SHORT STORIES

twenty-four hours eggs and grits and hot coffee small shared silences Too old for milk and sugar, I was 12 when I drank my first cup of black coffee. We were at the diner where Old 54 runs into Trinity Mills. No sign, no name, just the diner where Dad and I always ate breakfast before heading to the lake. …

Dear Mother, You promised that you would never leave me, and you promised that you would always love me by speaking those three words, “ I love you,” and you promised that you would give me the sugar water whenever I felt the anxiety, and you promised to teach me how to count in Japanese, and you promised that you …

Maxxon Studios decided to make a sequel to Vanishing Point. The original movie was made in 1970 using a white Dodge Challenger, and the star was named Kowalski. Kowalski was a Vietnam veteran. He’s delivering the Challenger from Denver to San Francisco, and a chase starts after he has a run in with the cops in Denver. There’s a black …

His feet couldn’t handle the pavement. His figure couldn’t bend to the shape of the doorway. But he forced his way along—through the entrance of the bar. Therein, it bustled. A sort of grime laid overtop everything. It went further than the cigar smoke that hung in the air and the groaning tune that played on the jukebox. It was …

“I’m in love with that moment when I go to sleep, when my head sinks in the pillow and my body goes deep in my bed.” It’s a moment of giving one’s self up to the world of dreams. What a misty enigmatic magical world in which we may interact with our subconscious mind! It seems that all the thoughts …

The last day of the Bi-Annual Industrial Fraud Conference had gone as poorly as the first two days. The unseasonably cold weather, the economy, an escalating series of unfortunate events had left Riley Babcock exhausted and defeated. It was his last night in Vegas, for God’s sake, but all he wanted to do was retreat to his room. At least …

Airports and airplanes always give me a sense of new beginnings. The moment an airplane takes off, gravity changes and pseudo force pushes us back to the seat. Then the flight continues. Everything seems like a celebration with happy stewards walking across the plane, asking if everything is okay. Sometimes a hard turbulence may strike and suddenly everyone is praying …

“I don’t know what to tell you, Bryan,” Van Harappan said, expressing a minor distaste at having the young man’s name in his mouth. “That’s just business. I don’t judge you for engaging in it. But I might judge you for not having the stomach for it. All I can tell you is to suck it up. And, if you …

The leaves were falling. Jim Jefferies drove about town and noticed trees getting thinner and winter drawing near. He thought of the plains Indians living in these parts. How cold they must have been and how cozy in a warm tepee. Population replacement must have been easy. He loved his hometown but times were tough, once again. He was cruising …

He invited me to the swimming pool for a dip. I pondered over my bikini of too many low-cut bits. I could not think of myself at Bishopbriggs in such a strip. The name suggested a stronghold of monks that a monastic vein in my heart had always cherished. I deliberated over the matter with a troubled wit then decided …

I had arranged a meeting in the park with the woman who wrote the found poem. When she arrived she was carrying a tattered folding umbrella. She looked at me and said, I think I’ve eaten a whole block of cocaine. Have you ever broken your ankle? She sat on the bench and removed a hairbrush then proceeded to drag …

An Excerpt of Sleeping Beauty There was kiss me under the Golden Bough mistletoe, yes Virgil says it was gilt wholly golden, so named possibly from the clinquant tint the cut limb acquires when kept to wither glittering through a season. Was not the sun’s firelight, or a modicum thereof, supposed to radiate from this shrub gathered all in all …

Having tied his Capezio shoes, Vito brushes his white slacks and gets up from the chair. He walks over to the mirror in the living room to brush his black hair — again. He tilts his head to one side, looks at himself from the corner of his eye and runs the brush across his coal black mass of hair. …

Chet sat on the edge of the courthouse lawn. He was a thin black man. He wore khaki slacks and a green t-shirt and had a fedora hat on his head. It had cooled off a little now that the sun was going down, but it was still hot. Chet took a drink from a half pint bottle of Jim …

Jack, seventeen and homeless, still wearing scars across his cheeks from the beatings his stepfather gave him a year ago, tramped along the underground carriages begging for money every day, thankful for the generosity of the odd schoolboy or septuagenarian who handed him some change. Not that it amounted to anything, but being treated like a human, knowing someone cared, …

