fiction
Mystery, crime, murder, unsolved cases. Contribute your own tales of crime to Criminal.
Pleasantwood Valley
Pleasantwood Valley – could any area of this city have a more ironic name? For as long as you can remember, Pleasantwood Valley has been worthy of many other names, but not that one. Factory buildings, old and generally unused, as far as the eye can see; a layer of smog giving a grey hue to the sky, deceptively transparent from a distance; shady characters around every corner, from the large and burly to the demure and stealthy – all willing to either con their next victim out of time and money or threaten the poor fool outright.
By Dominic Morris3 years ago in Criminal
The Man With No Name
As the grey light appeared in between the chimneys, The Man With No Name’s eyelids gently opened as the brightness targeted him like a sniper. London’s chimneys were dancing in the grey light, occupying the place where rays of light were supposed to be. The smell of soot and coal permeated the air aggressively, attacking the pleasurable smells, dispersing and suffocating them. The flight of a few seagulls in the distance, too far to distinguish, and the machinations of industry sounded out their groans and grunts, as they stretched their metallic limbs at the sight of their masters. The city was coming alive, and No Name was as well.
By Jaime Calle Moreno3 years ago in Criminal
Secrets
Tears streamed down my face as I kneeled over the bedside of the man that I loved. Every breath he took, I feared, would be his last. I begged the doctors to be there with him. They insisted I stayed home because the disease was deadly, contagious, and there was nothing I could do. But I promised him I would be there to do his one last request.
By Katrina Olutimayin3 years ago in Criminal
My little black book
My little black book of prison horrors. Jail was a cold and eerie place for me. Days turned into nights, while nights seemed to never end. My so-called bed was a metal sheet, propped up on rickety, galvanized, legs. “Oh, you hoped for some quiet solitude?” I would often think to myself, while the creek of the bed pierced my inner eardrums with each and every toss and turn. My pillow was non-existent, my cell was rat- infested, and the smell of bleach and sewer filled my olfactory receptors.
By Ashley Tillinghast3 years ago in Criminal
The Thief of Fire
I am a fundamentally flawed person. Most people are – but there is a limit to the depths of their own personal corruption, whereas the limits of mine are unclear and are, in the best of all possible worlds, subject to the limits of my appetites, which are immense.
By Samuel Wilson3 years ago in Criminal
The Thief
The Thief WL1964
By Eudell Watts3 years ago in Criminal
Dark Fortune
It’s a hot Summer night, the ones that are hotter than when the sun is overhead, as Marcus sits on the front porch swaying back and forth in a rocking chair to kill the last remaining hours of the night. Trying to sleep at this point would be futile with the stifling heat of his bedroom on the third floor of his mother’s house. The feeling of being nearly forty and again living back home is depressing in every way possible for him. Everything he worked for, fought for, planned for, and executed, all but disappeared in a flash of a moment when his, now ex, wife decided to empty their accounts and vanish into an unknown existence. That day, the day, one he can’t forget, one that is burned into his frontal lobe forever more, he pulled into his driveway, slipped his key into the lock on the front door and it wouldn’t turn. He stood there confounded with questions. More than he possibly could compute in the seconds that led up to the following events.
By Jeremy Moran3 years ago in Criminal
There Once Was a Young Couple
Isn’t it funny the perceptions we create of our neighbors? We wave to them each day, engage in small talk, and casually watch over them, their homes, pets, and children without a clue who or what they are. We believe the lives we pull together of them in our heads. There is the young couple two doors down awaiting the birth of their first child. The older couple across the street who putter in their gardens, and so on. We believe the myths we contrive as fact. Never questioning that they could be more than living a typical middle-class life.
By Tersa Morris3 years ago in Criminal