Kruse Christopher
Bio
Stories (3/0)
Trust Your Mechanic
The little red hatchback bounced hard, swerved, then with a squeal of tires, caught traction again on the cracked asphalt of Interstate 805. A grinding noise emanated from somewhere near the rear tire. For the first time since she set out, real fear began to trickle down Maria's spine, as the prospect of breaking down on the side of the deserted highway became a very real possibility. A cold, familiar lump of anxiety crept up into her throat. Instinctively, Maria checked the rear-view mirror. There was nothing back there but the hazy, red line of the desert horizon below a darkening sky. Normally, such a sense of solitude would be a comfort to her. But right now, the feeling of being so vastly alone there in the middle of the arid New Mexico wilderness made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.
By Kruse Christopher2 years ago in Horror
The Valley of Oaxaca
There was a time I found peace in the windblown silence of an open prairie. I've calloused my hands at all manner of work – I've cowpunched across Texas and the southwest, bulldogged in Oklahoma, and I'd be a liar if I denied havin' covered my face more than once to rob a rich man's stagecoach or to rustle horses. But I ain't never done no harm to anyone that didn't have it comin', I suppose, and I never left a place havin' made an enemy. Never stayed around long enough to make 'em, neither. But I have made some friends during all of my years on the trail, in ranch bunkhouses, and in mischief, and I've heard plenty of stories and yarns, some spun so well, they would leave you fit to be tied. Sometimes, even I tell a story or two about my wanderin' from place to place – but there's one I've never told until now. It's about how I no longer find peace when I feel a cold prairie wind on my neck. It's about why I now feel a prickling kind of fear coldly slipping over me when I hear the sound of the wild suddenly die down, and silence washes over the dark open range after the sun goes down. It's a story of the night I shared a campfire with a dead man in the Oaxaca Valley, and how ever since, I've never been caught out under the stars after dark again.
By Kruse Christopher2 years ago in Fiction
The Man in Red
The cul-de-sac had all the hallmarks of life and prosperity. Trees swayed in their green finery, their leaves twisting and catching the shimmering rays of a sun that had nearly reached its peak over the idyllic subdivision on the east side of town. A cool spring wind caught itself in the branches, and pushed along an armada of clouds like plump ships sailing through a sky as blue as Caribbean waters. Bob white quails whistled questioningly from their perches, and the occasional grackle trilled and chirped right alongside them. Squirrels tittered in a manic rush, as they fought each other for acorns, or sweet tree sap, or the swelling buds of trees. It was that perfect, lotus-eater time of day, when the elderly napped, and perhaps the dreamy drone of a lawnmower somewhere in the distance was the only evidence that people were present.
By Kruse Christopher3 years ago in Horror