The Randoverse

Every neighborhood has that house. Curtains closed. Grass too perfect. People keeping strange hours. For one summer, a nine-year-old me decides to figure out what’s going on across the street. I get some of it right. My Neighbors, the Vampires is a story about bicycles, notebooks, magnolia trees, long memories, and one wave that takes about thirty years to come back. Come for the vampires. Stay fo...

Look. It’s hot. There’s an ice cream truck. There’s something in the freezer that absolutely was not there before. And yes, Ice Creaming is the title. You’ve made it this far. You might as well find out. A slightly suggestive little Randoverse story about appetite, memory, summer, and the kinds of things that probably shouldn’t happen inside an ice cream truck. Come on. You know you want to. Liste...

Some things are better loved from a distance. Benjamin St. Fred has spent a very long time looking toward Earth… Small, blue, beautiful, and impossibly far away. Then one day, he decides to come closer. What follows is a story about loneliness, good intentions, impossible proportions, and the strange amount of space sometimes required to care for something gently. I first wrote Benjamin St. Fred b...

Three old stories. One Halloween night. And a pretty good excuse to see what happens when the veil gets thin. Welcome Back to The Randoverse: Volume Two opens the door with three stories from years ago, revisited now with new eyes, new music, and a little more life in them. They arrive together on Halloween. The rest of Volume Two follows from there, carrying The Randoverse into 2027. Turn the lig...

Old perspective. New eyes. Written across years, from my childhood notebooks to late-night fragments, The Randoverse returns with a new collection of original short fiction about impossible neighbors, unexpected sweetness, distant friends, and the strange things we carry with us long after we thought we’d left them behind. Some stories changed. Some waited. Some just needed me to catch up. A Guide...

A man takes to the river with a few unlikely traveling partners. The road ahead is rough. The water’s unpredictable. But the company? Better than he expected. The Prospect is a story about what happens when you head out looking for one thing and end up finding something else entirely. 🎵 Featured Song: Good Company — Jesse Waldman

Every Greek play has that one moment: the stage still, the chorus watching, the hero stuck between choices. That’s this story. The moment that isn’t a moment at all. Just the wait. 🎵 Featured Song: Choo Choo Parker Rose by Cowboy Supernova

A man. A bucket. Nothing unusual, until the moment it is. He isn’t searching for meaning. He isn’t searching for anything. But sometimes life taps you on the shoulder anyway. Pails in Comparison is a quiet story about the instant something everyday tilts… and you notice. 🎵 Featured Song: Small Town Pride — Nick Loux

I wrote West Wings in 2015, wanting to try my hand at a modern fable. Something simple on the surface, but carrying a small oddness underneath. It follows a creature who ends up somewhere he never expected to be, carried by forces bigger than he understands, and changed in ways he won’t recognize until much later. A story about motion, chance, and the odd, wind-tossed places we sometimes land. And...

A desk rests in the middle of a field. Untouched by time. When I first wrote this story in 2010, I was experimenting with something more classical: long notes of description, soft edges, a bit of romantic prose inspired by the music I grew up hearing at home. I wrote it to feel like Little Bear meets a chamber piece. Simple, calm, and strangely alive. This episode is an invitation to wander throug...

There’s a strange truth about kids: they exhaust you, confuse you, test every nerve you have… and somehow, sometimes, you still wish the days would slow down. You don’t always know what to do with that feeling while you’re in it. You usually understand it later. This is my poem written for The Randoverse called “Steal Your Steps” 🎵 Featured Song: “Restless” — A. Wesley Chung From The Randoverse —...

There was something unusual about the mailbox at the edge of town. It asked questions. Or rather, something beneath it did. In this tale of strange interruptions and small awakenings, we explore what happens when routine meets curiosity… and whether you’re really listening when the world speaks. 🎵 Featured Song: “Change Takes Time” — Nick Kingswell From The Randoverse — Volume 1: A Guide to Levit...

Three voices. Three eras. Three winters. This intermission takes you on a quiet journey across seven centuries. From a medieval lament, to a wandering German poet in the seventeenth century, to an American winter in the 1800s. Each poem notices winter in its own way, but all three remind us that people have been trying to make sense of this season for a very long time. Featuring: • “Winter Wakenet...

There’s a town nearly gone now. It’s pond dry. Its seasons confused. Its memories scattered in strange little objects left behind. At the rim of the dry pond sits a small figure who feels something familiar returning as a storm gathers in the distance. A pull toward a life it can almost remember. A quiet, surreal story about time, loss, and the ways places come back to life. Since I was young, tin...

Step into a quiet detour with a Randoverse Intermission, where older stories from history are lifted out of their centuries and carried into new sound and new light. This episode features “The Discontented Pendulum” (1810), written by Jane Taylor, one of the earliest women in English literature to publish widely under her own name. She wrote in an era when clocks were still wound by hand, children...

When I was younger, I stayed in houses where “goodnight” meant everything. After long summer days, lightsaber fights, street games of capture-the-flag, biking to the pool, sleepovers, blockbuster runs, running wild with neighborhood kids — a parent would click the light and say it softly. Not “I love you,” but close enough that you felt it anyway, a small, steady kind of care that ended the day ju...

When everyone takes to the skies, the last person on the ground finds the real horizon. Featured Song: “Changes” by Jane’s Party. https://music.apple.com/us/album/changes/1784943352?i=1784943353

When the last order leaves the counter, the night still has one more story to tell. It’s strange. It’s warm. It might even make you hungry. Featured Song: 🎵 “Swallow” by Ben Reneer (feat. Tell the City) https://music.apple.com/us/album/swallow-feat-tell-the-city-alternate-version/1782235680?i=1782235683

By morning, he sang the sun into waking. But tonight, a curious lark leaves the safety of daylight to chase the song of the night. What he finds is wonder. What follows… has wings. A quiet fable about fear, flight, and the hush that holds its own kind of music. From The Randoverse. Featured Song: “By Your Side” by Justin Lee https://music.apple.com/us/album/by-your-side/1627815994?i=1627816266 — P...

These writings were always meant to be found, not buried, not forgotten, just waiting for the right voice to breathe them awake. Each page began as a quiet experiment: a thought half-formed, a moment pinned between dream and daylight. I wrote them for the page, but they refused to stay there. Now they live where they were always meant to, in air, in resonance, in the small vibrations that turn wor...