Open Stories — Short Fiction by Hank Redding

In a failing mill town in the early 1920s, a woman’s life is reduced to rumor, paperwork, and ash after a fire no one fully questions. As the town rushes to balance its accounts, one witness must reckon with the cost of watching when action never comes. The Accounting examines how tragedy is processed, explained away, and finally buried.

A man sets out on a westbound ride that becomes an examination of what remains after a life quietly breaks apart. As distance accumulates, the story traces how freedom, connection, and disappearance can occupy the same road without offering answers.

Across decades on a working ranch, a son watches his father’s authority pass not through instruction or praise, but through proximity, habit, and restraint. As the work shifts hands and a third generation begins to watch, After the Work Is Done explores how legacy is carried quietly—and what remains when strength gives way to presence.

In a remote Wyoming basin, a solitary rancher spends his mornings fishing a slow bend in the river while the season presses quietly forward. When a boy arrives looking for work and instruction, their days unfold through labor, water, and restraint. The Bend in the Current is a quiet Western story about endurance, transmission, and what continues without resolution.