Joseph Kunkle

“He did it in the Library With a Knife” by Joseph Kunkle

He did it in the Library With a Knife Stacker emerges from the recessed niche he appropriated from a student of literature who leaped to his death from the northwest window of the Rare Book Collection. Murder? Stacker discovered the hidden room only half a year ago. Located on the attic floor of the campus’s Main Library, which houses The Rare Book Collection. Stacker feels the hidden room has chosen him to continue the lineage of those who rescued books and built this monument from the doomed and discarded. Builders whose linage goes wel...

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“Between Two Worlds” by Joseph Kunkle

Between Two Worlds: Fresh blood, wet and slick seeped into the flannel of Josep’s calico coat. Whose blood? It’s his father’s, or his mother’s or a comingling of both. He didn’t know whose. Only that it smelt slightly like the rusty, greasy hub of a wagon wheel. But mostly like animals butchered. The darkness, swiftness, and clubbing left him dazed. Crossed and blurry, the blaze inhabiting his eyes reflected into the sky, a plea sculptured by fear, bleeding out into space: Unanswered. Chizmo began to set fire to everything that ever existed ...

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“Abreaction” by Joseph Kunkle

Submitted to Contest #218

Abreaction "Doctor, the signature of murder is everywhere: but there is no stink of death. Should be. But there isin't. It's the worst stink of all. The worse sense of all. And you want to know about my first brush with death?” “Yes.” Says Doctor Fringe. She’s the Department Psychiatrist. I don’t deny that I have issues. “Go ahead. Relax.” She says, “I’ve given you a mild sedative: 5% solution of sodium amytal to ease you in and counter another reaction. Play it back in your mind, like a video. We’re going deeper today. Get to the root and...

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“Show Me” by Joseph Kunkle

Submitted to Contest #216

Guts fascinated Chalktawl. The bayou offered up a host of entrails from American Alligators, swamp rats, feral hogs… and humans. Chalktawl has seen them all. Including those of Tex. Crouching on his knees, Chalktawl lifted a lumpy strand of a transversing zig and zag for a closer look. He tilted the willow stick. The large intestine descended back into the heap. If he hadn’t been 4-F, he’d seen plenty of guts on D-Day. Summoned by U S Marshall Louise LaBlanc, Chalktawl Jones arrived. They were gone. The guts. Gone from where they’d gushed a...

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“The Gravity of Summer” by Joseph Kunkle

Submitted to Contest #214

The Gravity of Summer Josie woke in an eerie darkness, where neither starlight, moonbeam, nor sunshine ever entered. The only light is fashioned to the Red Hermit’s head. Grudgingly, he’ll exchange this bottomless darkness for another form of gloom - by dying - by poison. Josie says, “What's that sound?” The Hermit jerks his head. Carbolic light transits away from Josie’s face. It pierces and then hovers like a UFO in the cavernous vault of deception. Something is there. Frozen. In a side drift. A rat? No. It’s a pareidolia articulated f...

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