Robert Pettus
Bio
Robert writes mostly horror shorts. His first novel, titled Abry, was recently published:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/abry-robert-pettus/1143236422;jsessionid=8F9E5C32CDD6AFB54D5BC65CD01A4EA2.prodny_store01-atgap06?ean=9781950464333
Stories (64/0)
Hey!
“Hey!” came a jovial voice from behind. I was in the process of taking the laundry out of the dryer; bent over to pull the clothes from the machine sitting on the ground. I turned to look in the direction of the voice and saw an old man standing in the doorway. He was tall—over six feet—and mostly bald. He was wearing plaid pajama pants, a dirty old tee shirt, and a green windbreaker jacket. He had thin, old glasses that looked like they could snap at any moment. His eyes were wide, though droopy. He looked for some reason happy to see me.
By Robert Pettus2 years ago in Fiction
The Emptiness
“You don’t know shit! There’s nothing at the end of that tunnel. It probably just dumps out into the creek.” “No, you dumbass, I’m telling you that there’s something weird about that place. It’s too… shapely. There’s no other place like it in town. You think it’s no coincidence that there aren’t any big tunnels anywhere else, and then there’s just this big-ass old thing here? Not a chance.”
By Robert Pettus2 years ago in Fiction
Croak
“I got him!” yelled Elijah, lifting his net from the mossy water. He was knee deep. His adult-sized rubber boots, though adequately protecting him from becoming wet, reached nearly to his waist. Trying to wrench free from the goop of the pond, he fell clumsily to the damp bank. His prized frog hopped frenziedly in an attempt to escape. Just in time, Elijah again lifted the net from the dewy morning ground, successfully entrapping the frog. His hand, planted against the wet grass, slipped, and he fell backward to the earth, his feet flying freely out of the oversized boots. He laughed and cheered victoriously.
By Robert Pettus2 years ago in Fiction
Tatham Springs
I pulled skidding into the gravel parking lot of Pleasant Grove Presbyterian Church. I didn’t plan for my entrance to be so abrupt, so aggressive, but I nearly missed the parking lot while cruising inadvisably speedily down the perpendicular, curving Highway 555. I had been driving down that shifting road for more than five miles, and I had begun to zone out, listening to the ethereal, high-pitched guitar wails of “Subterranean Homesick Alien” by Radiohead, which blared out from within the spherical speakers of my car, from my connected playlist of the month. The small speaker, bulging out from within their home in the dashboard, looked like the helmets of miniature deep-sea divers.
By Robert Pettus2 years ago in Fiction
A Good Book
Leaves fell peacefully from the roof down to the damp earth. It was autumn – mid-October. The air, though at this point in the year mostly crisp, still periodically fluctuated back into the muggy swamp of summer, blasting a heated breeze into Harold’s still burned, freckled face. This year the summer had lasted longer than usual, pushing its way through September and into October, but it had finally subsided.
By Robert Pettus2 years ago in Horror
Faces in the Trees
Faces in the Trees Lucas was sitting in class in the mathematics building at Northern Kentucky University. He looked outside, through the splotchy smudge of the dirty classroom windows. He longed for the weekend. Lucas hated math class; he was only taking it because he was forced to – it was one of the unfortunate hurdles of completing his general-education requirements.
By Robert Pettus2 years ago in Fiction
The Cowfield
Timothy Montgomery Born September 2, 2043 Died October 13, 2054 “Muuhhhhhhhhh!” I always screamed so pathetically in my last days. I spent the last few years of my life that way – mooing and shrieking like some sort of domesticated, bovine ape. I knew the cow fields bordering Abry were dangerous – my mother had always made me well aware of that – but I couldn’t help running around out there, in those open spaces. I had to get away from the smog – the muggy, toxic goop of that unnaturally shifting city. The relatively big sky allowed me to breathe; my chest contracted and retracted with pleasure when I was there, as if at least relieved.
By Robert Pettus2 years ago in Horror
Taxidermy Soul
The traffic wasn’t moving a bit, so we decided to park on the street and hoof it the remaining two blocks. We walked the cracked, dampening sidewalk with a purpose. This was a party street – directly bordering the University of Cincinnati campus. The street-side was littered with beer boxes, beer cans, shattered glass, rotting food. The smell of freshly-lit bud wafted throughout the area as if naturally present in the local flora. I liked the scent, but I can’t handle smoking the stuff – makes me far too paranoid. It was early Saturday afternoon – maybe one o’clock.
By Robert Pettus2 years ago in Horror
Pattananikom School
My alarm rang. I threw the synthetic, translucent blanket from my bed and arched my back to upward to the ceiling as if in a yoga position. My bed was uncomfortable as hell, and I don’t mean in any normal sense. Every morning I would awake with a cramp so bad that it would cause me to flail around like a flapping, caged goose. Laying back down, I leaned against the wall and grabbed my phone from the floor. I had an iPhone 4s – it was a cool model, at the time. I thought so, at least. As I did every morning, I opened the Clash of Clans app and checked out what was happening. We had been invaded. The whole place was fucking trashed. That was what I got for using exclusively goblins in my army. I was stubborn, though – goblins are fucking cool. I didn’t care if they weren’t the strongest creatures in the world – I was going to use them.
By Robert Pettus2 years ago in Journal
Sisyphus at the Edge
Nobody can hear you scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. They’re wrong, though. I’ve known it for years. Known it! Why else would I be out here, near the blackness of the gravitational trench, this deep into space? If there is gravity, sound can travel through it; and gravity is everywhere! So there must be a noise – at least a whimper – in a vacuum. Perhaps the sensory experience of that whimper is beyond human epistemic comprehension, but I wasn’t ready to admit that; not yet. Zero-gravity is a myth – gravity is existence.
By Robert Pettus2 years ago in Fiction
The Lincoln Homestead
Lincoln Park road curved back and forth as the dainty maroon Toyota Scion revved exhaustedly up and down each winding hill. Its little engine was working hard. At the top of every slope, Raymond threw the car into neutral to see if it could descend the hill, build momentum, and scale the next without putting it back into drive. He had been successful a couple times, but not often enough to relieve the small car of its monotonous, Sisyphean struggle.
By Robert Pettus2 years ago in Fiction
Yangon to Naypyidaw
I wrenched open my heavy eyes. I was only half conscious. Hot, swampy gusts from the opened windows buffeted my face – the smell of the outside jungle circulated through the train. I was dehydrated. My head throbbed; I was hungover. Three 24oz. bottles of ABC beer – a stout popularized in Myanmar due to years of British occupation – stood jiggling with the rattle of the train on the rusted metal tray table in front of me. Those weren’t the only beers I had drunk the previous evening. I had a hell of a time in the restaurant car, talking – along with my British colleague, Ben – with some locals. We drank to excess the two beers – Myanmar Pilsner and ABC stout – which are popular in the country, conversing in what broken language we could each use. We chewed betel, which I had wanted to try for some time. I didn’t feel much of the stimulating effects – maybe I wasn’t doing it right – but it did turn my mouth and teeth red, of which I was proud. I felt like I was getting the true Burmese experience. I wasn’t sure how I wound up in my current location, however. It didn’t look familiar. The outside sky was still dark, but morning was breaking slowly. Thick dew from the outside jungle spritzed my face as I stared out the rushing window. I drank it in greedily.
By Robert Pettus2 years ago in Fiction