Short Stories

Denoncourt’s shorter stories tend to be dark, symbolic, and full of meaning and mischief.

In The Way Things Fall, a father builds a towering platform outside his family’s cabin, then proceeds to live up there for the rest of his life, offering only cryptic remarks as evidence of his…mental breakdown? Or spiritual ascension? Things get weird when he begins to amass a group of followers, some of them harboring dangerous plans for the man’s confused and heartbroken son.

In Passing Souls, a young man dying of a heart condition goes on a series of dates using a matching site for other “terminals” like him—people with only weeks or months to live. As he begins to plan for the final chapter of his life, he is kidnapped by a perfectly healthy man with a disturbing need that requires access to the Passing Souls website, which is not available to everyone. What happens next will thrill readers who enjoy suspenseful rides through the darkest corners of the human psyche.

He climbed the tower to be closer to God. Instead, he became the devil…

That’s how the story goes. But I know the reason. I was there when it happened. I saw him change. I saw him lose his mind.

He was my father. And I loved him.

But he left us. He climbed that wretched tower and left us alone in this cold, dark forest. Left us to fend for ourselves against the wolves and the bears and the strangers who came looking for him.

They said he was a prophet. They said he had a vision. They said he could speak to God.

But I knew he was lying. He was hiding something. Something terrible.

Something that made him the devil.

A dating site for the dying… What could go wrong?

A young man with a terminal heart condition discovers a dating site for the dying. His adventures in the “terminal dating” scene teach him the true meaning of life and love when he goes on a terrifying date that forces him to face demons even death can’t erase.

This dark, thrilling novella about death & online dating can be read in under an hour.