In Short – Issue 5 (Spring 2026)

May 31, 2026

Image credit: Conover Closed Encounters Conover NC 2019 by Charles Corriher

Uncle John’s Hide And Seek

By D. Doug Mains

Once, we couldn’t find him for three whole days. We searched and searched around every corner, any corner, inching as we always did, bracing ourselves for his enormous roar. We were ready to see his hands above his head like moose antlers. Ready to run to our mothers screaming. Eventually, the police won. Where was he hiding? Behind the sofa? The shower curtain? Gram’s pantry?  Dead in his car, they said, a needle in his arm.

D. Doug Mains (he/him) is earning his MFA in creative nonfiction from the Bennington Writing Seminars in Vermont. At 36, he earned a BA in creative writing from Michigan State University. Now—with an undiagnosed case of obsessive introspection, a problem with oversharing, and a propensity toward humor as a defense—he is writing a book of personal essays which explores what it means to raise humanists while rejecting the evangelicalism that still haunts him today. He lives just outside of East Lansing, Michigan with his wife and their four kids. This is his first publication.