Fermentation tanks reflect last call exit lights. Finishing beers, the tenth or fifteen, as taproom lights fill in our accidental drunken Thursday. We’re the only two drinkers at midnight other than the bartender who drank to not be our third wheel. We walk and all that watches is the moon, a misshapen fish eye from a broken body of water. …

Smoothly, it floated, sashaying down the slope. It twirled around, nudging its posterior, dancing to the tune of pitter-patter. Oh! It had the moves! The notes were clear. It’s movement swift. It was a sight to see the graceful moves. Captivated, they looked at it shimming its way through. As the droplets became heavy with moisture, it bobbed as it …

“You dream of me less these days,” my father says. Even in my dream, I feel guilty, like I did when he was alive. He would say, “You don’t call no more?” even when we’d talked earlier that week. I try to hide my shame, but he can see through it. I am dreaming. My mind is wide open. “I …

Off like a shot, the years just drifted away for two young men. John and Nick grew up together on Harrison Avenue. Their fathers worked at blue collar jobs and the mothers stayed at home. The moms didn’t all bake cookies but they were there to put band-aids on the scrapes and cuts and cooled the bruises with ice cubes …

“His was the light of the world, a lit match or the whole city, burning.” — Robert Creeley My old friend visited Las Vegas with his Katrina rescue shepherd, stayed at a nostalgic Motel 8 on the main drag, urine and stale disinfectants warded off most demonic spirit possessions in the late 1970s. Rescued from nowhere, its neon sign stared off …

I play Santa the year after Dad leaves. I’m fifteen. Older sister Nancy and Mother insist. I try to make his suit fit. It’s too wide, lanky body invading another man’s space. Spaces rife with mystery and Dad’s inner thoughts, concealed. I can’t even do Dad’s booming voice. I think of the act of leaving, taking furniture, leaving rooms and …

I watch the tide of darkness seep in through the periwinkle curtain against the pane of my bedroom window. The birds have stopped chirping. There is no sound except the occasional vehicles that honks on the stray dogs. Nothing has changed. Only that I have retired and my arthritic limbs impede my movement. I wait for my wife in the …

My oh so bloomy garden auteurist domain, where savored I wholesale poetic license, was far more fantastic than the famed hanging wonder of the world terraced in antiquity for a melancholy missus by her kingly spouse. Still and all I wanted the whole blooming world as my garden my luring organa garden my fata morgana garden brimming in the brightest …

Geez Louise, I know what’s wrong with me. Even so, there are times when you must talk to something called a psychologist — in my case, for a lawsuit. (You know what they say about female litigants: nutty, slutty, or crooked.) And here I am sitting across from a woman who is probably crazier than I am. She’s scared of …

It was one of those lazy November days, the sky was a blah grey, with an impenetrable fuzzy blanket across the sky. I pulled into the driveway of my condo, just in time to find something to eat and watch the PBS Evening News. My late husband inculcated the importance of this in me, and it was now my duty …

I remember my mother had built a small terrace garden on the roof. I was around fourteen years old then and I helped my mother in her endeavors. She had built a room size steel cage with whatever money she had saved for years. It was impossible for her to do gardening on the roof without any guard as mischievous …

Dwayne catches a cab from the bus station to his parent’s home on Salazar Street. Late afternoon sunlight diffuse and mute like underwater light under a gray Kansas sky flickers through a line of darkening catalpa trees. The cab pulls into his parents driveway. He notices his Dad’s silver Cadillac parked in the garage. He’s ambivalent about seeing his parents …

Alcohol will still be everywhere but soon no one can buy any from bars. “You can go home whenever you want, just lock up by 9,” is the last thing my boss says before disappearing out the door. “And wash your hands. We’re filthy.” He wouldn’t be here for the end of an era’s closing time. Our old vices don’t …

Don’t be alarmed if alarms alarm in your head. Remember, the lighthouse of your body is in your head. The island of your head. I have a head. It alarmed during the film. But this is because I am a horror fan and this was horror is horror and I got in an argument with a Poet Laureate from Minnesota …

WARNING: IMPACT IMMINENT COURSE OF ACTION: WAKE PILOT WAKE UP. WAKE UP! Donte Zazzala was sleeping. Deeply. Dreaming of the riches that would one day be his. The women he would have, the drink and the debauchery. The semblance of a smile rested on his scarred sleeping face. YOU ARE FLYING ON A COLLISION COURSE! YOU MUST PULL UP! The ship …

