SHORT STORIES

I’m finished with the second box of matzo and we still have a hundred or so miles to go. One piece of matzah every ten to twenty miles. It keeps me awake and I like the way it crunches, changes texture, leaves a slight film in my mouth. I always take a five to ten-mile break between each piece. “Hey,” …

It was six o’clock at night. Irene stressed. Slightly disheveled. Dropped ice cubes. Poured whiskey into a glass and rapidly started stirring. Donald would be coming into the house. She’d heard the garage door open and close. “Where’s my drink?” he asked putting down his briefcase. “You know I want it when I get home from work.” “I made it. It’s …

(Featuring Polly & Molly) Other Characters: Chef Jean-Paul The Ice Man Fifi the Cute French Waitress Harry & Larry Freezer Boy Bob Random Marcy Marcy (does not appear) Cyclops Various narrators & monkeys, who can be played by actors or cardboard cut outs as the budget allows, except where indicated Location: The Walk-in Freezer at the Ritz Carleton, Paris Time: …

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 …

Willie Ortloff knew Pamela Sunshine was going to crash through his front door in about a minute and a half and begin asking questions — questions for which he had no satisfactory answers.  He dreaded what was coming. Willie ran a straight shop. His work was immaculate and he had ethics. That ought to mean something. He had the only …

“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 …

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 …

The sun rose on Mars, and Spektor watched the grainy images sent back by NASA’s rover on his computer screen. The MP3 playing was a European dance beat without any real instruments, produced by a South African DJ who never showed her face. The time was 3:21 in the AM. Evanescence, Spektor’s girlfriend, was out somewhere, either at work or …

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 …

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 …

Maria, a forty-year-old divorcée, hoped Frank hadn’t changed his mind. She peered out her living room window. Pedestrians passed, cars eased to the curb, but no sign of Frank. She scooped a handful of jellybeans from the candy dish and popped them into her mouth. She picked at her teeth with a glossy red fingernail. Finally, Frank pulled up front …

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, …

My wife and I are new residents of an over 55 community on the edge of the Pine Barrens in southern New Jersey and are still finding our way and learning the rules, regulations, and customs of our neighborhood. We feel as though we are living “off the grid” as a simple trip to a grocery store, mall, or restaurant …

Two drunken men in their late twenties stumble down the steps of a brick house into the street. They ask what the hell I am doing walking the streets of Hyde Park at three AM. “You looking for a place to rob?” the taller one pushes. I could shoot back the same line but I am prepared and tell them …

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 …

One day when I was sitting in the teacher’s room a man walked in and sat next to me. “Remember?” He asked. His face looked familiar but I wasn’t able to remember where I had seen him. I was putting pressure on my mind when he jumped to his feet, frowned, and got very angry. “As now that you’re a …

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 …

“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 …

The best result of hearing a police siren when you are in jail is that you know they aren’t after you. Of course then you must deal with the reality that your ass is incarcerated. Los Robles prison near Punteranes, Costa Rica. I’ve resided in gray bar hotels in a few states back in the U.S. and had the hospitality …

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 …

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. …

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 …

The Kafka brothers, tiny men with thin moustaches and matching scars across left cheeks, hardly ever speak to one another and forget the other exists, even though they live in the same house. Now in the bestial winter, they have not spoken in over a month nor have they seen the others’ dark brown eyes. The house is not a …

He awoke as General George Armstrong Custer. What’s more, he was in the thick of the fight. The Indian took stock. “It’s ironic,” he told himself, “but I’m General Custer.” Just then an arrow flew past his chin. The Indian as Custer looked around. He and his men were trapped! On the crest of a tree-less rounded hill! With hostile …

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 …

People from Newark have a beautiful quality of saying exactly what’s on their mind. From the ages of eleven to thirteen, I played on an AAU basketball team from there－The Newark Rams. A basketball director from a summer clinic in South Orange, New Jersey must have had a wicked sense of humor when she told my mother that my older …

Now they’d bloody well fucked it. Humanity, having finally realized how much it hated itself, had wiped out its existence from the universe in a nuclear firestorm. Even the politicians were dead, the ones who had pushed the buttons to set the whole thing in motion. The big nuclear powers, seeing the course global politics was taking, had all independently …

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 …

It was not the torso that Greeks and Romans sculpted for generations to immortalize the ideal physique; neither the Celtic mane of a Scottish highlander nor the stature of an Amazonian warrior. It was simply the freckles on his irises that brought it all about, an obsession that changed the entire course of my life. His eyes reminded me of …

