was something. This was new. Sensation? No. It had sensed and it had awakened. Now it raged in its prison trying to… focus? Trying to feel? Trying to… Was the sensation found in the attempt? Was there something else, or had it awakened itself in vain? It did not know. It fell back into its madness. (more…)

Samhain

Billy October 31, 2018 3 Comments

This is a story I wrote for a friend’s blog. The prompt was this picture. I cannot find the link to the story on her blog but when I find it I’ll post it. Happy Halloween!

Please get permission to adapt/narrate, or otherwise use my stories. Thank you.

Samhain

By William Stuart

The whole thing started as a curiosity piece, part of a week-long Halloween-themed series. It’s the sort of maudlin fluff that serious journalists despise, but what we all end up doing so much more of than actual reporting. This is the stuff of small town newspaper. Talk with an old lady whose cat was rescued by the fire department. Cover the ribbon cutting at the new Chevron station. Interview old folks and ask them what it was like to grow old in this no-horse town in the middle of nowhere. But I digress. It was nearing Halloween and the boss wanted to report on some dark and mysterious things in our town’s history. (more…)

Leaves in the River

Billy October 17, 2018 3 Comments

Leaves in the River

Inspired by the Sea Wolf song of the same name.

(Video linked at the end of the story.)

It was one of those rare seasons where Halloween landed on a Saturday, so big plans were made by all. All the bars and clubs had drink specials and everyone with half a mind was having a party, including us. Zack, Teddy, and I had been planning this party for weeks, as it would be the first major event in our new place off campus. And as things turned out, we had a pretty good crowd that night.

The house was near to full and there were kids milling about in both the front and back yards. I wandered around talking with people and drinking beer most of the night, with the occasional Jell-O shot thrown in for good measure. Most everyone had at least some kind of costume, so there was plenty of vinyl and latex scattered about accentuated by the orange and green party bulbs we’d installed in all the fixtures. Zack had made several mix CDs of Halloween classics to play through the night so the three of us stood back and admired our handiwork while “Monster Mash” played in the background.

“Dude, we nailed it,” Teddy said, his voiced muffled by the latex Freddy Krueger mask he wore.

“Hell yeah, we did,” Zack agreed, looking sinister in his white jumpsuit and fake eyelash as Alex from A Clockwork Orange, “Party of the century!”

I nodded and raised my bottle in agreement, but I was no longer listening. For there, near the kitchen, looking a bit confused, was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. She was dressed as a witch or a vampire or something. Medium-length blonde hair with black streaks framed a pretty, almost pale face with large eyes that were accentuated by dark makeup. She wore a black shirt with fishnet sleeves, and a black skirt that ended just above her knees revealing a few inches of fishnet that plunged into tall black boots. Over her shoulders, a simple vinyl cape hung to her waist. She held an unlit cigarette in one hand and a beer bottle in the other as she looked around. (more…)

When I was about six…

Billy September 21, 2018 42 Comments

…my dad had been fixing something with super glue. When I walked into the room, he looked grim and my mom looked worried.

“Do you think alcohol?” She asked.

“I don’t think it’ll do a thing,” he answered.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Your dad glued his fingers together,” Mom answered.

Dad held up his hand. His pointer finger was stuck to his thumb in an ‘OK’ gesture.

Mom continued, “We need nail polish remover but I’m all out. There has to be something we can use.”

As she said this, I’d moved closer to Dad and was studying his fingers. My father was a teaser and  a prankster. He was always saying silly things or telling little stories to see me puzzle them out. The good thing about this was that I had a loving and involved father. The bad part was, I could never really know if he was messing with me or not.

I sat there staring at his fingers while he and Mom talked about alternatives. Mom finally went and got her purse and started heading for the door.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“To the store to get something,” she said.

“Can I come?”

“Not this time. I’m just there and back.”

“Why?”

“I need the stuff to get your dad’s fingers apart,” she said

I turned back to Dad’s glued fingers, which, by now I’d decided were not glued and he was just messing with me. That or they were glued but I played with glue all the time and it wasn’t that strong. As he called to Mom to ask her to pick up something else, I reached up and grabbed both of his digits. Before he could pull away, I yanked as hard as I could and boy, did those fingers come unstuck!

