Terrific Tales

Mystery Short Story: Proof Text

by Janet Alcorn


You’re gone. That’s why I’m out here driving this gosh darn Bobcat in this gosh darn wind to dig a gosh darn trench in this gosh darn field. The wind rises like a breath and works its way under the Bobcat, under my skirt. I hunch over the controls, press my skirt between my legs, and clamp them shut. Digging a trench is man’s work. Women are supposed to be, “discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands.”

Mystery Short Story: Clear Evidence

by Guy Belleranti


Edie Cunningham left Sarah Bracey's house the same way she'd come, by an unlocked back window.
Got to get away from here, Edie thought, ripping the rubber gloves from her hands, and stuffing them beside the small flashlight in the hip pocket of her jeans. Got to get far away from Sarah’s dead body on the study floor.

Fire Alarm On First Night: New Year’s Eve Mystery Short Story

by Margaret S. Hamilton


Up to her elbows in mounds of washed lettuce and spinach in the parish hall kitchen, Lizzie Christopher assembled large bowls of mixed salad garnished with carrot peels and dotted with sliced radishes. The parish hall would be one of many event spaces serving dinner to the townspeople on First Night, or New Year’s Eve, before the evening concerts, one-act plays, and fireworks.