The Fairfield County Friday Night Gridiron Bonanza: A Short Story

When a tragic accident claims the life of a small-town cheerleader, a stunned community mourns a beautiful girl taken all too soon. Caught on the fringes is Wade Shaunson, a clean-cut kid still sorting through the rubble of a lost relationship with the dearly departed.

Wade is haunted by visions of his brief affair with Kiki Malone. He looks back to the moment their eyes met, then ahead to the future they never built together; he even sees into her mind at the moment she died. But in every thought looms the specter of the night he broke her heart, and a sickening secret that would shatter his reputation.

On the night of his sleepy town's biggest football throwdown of the fall, Wade confronts his guilt, his sins and so much more. There is blood, and a harrowing chill, and an eldritch force in the woods. Yet every shock and brutality pales next to what lurks in the soul of an American teenager.

Award-winning writer and filmmaker Adam Bertocci has been praised by Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, The New Republic, GQ, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Back Stage, Broadway World, E!, Maxim, IGN, Film Threat and more. Now, in this debut short story, he tries his hand at the horror genre—with terrifying results.