Douglas Young

A Free Pass

by Douglas Young      Raleigh Reynolds was selling tickets as fast as he could for Friday night’s second show at the campus cinema. From behind open-air bars in the theater’s round ticket booth inside the student center, he enjoyed seeing how fast he could dispense tickets, make change, and keep the line moving. When a […]

From Festus Bullineaux, With Love

by Douglas Young      Heading to his first summer class, Huxley Madison walked ever slower toward Erasmus Burt University’s Foreign Languages Building. Though he did well in high school Spanish, learning another tongue had not been easy or particularly fun, and he had put off fulfilling his college foreign language requirement as long as possible. […]

The View from the Side of the Stage

by Douglas Young      “Guess who’s coming to the campus coliseum?” Zora greeted Zarius in the hall with a wide-eyed grin as he left the classroom. Zarius got ever more excited as his friend leaned in closer boasting a thoroughly pregnant smile about to birth a big laugh.      As he blinked and imagined a […]

Looking for the Grave of Luther Laughton

by Douglas Young      At 10 o’clock on a warm August morning, an old but immaculate big blue Buick slowly pulled up and parked by the front gate of the largest section in Serenity Springs Cemetery, Azalea Falls’ oldest, biggest burial ground. Heavy-set, eighty-two-year-old Averilla Finney and her almost as heavy-set, eighty-year-old sister, Zabel, slowly emerged […]

Looking for Bigfoot

 by Douglas Young      Dudley and Zillah DuBose had lived full-time in their old mountain cabin since retiring two years before. During their first year there, they renovated and expanded the place considerably, doing much of the work themselves. Pleased with the results, Zillah looked forward to a far more relaxing life defined by hikes […]

Wild Weeds

by Douglas Young      The dinner invitation was totally unexpected since Josiah Gorgas had not heard from his high school and college buddy Austin Ervin in well over a decade. They had always been somewhat unlikely friends. While Josiah was a popular athlete in high school, Austin excelled in the arts and was a standout […]

Fishing for a Connection

by Douglas Young      Before the plane took off, a stewardess stood in the aisle explaining in a bored monotone what to do “in the highly unlikely event of an emergency.” Addison Armistead contemplated whether he preferred to survive should the plane crash. After such a pleasant stay at the conference in New Mexico where […]

The Light in the Cemetery

by Douglas Young      Ellis Hawkins and Julep McBride sat together on the high school bus taking them home on a late Friday spring afternoon. They had grown up next door to each other on Woodlawn Avenue across the street from the largest local cemetery. Born weeks apart, Julep and Ellis were playmates from the […]

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