Dispatch No. 30

The Midnight Vault, and then some.

Recent stories: A Helping Hand | The Weight Of Snow

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Opening “the Vault”

Yes, the rumors are true…29 of your favorite writers have embarked on the perilous journey to bring The Substack Zone to print! That’s right, soon you can own the complete anthology we call The Midnight Vault.

Included in The Midnight Vault:

A Six-Part Death -

William Pauley III

The HALCYONIUM -

Clancy Steadwell

Hector -

Annie Hendrix

The Lonely Planter -

Bryan Pirolli

Separate Memories -

Author Michele Bardsley

All the World's Static -

Jason Thompson

An Elegant Solution -

Bridget Riley

The Creative Lives of the Lichtensteins -

EJ Trask

Watched Pots -

Will Boucher

Off Switch -

Honeygloom

The Last Stop -

Shane Bzdok

The Sun and the Moon -

𝐂𝐁 𝐌𝐚𝐬𝐨𝐧

Sunbonnet Sue -

Lisa Kuznak

Blink Twice if You Can Hear Me -

Sean Thomas McDonnell

Vote Control -

Andy Futuro

Soma’s Reflection -

Edith Bow

Room 13 -

Miguel S.

The Thing in the Box -

A.P. Murphy

Amanita -

Sean Archer

The Swing of the Pendulum -

Adam Rockwell

In Capable Hands -

Shaina Read

August’s Fog -

NJ

The Zeno Paradox -

J. Curtis

The Jokes on You -

Stephen Duffy

Mail-Order Bride -

K.C. Knouse

The Switchboard -

Hanna Delaney

What You’re Made Of -

Jon T

Conception -

Bob Graham

Good Neighbors -

Liz Zimmers

This anthology of amazing, mind-bending stories has been meticulously crafted for print by our creative director,

Shane Bzdok

. He’s the architect of a fantastic cover and really sweated the layout to get it ‘just right’.

I’m really proud of this is anthology and to share it with new and existing readers. I suspect you’ll be hearing more about it from these incredibly talented authors over the coming weeks.

The Midnight Vault will appear in paperback ($19) and ebook ($10) through most major retail channels worldwide on March 15th or you can preorder the ebook now.¹

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Non-Sequiturs

1. The logic argument - I sometimes argue with myself about how fastidious to wash cookware. Here’s an example of washing a big pot:
   Left Brain: La-di-da… clean dishes are nice.
   Right Brain: Hey, that looks like a lot of work. What do you think you’ll put in there next time?
   Left Brain: Prolly water for pasta.
   Right Brain: So, you're gonna heat up that water, make it boil?
   Left Brain: Yeah.
   Right Brain: Like, sanitizing hot?
   Left Brain: Huh, yeah--I guess so.
   Right Brain: Hmm, so why are you spending so much time washing it?
   Left Brain:
   Right Brain: [eyes wide, gesturing from the pot to the dish rack]

2. The Garbage Man - Living rurally has advantages, going to the dump every few weeks isn’t one of them. But, the staff is friendly and, after a few years, I feel like I’ve made in-roads with a few of them. Namely, a leathery, hooded man who assesses fees for each load of trash. I don’t know his name but he’s chatty and sometimes a little raw. One day I said something meaningless, one of those throwaway line used when making smalltalk like, “How ya doing?” He paused ever-so-briefly then responded by telling me how his son suffers from seizures, how scary it is and the piling medical bills. I can’t see his eyes for the dark glasses he’s wearing but he sets his jaw as he tells me about how they’ve seen every specialist in driving distance. But, he says his son just started a new medication and “we’ll see.” His face is focused, one of fatherly concern, but the pressure valve has opened and he takes a deep breath, nodding that everything will be better soon. I wish he and his son well as we conclude our business.
   A few weeks go by and I'm driving through the pay station again as he comes out. We chat briefly, “That’s $10,” he tells me. When he comes back with my change I remember to ask about his son. He stops. This hard-looking man pulls off his truckstop sunglasses, tears have filled his eyes. He tells me there hasn’t been a seizure in a month and his son is resuming life as normal. I’m so taken back by his reaction I don’t know what to say—some mumble of “that’s great” comes out but it’s not enough. He shakes my hand, thanking me for asking and calls me “sir” as he goes back into the booth.
   I haven’t seen him in a while but I think about this exchange every time I drive the little lonely road to the dump.

