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The Mourning (miniStories winner in MNArtists.org's Flash Fiction Contest; Fall 2008)

The old man parked his Buick in front of the house on Lilacs Avenue. He looked down at the crumpled newspaper sitting on the passenger seat. The obituary page stared back up at him.

The Last Time You Saw Grandma (MicroHorror, June 2009)

Remember the last time you saw Grandma?

Custody Battle—Horror Writers Awarded Poe (Horror Writers Association's Newsletter, May 2008)

Now I have no problem granting mystery writers their Blessed Trinity of Saints, Agatha Christie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Dashiell Hammett, but I draw the line at Edgar Allan Poe. Sorry, mystery hacks, no joint custody allowed. Poe's tortured soul IS the horror genre. Poe is one of ours!

Fine Cuisine (Quantum Muse, August 2001)

I stared at the food critic sitting across the desk from me. He wore the look certain people have, people who could be anywhere between twenty and fifty. His face a sleek plastic with no sign of a five o'clock shadow. His thick, uniformed hair parted perfectly on the side. I realized then what was making me nervous. His eyes. They moved ceaselessly about the office from my face, to the wall, to the desk, to the door, and then back to my face again. Why would a food critic waste his time giving the manager of an eatery advance notice that their establishment was going to get crucified, and crucified big time, in his column? In the dining industry reviews are typically a hit and run affair.

Glass Jars (Potpourri Magazine, Vol. 13, No. 1, 2001)

Never terribly comfortable with myself, I gave her an embarrassed grin. She smiled back, a moment passed, her eyes became unfocused, lost in a deep thought, possibly the same expression I wore. Then gave a friendly half-wave with the fingers of her ring-less left hand, and she was on her way toward the I-Tech parking lot. I was flustered. And it has been so long since I’d been gratefully, marvelously flustered.

The Forever Stone (The Rose & Thorn, Winter 2007)

"A diamond free of flaws is the highest quality, the purest mineral in the universe. You can see how nothing interrupts the passage of light through its many eyes—its facets." The owner of Forever Jewelry held one up for me to inspect .

!Note: Shadow Play, a collection of short stories by Jeffrey B. Burton, may be purchased through online bookstores or Pocol Press.