Conventional wisdom says never go grocery shopping on an empty stomach. I’m not one to defy logic, so I drank several IPAs and drove drunk to the supermarket with my reusable shopping bags and Rocky, my bulldog best friend. He sat in the back of the Subaru drooling on the windows while I shopped.             Navigating the supermarket was a …

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 …

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 …

It’s the same scene today as it is every morning: my husband amuses himself with the stock market, the children get dressed for school, I toss up breakfast and the sun streams through the open window. I am in a state of constant dissatisfaction. Frenzy. Turmoil. I walk around with the same unanswered questions. We want our partner to remain …

A man fiddles with his top button and recounts his sadness. I sit, half-listening, as the speakers above us garble. With music or talk radio, I’m not sure. When I’ve had enough I go outside to smoke a cigarette. Someone asks to borrow my lighter and calls it pretty even though it’s not. I listen to three strangers discuss politics …

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 …

Dominica had a beehive like Amy Winehouse, like Marge Simpson. It was a strange beast, natural but with a fake sheen. If someone needed a pen or a lighter, even a cup of tea, she just reached inside and pulled out whatever was needed. Chris, her ten-year-old nephew, was fascinated by her tricks and at a family gathering hosted by …

I lift my eyes from my work as a light moves across the living room—the sun glinting off her windshield as she approaches the house. My thoughts are drowned out by the muted crackle of tires slowing their roll against the road. Apprehension turns to dread, turns to defeat, as the garage door opens and the whole house hums. Her …

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, …

Screwdriver seems to be an ideal cocktail but not everybody shares this opinion. I got sucked into making one after reading an article in a magazine, one you wouldn’t touch if you weren’t sitting in barbershop, waiting for your turn. Screwdriver－two ingredients: long-awaited drunkenness and a mild state of euphoria, things that any of us need in certain situations. Also pain. …

Our objective was to find the Engineers. Some religious people coined the term God but Scott and I were clear they must have been just plain Engineers. Several archaeological digs consistently pointed out that one planet in a distant planetary system, some 60 light years away. As per the observations using large array telescopes, the planet was the first and …

The old snake made its way around SouthGress. People saw it in several spots on occasion. But among its favorite of spots was the carousel. It would wind around the circle of the carousel’s low metal gate several times and then settle into a sleep as the dawn broke. On the days when the snake curled around the carousel, only …

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 …

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 …

The meteor shower was spectacular. It was also unexpected. All over the Earth, at least in most places, people were treated to a magnificent fireworks display. Many of these “falling stars” seemed to streak brightly across the heavens clear down to the Earth. For stargazers around the world, it was a show that lasted for several days. Scientists appeared on …

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 …

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, …

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 …

When I watch television, I hardly ever listen to commercials. About 99% of the time, I mute them out, with the exception of the guy that does the Mexican beer commercials about the world’s most interesting man, but that’s not the commercial that I want to write about. Back in 2012, I muted a commercial as soon as the station went …

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 …

Walter Nye would overcome his shyness towards his lover Kristin. After his eventual first date they became a great couple. Collecting comments from street gossip about their togetherness. Walter would talk of nothing else. Kristen this. Kristen that. Until all his friends deserted him. But Walter didn’t care. Nor hardly realize. All he wanted and needed was Kristin. As time …

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 …

“It was an Appelt.” “Huh?” “Its sale covered the fees for: the hall, my dress, and the caterer.” “Not parsing.” “I found it when cleaning out my grandma’s storage room.” “?” “I was looking for vintage and found expensive art.” “So?” “You and I took Art Appreciation, together, sophomore year.” “We also toked together and we each also slept, without …

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 …

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 …

When your father’s angry, his mustache bristles. Words fire fusillades. You’re too weak, what good is art, you need to fuck around, use people, don’t trust anyone. When he’s in a good mood, he proclaims you his light. You build walls of mendacities. First you make up fictitious girlfriends, prestigious fake awards, even fake fistfights. You add bloody detail for …

Once upon a time, Barry woke up in his dark room, where the smell of the unknown floats like a river of riddles and the soul of the world goes round and round within four walls of an unborn light. He was oblivious to the dream. How did he wake up? What was the unfathomable mystery that unhinged such a …

In a theatrical afterlife, the shades take over the performance halls, while post-pandemic audiences move into the limbo of the virtual.  When the theater is dark, critics and reviewers have nothing to report. A Drama Reviewer’s pages remain blank; there is nothing to review when nothing is viewed. Reviewer is unemployed, like the actors, directors, designers and stage hands. He …

The first time I met White Feather was in the ER. I was an RN on the psyche floor of our hospital. I was a floor nurse, working the Special Care Unit, or the “locked side,” as we called it. I was often asked to come down to ER to help with patients that were combative, for whatever reason, including …

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 …