The sun on the bare rock-tip is raspberry, above the mingled white of snow, green of wood. ‘Ïmi amintesc de terci,’ crystalizes in Chocolate’s mind. Ioana was from beyond that mount. Maybe she returned. He still lumbers. To his shy heart the bears had been strength. The wood had been a playground. At fourteen he had only known the closing …

Michael was medicated—by a doctor, no less—and had two dozen nurses and a security guard to make sure he didn’t do anything rash. They were more careful than he knew—nobody else in the hospital had a name like his. It invoked visions of a dozen police cars lined up in front of the building, of litigation, of manipulation of public …

While Tony gave a speech in his role as the best man for Gareth the groom, he sported a traditional Nigerian royal blue kaftan, clutching a horsehair fly swatter–clashing with the black-tie event–and reeled off a list of Gareth’s conquests that he’d seduced prior to his bride Jackie coming on the scene. Everyone shifted uncomfortably in their seats but when …

It feels like it should be raining. I can’t quite explain why. In novels and films, there would be a constant pattering against my windows. Shadows would be long and strange. Maybe the rain is a baptism, maybe it’s the tears the protagonist won’t cry. If it was an artsy film, there would be no musical score to emphasize how …

‘ …La nuit, tous les chagrins se grisent; de tout son cœur on aimerait, que disparaissent à jamais, les papillons noirs, les papillons noirs, les papillons noirs…’ From inside his black pea-coat, Jacques took out his phone and looked at its cracked screen. Why he hadn’t changed the ring tone, he had no idea. It had been over seven years …

Customer: I tried to pay with PayPal for my Serenity Serum. My PayPal Transaction ID is o-4AR19803G257038B. I entered the payment at 9:55 PM. Reggie: Good evening! I will be happy to help you. May I have your Street Address, City, State and Zip Code to locate your order? 9:56 PM. Customer: Yet, End of Time webpage said I need …

Around narrow trunks, thoughtlessly spread lights wrap bare trees reaching towards the end of the year. Etched initials on bark are all that exists, nothing lives in the trees. No shadows cover main street’s potholes as Christmas steps dry out on downtown asphalt, the only audience for strung lights atop closed businesses. By the nativity scene between a Spanish-speaking Baptist …

Out of concern her family keeps a constant watch over her, the youngest leaf on an ancient tree, so very eager to flutter with the slightest breeze. Filial feelings dictate on nearby twigs to sermonize the little chick whose veins contain the thinnest blood. Deep-rooted in the soil, her father is keen on having his fretful kid enjoy a gravity-free …

I can’t think of a better job. I’m the third-generation mailman in my family. We call ourselves “mailmen” and won’t change that term no way, no how. Grandpop worked in Germantown, Daddy worked in Bucks County, and me, the only girl, I work in Huntingdon Valley, PA. Lordy, Lordy. What a gorgeous area that is. Would you believe I’ve been …

When I climb out of the KIA I notice an old man standing by his suburban. I look to where he’s staring and see a woman behind her covered pickup. The tailgate is down and she is moving metal cages around that hold small dogs. I think she must be a rescuer. The woman must bend over to do this …

When someone quits you, for whatever reason, even death, there are parts of you that languish, anger, and wither. You fallow empty of sun, thirst for rain. It can be an emotional cardiac arrest, or a diabetic depression, coma. Instinctively you know, just as the removal of slivers won’t fall trees, to survive, you need to keep growing. A broken …

The phone rings incessantly on this seething August night. It is 3 A.M. but the night call does not disturb my sleep. You see, I suffer from insomnia, my air conditioner is broken, and on this oppressively hot night, I sweat profusely. “Hello,” I growl. “I need your help,” the eerie voice whispers. “Who are you?” “Don’t you know?” “No.” …

In science class, the teacher was telling us that human beings can’t lay eggs and that only chickens can lay eggs, but I piped up, “Humans can lay eggs, you’re wrong, you stupid teacher!” The teacher said, “Well, that’s what all the smartest people in the world say is true and you can prove it through science. You can poop …

Friendship’s the wine of life; but friendship new is neither strong nor pure—Bunko was reading Ernest Young’s Night Thoughts in your bedroom. Reading’s a practice you shared since the early days of your marriage. You smiled endearingly, watched his Adam’s apple move up and down, listened to his solemn baritone reverberate. Bunko enjoyed your undivided attention. But that was two …

