These short works are the result of looking back on the experiences of a lifetime. Regrets? I've had a few. Would I change anything? Of course, that's why these stories are fiction."A Steppe Beyond," resulted from my experience hiking across Lapland at age twenty. A naïve, inexperienced hiker, I was entirely dependent on a Scotsman I had met at the Hammerfest, Norway, Youth Hostel. He had the maps, compass and experience. What began as a melding of youthful free spirits turned into a clash of cultures, and more.An event that happened during my time as an airline employee, frequently traveling to Europe and the Middle-East, turned into "Book Club: Died on the Fourth of July." At the time, there were constant threats of terror from the PLO, Baader-Meinhof Gang, Japanese Red Army and others. The book club part came from listening to my wife's comments concerning goings-on in her book club. The ladies were mostly political progressives. When it came to Islamic terrorism they echoed the leftist line that Islam was a religion of peace and not all Muslims were terrorists. Conflicting evidence was ignored until-in the fictional version, at least-several of their own were affected.Growing up in the Chicago area, I, like most self-centered youth, thought Chicago to be the hub of the multiverse. Vacations were spent in the North Country-Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan. Cairo (KAY-row), at the southernmost tip of Illinois, might as well have been in Egypt. The city was considered the capital of Little Egypt-extreme southern Illinois where the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers converge. On a return drive to Virginia from Arkansas where my mother was living at the time, I detoured through Cairo to take the Scenic Ohio River Byway to Paducah, Kentucky. Darkness closed in sooner than expected. Too dark to benefit from the scenic route, I ended up taking back country roads that appeared to be more direct. I was soon lost in the tall corn in the pitch black and low on gas. Growing anxious, my imagination ran wild. "Cairo" is the result.We lived briefly in a coastal Maine community. Most houses were owned by people from away, as locals say. One house stood out from those that had been recently built or renovated. More than a hundred years old and occupied by the widow of a fisherman drowned at sea, the house was coveted by those seeking a waterfront bargain. Almost one hundred herself, the widow refused to move-or die. Incessant inquiries and "generous" offers caused her to post a sign out front: House Not for Sale. A local who managed to obtain the house at auction after the widow died and misfortune struck the original buyer, was at first ecstatic over his luck. But his good luck turned out to be illusory. Locals attributed the tragedies that eventuated to the ghost of the drowned fisherman who allegedly prowled the home.My culture shock adapting to life in Latin America included learning the arcane rules of socializing with women. "Pila" is an account of my first date with an Ecuadorian girl. Pila was eight years my junior at sixteen-years-old. Any girl who had passed her quinceañera (fifteenth birthday) was mostly free game for older men. When Pila invited me to a movie, I thought I was in heaven after having been shot-down so often by American girls. There turned out to be hidden costs, however. Paradise gained became "paraíso perdido."The joys and frustrations of teaching ESL to high schoolers generated many story ideas. "Los Desaparecidos" (The Disappeared) resulted from my experience combined with fanciful imagination. Part "Invasion of the Body-Snatchers," part "The Picture of Dorian Gray," the story tells of an ESL teacher who finds that one of his students has disappeared from his class. Not only has her physical self disappeared, but her name and records have disappeared as well. A search for an explanation for the paranormal events surrounding her disappearance leads her teacher into an alternate dimension.