Status Updates From Coal Black: Stories

THE FEMALES ESPECIALLY, It’s tough out in these hills for the females, maybe even tougher than the males have it. Crime, the outlaw life, doesn’t hold any prejudice on who it indoctrinates. Some wind up in prison, some may clean themselves up and live the straight and narrow, but others, they just can’t pull themselves away from it.

RIVER OF NINE DRAGONS, The sheriff, he’s done this before. Now he’s chasing a thief through the hills of Eastern Kentucky. Before he was chasing a sniper duo through the jungles of Vietnam. PTSD. How little instances can break the dam, causing memories (or nightmares) to come flooding back in.

WITH HAIR BLACKER THAN COAL, A baby abandoned in the wilderness. Legend says she was raised by bobcats. (Jungle Book vibes) That is if you actually believe such tall tales. Years later a sheriff tracks down a pair of poachers who maybe have run across something a bit more feral, something that shouldn’t be prowling up beyond the notch. When the predator becomes the prey.

THESE HILLS, People live by these hills and die by these hills. These hills are a gift and a curse. The hills provide what they can but what happens when we take too much? When people resort to stealing bark in order to scrape a few bucks, to feed their habit and ease the pain just for a little while. Maybe these hills would be better off without us, maybe we’d be better off without these hills.

COAL BLACK HAINT, A sheriff whose daughter ran away years ago. She is tormented by their last words, an argument, a fight. Another girl has gone missing out by the old coal tipple, unearthing painful memories. Legend says there is a haint up in the hills, wearing all black, tending to her flock of runaway children.

KIN TO ME, The coal company owns the mountain that was supposedly named after Ephraim’s grandfather. Soon they will deface it by turning it into a slurry pond. The company has already taken his father, stolen his mother, but they will not kill his kin.

A QUEEN’S BURIAL, Bits of Native American folklore. Being respectful of nature and its inhabitants. Two brothers who use, abuse, and leech off of the land get more than they bargained for when they try and steal what their hermit of a neighbor has been burying out in the woods.

AND THEY SHALL TAKE UP SERPENTS, Serpent handling fire and brimstone preacher, a mining site rumored to be plagued by bad omens, and two young men looking to make a quick score with dreams of one day leaving these hills behind.

THE QUILT, A life of drugs, abuse, and petty theft. A stolen quilt sparks fond memories of the past with mamaw which may be the very thing that saves a girl from a life that's going down the wrong path.

HELLBENDERS, The opioid epidemic in Appalachia. Junkies, over doses, and an old jaded sheriff who is fed up with it all. People struggling to get by, clinging to the last vestiges of hope however small. Learning that it is never too late to forgive until it is, in fact, too late.