Brown Hound Press (BHP) is a new online literary journal whose mission is to publish one new story each week. Their fictional bent is “…offbeat, a little different than the norm. Quirky is good. Dark humor is good. You might call our style mystery, literary, or Southern Gothic.”

BHP’s inaugural story was written by celebrated short story writer Bob Johnson, whose debut collection “The Continental Divide” (Cornerstone Press), earned him a spot on the longlist for the 2026 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection.

Johnson’s latest story, “The Train to Union Station,” features Esther, a woman who is on a train from Waterloo, Indiana, to Chicago because she’s answered an ad in Winnetka to be a nanny for two kids. Esther’s left behind a fiancé and her fiancé’s sister, who’d recently moved in with them. When Esther told her fiancé, Kenneth (17 years her senior), that she was leaving, he’d said, “Sweetheart, have you lost your mind?”

Indeed, yes, if she hadn’t lost it already, she was slowly beginning to do so, and Kenneth seemed to be a critical part of her losing her mind. And Kenneth’s sister, too, who seemed to have an unusual relationship with her brother (Kenneth often rubbed her bare feet) would make disparaging comments and “criticize Esther’s cooking and fashion choices.” Kenneth dropped Esther off at the train station and told her, “When this insanity becomes clear to you, Esther, I’ll be waiting at home.”

Over the weekend, I listened to “The Yellow Wallpaper” (I’ve read it a few times already, but wanted to try the audio experience), and while reading Johnson’s story about Esther, I couldn’t help but hear hints of this slow-creeping insanity consuming Esther, in the same way it consumes the narrator in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story.

Except in this case, Esther’s containment isn’t a room in stately home, but instead a train car, where she meets a pushy young man who spills coffee on her and gets too close, physically, along with a train conductor who’s obsessed with Mike Ditka. As the story unfolds, Esther grows more unstable and more uncomfortable.

Objects play a significant role in the story as well, as Esther clings to an old purse whose contents, at one point, spill out onto the train floor—an exposure that results in an unusual amount of embarrassment, as if she’d just revealed her darkest secrets.

“The Train to Union Station” is a masterclass in how to introduce and sustain tension from the opening lines until the inevitable conclusion.

Read the story here.

Bob Johnson’s collection The Continental Divide was published by Cornerstone Press in February 2025 and was subsequently positively reviewed by Stuart Dybek in The New York Times. It has been long-listed for the PEN/Bingham Literary Awards. His stories have appeared in The Hudson Review, The Common, The Barcelona Review, Vol 1. Brooklyn, and many other places. bobjohnsonwriter.com