The stories of Bryan Young

I hadn't planned on another short story this month, but I couldn't sleep and a short story leapt out of me. It's shorter than I wanted it to be, but that's what you get when I'm doing this suddenly at two in the morning with no warning or planning. One of the fondest memories I had of my grandfather before he passed away were the times we’d spend out in the front yard. I was about six or seven and he would sit in a foldout chair under the shade of the old, wooden garage door and watch me ride my bike up and down the sidewalk. I’d blaze by as fast as I could and he’d slap his hand to his forehead and make some kind of exclamation, usually, “Wow!” We lived with my grandparents then and this was the closest thing I felt I’d had to bonding time with him. Sure, we’d watch cartoons and he’d watch us play and things like that, but for some reason, our time in the front yard with him watching me bike back and forth seemed incredibly special. Soon, he would wa...

I imagine it’s never an easy thing to hear that someone you knew a long time ago killed and raped a little girl. You think back and you wonder if there was anything you could have done to change what had happened. The most frightening thing about Jack Thompson is that I really feel like we could have. We grew up in the same neighborhood, fifteen years ago. He was younger than the group I would hang out with, but his older brother was part of that group and he was always hanging around. Back then, he wasn’t wanted at all, we never wanted him around at all. He would ride around the neighborhood, following us and whatever we were doing on a girls bike in bare feet that were constantly as dirty as his face. He was a weird kid and didn’t have many friends and naturally he would gravitate toward the crowd his older brother congregated with. But we were all brand new teenagers, kids really, and kids can be cruel. This story appears as part of the collection " The Cruel Kids:...

Here's another one from my little brother, Jason Young. The city sleeps when terror casually strolls out of the misty hills. She’s not bad by nature, but few would argue the fact that she is a beast. Left over since long before the ice age, from a time when the Earth was a much harsher place, a distant epoch when evolution was still playing cruel jokes. She is the last of a dying breed, natural selection's failed champion. She leaves the place of her birth, the only place she has ever known, in search of a mate, in search of a future. She doesn’t look back as she leaves the protection of the misty hills. She crosses over the borders of a small town at the base of the silent knoll, never looking back. As she passes by the houses on the outskirts of town it’s hard to keep from mentioning the fact that she’s as big as a house herself, with jaws that could easily snap bone,and paws as big as an adult human being. It’s a particularly quiet night, and at this late...

I worked so hard to avoid your gaze, afraid that if our eyes met that there would be something there. A glance, a look, a spark. I was pulled aside to have a word, trying my hardest to look at my shoes but when you finished your question and I looked up to answer… It happened. That glance, that look, that spark. Your eyes the deep color of chestnut, a bright and beautiful amber that glimmered in the light. I could see into them as we shared that tender, unspoken moment. My heart skipped a beat and my breath was took. Our eyes had locked and my worst, best fears were realized. I brought my eyes down to see your delicate lips raised in a smile that matched the smitten flutter in my heart and the simple grin on my face. I realized that we were inches apart, our eyes locked once more, and then we remembered ourselves. Sometimes, I’d prefer to forget.