One Very Short Story

This week’s episode is a wild one.I’m about to go dark for ninety days, and before I do, I want to set the record straight. No, I’m not soul-searching in Bali or joining a silent monastery. The truth is… much stranger, far funnier, and way more personal.

It all begins with a woman named Clarissa—yes, say it like a sigh—and a curbside pickup shift that pushed my life clean off the rails. From there? A chain reaction of incidents, citations, and one very patient local officer. Think runaway shopping carts, questionable “romantic gestures,” and choices that snowballed faster than I could catch them.

I won’t spoil the ending—but trust me, even I didn’t see it coming.

So buckle up.This is the story I need to tell before I’m offline for ninety days… give or take good behavior.

Detective Sarah Chen steps into an abandoned garage to confront the one man who may finally expose the truth behind a young girl’s murder—and the haunting gaps in her own memory. As the night unravels, Sarah is forced into a deadly game of confession, deception, and consequences she can no longer outrun. / Buy the ebook - “The Lethean” by J.L. Stroud, Jr. at www.jlstroudjr.com

When the world goes silent, Syrena Gomez knows she’s not alone. An empath in a city that never stops feeling, she’s lived her life drowning in other people’s emotions, until the night it all vanishes. In the silence stands him: a man who radiates nothingness, a human black hole the forums call - The Atlanta Void.  + Download the eBook - The Lethean at www.jlstroudjr.com

The lights never stop buzzing in Nathan’s world — the office, the police station, the house he built with his bare hands. When his wife disappears, the town rallies behind him. When she’s found, they laugh. Overnight, he becomes the joke no man survives. A pillar turned punchline.In a place where gossip spreads faster than grace, Nathan drives through the rain trying to outpace the sound of strangers laughing about his marriage, about his manhood. Across town, Eva packs her suitcase, trying to run from the wreckage she started and the mirror that won’t stop showing her what she’s done. 

“Bad in Bed” is a quiet detonation — a story about pride, shame, and the moment a man realizes the worst thing in his life isn’t losing love. It’s being seen without it. 

Download the eBook - The Lethean at www.jlstroudjr.com  

In the dead of night, hardened convict Cal Hargrove claws his way out of Reedsville State Penitentiary, plunging into a fog-shrouded pine forest where every shadow hides a hunter. With hounds baying at his heels and rifle cracks shattering the silence, his desperate flight takes a chilling turn when he stumbles upon a wounded girl in white—her face a haunting echo of the daughter he left behind. But in the moonlit wilds, mercy is a dangerous illusion, and the past has teeth sharper than any guard's bullet. Dive into this gripping tale of guilt, ghosts, and unrelenting pursuit—a psychological horror that will leave you questioning what's real and what's running from you. Perfect for late-night listens when the woods outside your window start whispering.

Want more suspense? Download “The Lethean” - the new eBook by J.L. Stroud, Jr. Get it at www.jlstroudjr.com

When the sky turns bruise-purple over Lake Okeechobee, storm chaser Jake sees something he shouldn’t—three unmarked white vans driving into the chaos. Not fleeing it. What starts as a weather chase turns into a descent through conspiracy, crime, and corrupted science—where tornado warnings aren’t always real, and the real storm might be man-made. / Download the eBook - “The Lethean” from www.jlstroudjr.com

Three weeks before her wedding, Clara finds a ledger in her grandmother's things. 43 names. 43 deaths. Her father's signature on every page. Then she overhears her fiancé planning a murder—at their wedding. A dark tale of family legacy and impossible choices. | Buy the latest ebook by JL Stroud, Jr. - “The Lethean” at https://www.jlstroudjr.com (Click the “Books” link.)

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The Time He Died

Cassie thought she was done grieving. Marcus was gone, buried, mourned — three days of whispered condolences, sleepless nights, and the cheap digital watch he’d left behind, still frozen at the time of his death.But then the watch started counting down.What begins as faint seizures and flickering hallucinations spirals into something far darker: a motel room that isn’t safe, a key card that shouldn’t exist, a voice in her throat that isn’t her own. With each passing hour, the watch ticks closer to the moment Marcus died — and closer to whatever waits for Cassie at the end of the countdown.Is it guilt? Madness? Or something far worse?One thing is certain: at 11:47 PM, time runs out. A woman has a psychotic breakdown as she obsesses over the time her fiancée died.
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What if a bullet could think? Could feel? In a city where violence is just background noise, one shot rips through the night—and tells its own story. A chilling, relentless plunge into the mind of a weapon with no will but plenty of conscience. Once fired, there’s no turning back.

The earth doesn’t lie. It keeps secrets. It remembers everything we’d rather forget.In a packed courtroom, a quiet man waits as a forensic scientist takes the stand. She speaks of dirt like scripture—soil pressed into wounds, hidden signatures buried in the fibers of the dead. Each grain is a clue. Each fragment is a confession.What begins as testimony becomes something far stranger: a reckoning twenty years in the making. A story where fire, memory, and murder have been smoldering beneath the surface, waiting for the right hands to dig them up.The Soil Man is a chilling psychological thriller where evidence is more than science—it’s obsession. It’s intimacy. It’s the one thing that never forgets.Press play… and listen closely. The soil is ready to talk.