Dad yelped in pain and stood up, kicking the chair backwards and making all kinds of noise. Mom came running back in, yelling, “What happened?”

I saw the most rare variety of rage welling up inside my father. I had just messed up big-time. He hopped around huffing and puffing and holding his fingers with his other hand. Blood began to drip from between his hands and I knew I was in serious trouble.

“WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?” He screamed. Mom came running back into the room, throwing her purse on the floor and spilling it everywhere. I watched in horror as lipstick rolled in my direction and I knew I was toast.

“GO TO YOUR ROOM!” They screamed in unison. They didn’t have to tell me twice. I ran as fast as I could.

The next few minutes were torture. How much trouble was I in? How badly had I hurt my dad? Oh man, this was at least a spanking. Probably no TV for a while. OH NO! What if they took away some toys???!!! 

I sat on my bed for what felt like forever waiting for one of them to come in. I think the stress of the situation was just too much because the next thing I knew, my dad was shaking me awake and it was dark outside.

He sat on the bed next to me and said in a quiet and soothing voice, “I’m sorry I yelled. It just hurt, that’s all. I know you were just trying to help.”

I relaxed a bit when he tousled my hair and patted my shoulder. “I’m really, really sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

“I know, son. It’s okay,” he said, “Now you know.”

As he hugged me, I looked down at his hand.  He had a ball of gause wrapped around the pointer finger of his left hand. His thumb, however, was unbandaged although it looked chunky, bloody and raw.

“Daddy? Why do you only have a band-aid on your finger? Isn’t your thumb hurt too?”

He held out his hand for me to have a closer look. It was then that I saw something that still makes me shudder to this day. “No, son, my thumb is just fine. It just has the pad of my finger glued to it.”

 

 

Troll Bridge

Billy August 31, 2018 No Comments

Please get permission before adapting or republishing my stories. Comment below or send a message to me at billy stuart 75 at gmail Thanks!!

Troll Bridge

Every town has the place—an abandoned building, an alleyway, a wooded area—where the ‘bad’ kids hang out. You know who I mean; the long hairs, metal heads, the druggies. It’s where these outsiders go to smoke cigarettes and listen to music. For us, it was the bridge over Boot Creek, the little stream that snaked through town. Boot Creek itself was rarely any more than a muddy ditch. But at the top of the bank there was an area where kids could hang out and make noise and ride their skateboards without the nosy gazes of adults.

My friends and I took to calling it, “Troll Bridge,” on account of it was occupied almost all the time by Billy Logan and his crew of pothead screwups. Billy was three years older than us but was only one grade ahead because he’d been held back twice. I was in the seventh grade and here was this giant, nearly fifteen-year-old bully running around terrorizing everyone. Don’t look so shocked. It was the eighties. Things were just like that. It was a different world then.

Anyway, Billy had grown this sort of scraggly goatee on his chin and my friend Chad made the remark that all that hanging out under the bridge was turning him into a Billy goat. My other friend Daniel pointed out that it had been the troll who lived under the bridge, not the goats. I agreed with Daniel, that Billy was much more like the troll than the goats. And after that, it was Troll Bridge, not Boot Creek, that we avoided as much as we could. (more…)

Her First Day

Billy August 22, 2018 30 Comments

The inspiration for this story was a prompt in one of my many writing groups. I hope you enjoy it,

 

Her First Day

His heart breaks all over again.

He shoulders his rifle and his pack, snatches up his keys, and chambers a round in the pistol. Just in case.

The knocking is weaker this time and he holds back tears because he knows what that means. Shaking it off, he tells himself there will be time to mourn later. Always more time, always later, but for now he has to focus.

An old calendar hangs on the wall next to the door. The actual month and year long past, it is now marked up with x’s and o’s of a dozen different colors. He checks the most recent series of blue x’s. 17 days. Longer than the last time by nearly a week. Maybe it would be over soon.

The knocking comes again and he swallows the lump in his throat. A coil of rope hangs on a hook under the calendar. Pistol at the ready, he grabs the rope, then throws the bolt and opens the door. (more…)