The Slash Pile

Title: Canaan Falls
Author: Tsukizubon Saruko
Format: Shousetsu Bang*Bang Short Story
Length: 2 Chapters
Status: Complete
Rating: At least R
Warnings: This story has a pretty high creep factor going for it.  Hot cocoa and plenty of lights may be called for.
Link: http://s2b2.livejournal.com/60769.html
Summary: The first thing I thought when I saw Bobby Leonard again was that I had never expected to see him old. The Bobbys of the world followed James Dean's advice, and his example, I guess; they got shot holding up all-night liquor stores by some clerk who got lucky, plowed their beat-up Camaros through the guardrail out on the point, loaded up their arms with poison medicine for the pain of being crazy in a sane world or the other way around. They had closed-casket funerals with big blowups of their high school yearbook pictures on a stand, decked with flowers. You didn't expect them back at forty-five. Hell, you didn't expect them back at twenty-five....

Review: One of my all time Bang Bang favorites, Canaan Falls is the story of two childhood friends who have spent their lives trying to forget each other and the darkness they found one dusty summer, at the heart of their small town.  But now, years later, it seems Canaan Falls hasn't forgotten them.

This short story is nothing if not powerful.  Beautifully written and full of terribly realistic characters- Canaan Falls could be your own home town and it will remind you of that time when you knew the dark was full of monsters.  Monsters that knew your name.