Excerpts from Sleeping Beauty Picking Up the Thread Rumor went round and round the land and even abroad of a most beautiful sleeping princess Rosamond, as you know I was called, who was encircled by an impassable thorn thistle which prickly creeping hedge had plot-thickened year after year after year for nearly ten decades and that within that intriguing aculeate …

Tony got up from the hotel bed and yawned as he pulled his Dolce and Gabbana jeans from the desk chair. “Seriously, Helen, do you know that you sound like a pig when we’re sleeping together?” Helen tried to laugh off his latest jibe at her lovemaking. “I can’t help myself, it’s in the genes.” “What does snoring have to …

The second psychiatrist I spoke with was Dr. Knowit —Barbara Gowers, the first, committed suicide at 6:00 pm and I left at 5:45. With such a suggestive name, how could I not investigate his schtick? I had as many questions as I had nonsense answers for his. For this diagnostic session, I cleaned up well, according to my mother.   “Did …

An auspicious event, a job interview, but what was I to wear for such a formal meeting? One suit could do but it needed matching shoes. The allowance money that I received every two weeks would have to be sacrificed. A pair of designer shoes on display met my eyes the moment I entered a grand store. I could not …

1. I would like to tell you a story that usually is not appreciated much when I have told it to others throughout the years. The kind of humor that many of us appreciated back in those days is pretty much extinct. At the time of this story, there was a soybean processing plant just outside of a very small …

For decades anyone in the world who wanted protection from the evil, brutal hands of reality could rely on one hero. That hero is CAPTAIN WHATABOUTISM! Armed with the powers of double-speak, explosive Red Herrings, Cloak of Hypocrisy, the Self-Righteous Shield of Deflection, and his super computer Social Media, Captain Whataboutism is able to protect the people who lives in …

Penelope loves being a tourist in her own town. Today, she is touring the OUE, the tallest building in DTLA (Downtown LA.) Its height exceeds any other building between Chicago and Singapore at 73 stories. Roundish and all glass to give people on each level the illusion there is openness around them, the building lulls them into forgetting there never …

Mother tosses that gold ring down the toilet. It strikes the bottom. Clink. “A metaphor for your father.” She laughs. Laughter cracked. She holds the handle, as if one gesture will unleash something frightening. As if he hasn’t been gone a whole year. “Shall I?” “Go for it.” I remember Dad making the announcement, words so matter-of-fact. Mother’s words, husky, …

“Brother, calm down. They will be here. Twenty more minutes, OK?” I don’t want to hear that. I really don’t. I have already been standing here in this two-bit DVD store for over half-an-hour. I don’t need it then. I need it now. “First, I fuck you, then my friend fuck you, OK?” And, no, I don’t want to hear …

When shimmering they came, he was hanging over the railing of his second-story balcony. He loved to stand on the balcony watching the sun’s comprehensible inertial descent behind the skyline of Agung Darussalam to the east and Masjid Agung Darussalam to the west. He would smoke his only clove cigarette of the day while he watched that happen. He bought …

“I went up those stairs at my next door neighbor’s party after midnight on New Year’s night to fetch our winter coats. I turned on the light and all the coats were on the floor and Gail was naked under the blankets making it with my next-door neighbor, this guy that ran a bunch of tanning salons. I flicked the …

Jack didn’t know why, but over the last year he’d been thinking about that day a lot. It wasn’t a day that had been out of the ordinary. And it wasn’t a day that he could recall that he’d really thought about for more than thirty years. But there it was anyway. Just as it had been for the last …

Jasper was cleaning out a smelly animal pen when he realized that he had a dopey crush on his boss’s daughter. Until this moment he had just assumed he hated Anna less than the girls he went to school with, but now he saw with disgust that he didn’t hate her at all. Her face was stuck in his mind …

If inanimate objects could talk, imagine the stories that would be told. When I was going to nursing school to become an RN and avoid starving to death, I bought a 1970 Chrysler. It was 28 years old when I bought it. It was a huge car. It burned a lot of gas and the heater didn’t always work as …

“What we gonna do now?” asked Zim, tugging his elf sleeve. “I dunno.” Nico scratched his pointy ear. “Hide him somewhere?” The two elves stood beside the sleigh in waist-deep snow, considering a headless situation. Icy gales snatched packages and toppled them overboard into the darkness. Panic filled Zim’s frail voice. “We can’t just dump him! This isn’t my fault.” …

