Sweet Gum Head

by Blu Gilliand

About the Author: Blu Gilliand has written everything from brochures to radio commercials to newspaper articles to book reviews. His short fiction has been published in various magazines and anthologies in the horror and crime genres. He's currently hard at work on his first novel.

Excerpt

His aim had been to lose them, and he’d done that, and got himself lost too. All these dark Florida back roads, all these stands of pine trees, all these little swamps full of mosquitoes and other, bigger, things that bite. He’d read somewhere that there were over a thousand swamps in Florida, and he reckoned he’d driven by half of them tonight.

He passed a sign that said “Sweet Gum Head 20” and shook his head. Where’d they get these names? Sweet Gum Head. He thought about people putting that on envelopes as their return address. Thought about wedding invitations listing “Sweet Gum Head Country Club” or “Sweet Gum Head Civic Center” as the venue. Thought about some guy or gal walking around, proud, calling themselves the mayor of Sweet Gum Head.

He was in serious trouble. It was good to let his mind wander a bit, loosen up some, so maybe a solution would shake itself free from the tangle of stress and worry his mind had become. But he couldn’t get too far into the weeds, forget why he was here. They might not know where he is right this second, but they were still looking. Maybe they would get lucky. Or maybe he would get stupid, thinking about Sweet Gum Head, and make a mistake.

Up ahead, in the darkness, a little oasis of dim, orange light.

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