3. Frog Thermometer — During bath time, we rely on this silly floating frog that tells us the water temperature (because scalding your children is bad). But we keep forgetting to buy more of those stupid coin cell batteries for it, so we’ve been winging it.

   After a long day, my wife started the bath and then exclaimed, “Ugh… I have no idea what temperature the water is!”

   She then asked me to get the instant-read meat thermometer. Dutifully, I did. Upon entering the bathroom, I asked, “Which kid do you want me to poke it into?”

4. WWJD? — I really wish people would stop calling what’s happening here in the U.S. a constitutional crisis. It’s not—at least not yet. For those abroad (or locals who need a civics lesson), the U.S. Constitution is our foundational governing document, defining its social contract by distributing power rather than centralizing it. It was designed to prevent any one faction from dominating the system, whether through political control or religious influence. But, as we’re finding out daily: a contract is only as strong as the integrity of those who uphold it.

   What we are witnessing is something more sinister: an ethical crisis driven by a ruling party that has all but abandoned independent accountability and drapes itself in the false piety of performative Christianity. We’ve had periods of one-party control before, but the systemic checks and balances largely held. Now, however, those safeguards are being dismantled, weakened, or ignored—not for the falsehood of efficiency, but to consolidate power under a white theocratic order. Make no mistake, these are not devout people—they are zealots wielding faith as a bludgeon, convinced they have a divine right to rule. They do not practice Christianity so much as they exploit it, twisting its message into a tool for control and consolidation of power. They will do everything possible to establish a Christofascist state—one that embodies none of Christ’s humility, compassion, or teachings. Worse, many so-called good Christians, who should know better, stand idly by, too cowardly, comfortable, or complicit to oppose this abomination.
   A recent discussion about Jesus’ teachings yielded this response from a MAGA faithful: “Find the Bible verse that says Jesus thinks crossing into America illegally is a right. It’s not there.”
   Who am I to judge someone’s faith? Nobody. But when those who claim to follow Christ turn their backs on the vulnerable, vote for intolerance, and wield religion as a tool of exclusion, the issue isn’t faith—it’s power. This isn’t just hypocrisy, it’s a rejection of the very principles that hold a society together.
   The Constitution, by design, is meant to serve as a levee, preventing any one faction—political or religious—from overwhelming the system. But when those in power dismiss or discard the contract altogether for ulterior motives—the crisis isn’t in the document. The crisis is in the people who abandon its principles for a false, orange god.²

5. Eloise — Most nights, I find myself reading stories to my kids books we pick up at the local library. They have a lot of fun at the library. Up and down the aisles they run. From the front counter, we see Lori—she’s not the librarian, but we know her, and she only works on Saturdays. Then we run to the play area and dump out all the LEGO and Lincoln Logs onto the floor. We don’t play with any of them because they’re boring. But the kids like to play with the piles of pens and paper. They make marks on their faces and hands, and we wag our fingers at them, but they don’t care.

   Then they run up the aisle to the board books and nab a few, then the easy readers, and sometimes the bigger books with chapters. They really like the Mister Putter books. At night, we read and read and read because my kids are insatiable for books. It’s something I really like about them. But then they make me read to their “stuffies”, too.

   My oldest has an elephant he calls Elephanty Pelaphanty and a unicorn he calls Donut Kevin Jasper. Lawd knows where he comes up with these names. They’re funny, my kids, I mean. And every so often, their mom sneaks an extra book into the bag to take home (and she doesn’t tell me about it at all), and my son picks it out. He really likes it and wants me to read every page—he knows if I try to skip a page. He holds up Donut Kevin Jasper and tells me to read it, but he does it in a cute voice, so that’s kind of okay.

   But it’s a really painful book. Just full of stream-of-consciousness writing about a little girl. If you ever get the chance to avoid it, I absolutely suggest you do. But, anyway, painfully, we go through every word, look at every picture. We see this entitled little girl push around the staff and wake up all the people in The Plaza Hotel before she finally settles into her penthouse room and orders room service. When they deliver it, she says, “Charge it, s’il vous plaît!”

   I fucking hate those Eloise books.

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More from Tiny Worlds

A Helping Hand

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