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Leshy

Chase Johnson   Leshy   “It’s cold,” said Ilya, pulling small mittens over his hands. His father and older brother ignored him. In fact, they had been unusually quiet tonight. His brother Kostya held a lantern and walked first, his breath coming with the cadence of his step, illuminated in the dim light. Even the lantern was losing to the cold. Their father walked in stride with his eldest son, the dark barrel of a shotgun resting in the bend of an elbow. Ilya shuffled along behind, rubbing his little hands together. Even for autumn, it was chilly, and the night air stung his lungs and windpipe if he breathed too hard. A thick layer of dead leaves crunched underfoot, and he enjoyed sweeping his feet through the deeper piles of them. This drew a glare from his older brother, and Ilya stopped kicking leaves, wincing. Kostya was always yelling at Ilya, sometimes kicking him or smacking him over the head. Ilya thought he was just mad for no reason and had come to expect random
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The Man, the Myth, the Legend

Craig sat on the living room floor, adjusting the dial to his toy train.  It only went in a circle most of the time, but not now.  It was the last gift from his dad, and he treasured it.  Craig’s dad, Robert Norris, was a professor of mythology at a local university, and was often buried in a book studying the histories and beliefs of some ancient culture.  When the school was no longer able to continue the mythology program, due to a lack of interest, Mr. Norris found himself out of a job.  His wife picked up the slack by finding a second job to cover expenses while she waited for her husband to redefine his career.   Two years later, he was still pretending to look.  He grew accustomed to sitting at home and absorbing himself in the stories of dead civilizations.  It was difficult for Mrs. Norris, but it was during these two years that young Craig Norris grew in his fascination of all things ancient.  The boy loved to listen, sitting on their scuffed velvet couch or at the ki
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First Short Story

   Soaked By Chase Johnson (Thanks to my wife, who is the first line of defense for potential readers and is my awesome co-writer, and for my buddy Marcus, who's feedback convinced me the story was incomplete.) Charlie stood in front of the orphanage in the rain. Always rain. Sometimes it would just sprinkle, sometimes sheets would come in sideways, but from the moment he’d arrived in the little town of Gull, it’d been raining. It made his investigation miserable. The water would seep into everything; down his coat sleeves, under his official police parka to drip down the bill of his cap, and even his socks. By the end of the day his toes looked like raisins. Audrey Harper, the alleged suicide, was the reason his boss had sent him to the ass end of the coast, and he just wanted to finish and go home. In the orphanage was the last of three eye-witnesses. So far both testimonies had corroborated the official story, that of a suicide. One more night and he would be ba
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