It’s Tuesday night and the table is full of weeping women, various stages of sex appeal, holding paperback books with the power of the universe coursing through their hands. The throbs of infinite emotion beating in their hearts. They are all on the same page. The same paragraph. Cindy reads every word aloud while everyone else follows along. Her satin …

Everything began when the larger dog attacked the beagle and drew a six-inch bloody gash across its side. Nick rushed to his dog, picked it up gently and carried it to the porch where the old man sat reading the newspaper. “Can you give me a ride to the vet?” he asked. Before the old man could answer, he added, …

Fall wind bit through William’s threadbare coat producing a shiver. He pulled the coat tightly around his neck to cut off the draft. The coat used to be snug, now it wasn’t. William was somebody in the military, but that was five years back. Since his discharge he hadn’t adjusted well to a noncombat environment. An endless string of temporary …

The orange book was an abomination. The people working in the shop left it to work its own way ‘round. Shaliqua saw it on one of the tables Thursday morning. When all surfaces were wiped but that table, she abandoned the task in favor of shining spoons. From behind the counter, with her right eye closed, she held each spoon …

My limbs move with an awkward, reflexive motion. I speak in a mechanical, colorless tone. My body is composed primarily of plastic and stainless steel. Most people assume that I am a robot. They are wrong. I am an electronic person. I once was a live human being. Toward the end of my life, an electronic copy of my brain …

I believe God is a woman. Why do I think God is a woman? The creator of all living things? I think it happened after the accident (I’ll get to that later on). For the longest time I tried to understand my own purpose. I used to look up at the stars and feel somehow I was in the wrong …

An excerpt from Sleeping Beauty One day like all seemingly other days a long impending day that was to be set apart from all other days by the opening of an impenetrable chasm I idle found myself in medias res wandering wandering intrepidly all about the palace running round running running round about the castle restlessly questing searching aimlessly for …

The cloud from Danielle’s vape enveloped the inside of her car like a Saharan sandstorm. Passers-by suspected her vehicle was in flames but instead of calling the emergency services they took a selfie, pinged it on WhatsApp, captioned it Car on fire lol and went on their way. Danielle applied another nicotine patch, sucked on her vape until she felt …

Through the sliding doors she came one hip at a time: the most beautiful woman he had seen in his life. It is a strange thing to suddenly find the most beautiful woman you have seen in your life. If you know this, then you are in rare company. Furthermore, you know exactly the feeling, and you do not doubt …

The Reedman house had been empty since the old man died. He and his wife June fell in love with it when it was part of Land Tract No. 19. He continued with his welding job, a strong man with a stubbly beard helping build ships at the Navy Yard. Then June starting coughing. The walls of their bungalow rang …

Midday bartending is witnessing drinkers begin, then see them end before your night even starts. Ending shift drinks are something to hold to, same as a nurse in aged green scrubs holds to her deep yellow beer. She daydreams, day drinks, and has for two hours. She’s looked towards me but far into her own past. Or into what happens …

The storm had passed by the time that dawn came. Wind fluttered into the back porch from over the lake. It had been a long journey from the other side of the continent but they would need to make it back soon. But before that could happen there would be kind of a long journey in and of itself and …

Hey nearly tripped up tripped down tripped over but bu b—got back on’em okay. Much the wiser. After talking it down over with my waitress we got outta’ ‘dere again. So, talkdown over much more productive than talk down all over. All over; from head to toe front to back inside to outside every cubic anything. As; all over; no …

You might think I’m a fan of Henry David Thoreau because I’m building a cabin away from everything in the woods in northern Maine. But I have a different reason for wanting to get away. I started working at the Dalton Corp right after I graduated from high school twelve years ago. It used to be a good company to …

I couldn’t get rid of the vendor on line 1, there was a call still hanging on line 2, I was ten minutes late for a conference call from Tokyo, and the senior VP was tapping his foot in my doorway. Worse, I had just spilled a four-dollar latte on my white Ralph Lauren skirt. “Just a minute!” I shouted …

Shit. They called him Shit. Sometimes, while he ate alone at his lunch table, Karl Bennett and his two toadies would walk across the cafeteria and stop at his table. Karl would lean over, the tip of his nose almost touching Shit’s face. “Hey, Shit!” Karl would say, turning his head and flashing a white-toothed All-American smile at the girls …