Stories

Luke-Skywalker

Sleeping Between the Bears

It was their first day together since the judge ordered them apart. Royce had picked him up around eleven from the boy’s grandfather’s in East Tulsa, then pulled into a McDonald’s drive-thru on the highway south for lunch. But Denny would not eat. The boy wasn’t shy about his aversion to being here, and Royce, deciding the boy had seen enough punishment lately, let him do as he pleased. Royce balanced his own cheeseburgers on a thigh as he guided the pickup down the road, glancing every so…

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Lew Going Clean

The time Lew tried going clean for good he took a job as Overnight Warden in a halfway house for criminal schizophrenics. The hours were long and the home, a hulking old three-story farmhouse, was out in the country beyond the city limits. He had a criminal record himself, but what they knew of it was not violent, and that was good enough for them. Applicants weren’t exactly knocking down the door to spend the night with insane people, apparently, even if the pay was good. His plan was to cut…

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