SHORT STORIES

It was 1953 one of the hottest, wettest and most hurrican-ed summers yet. People on the South Louisiana Cajun Prairie were pounded with the craziest of weather. Louisiana is known for its interesting, to say the least, meteorological feats! One of the reasons this Barefoot Cajun lives here. Gonna take more than a spot of poor weather to move this …

It groans in the West-North corner of our apartment. I do not know why its wailing brings Wuthering Heights and the Irish banshees to my mind. Only this household is without a child. The lightning flashes as in some Hollywood horror episode. We wonder whether to stay or depart. We opt to spend another night in our not-very-spacious car. I …

The dance was on the second floor. The leader played sax and flute. He brought along a drummer, bass player, keyboard man, and guitarist. All the players shared the singing responsibilities. They were each capable of doing lead and background harmony. This was to be an easy gig because a lot of speeches and award-bestowing rituals for gang members, for whom the dance was …

I first met Harold awaiting the recalcitrant elevator. He was on his way to meet one of my tenants, Michael. What they did or how they knew each other, I never knew, but I could guess. The Hollywood Arms has always been home to show folks, (we’ve got us quite a few retired ones here), and the rest are either …

There was a barrel of fish in the basement, by the pool table. The barrel was full of brine, and when somebody ordered fish, the cook would come downstairs and grab one from the barrel. That’s how it was done then. Augie was also down there, an awful lot, practicing trick shots on the pool table. The felt had small …

My friend Lonnie asked me could I paint his sister’s kitchen on my day off? He would pay me $150 and it would take two, three hours tops. $150? I said. He told me his sister Nessa lives in a bad neighborhood in West Agoglia, and that was why he was paying so much. So much? (I did not say …

After watching Snow White, I wanted to be a princess who won’t fancy an apple, no matter how red and ripe it is. My mother was the evil queen. At thirteen, I longed for a world with more freedom and no mother. On my fourteenth birthday, Baba gave me a heart-shaped locket. It had a glinting ruby in the middle. …

Walter pulled his old black Studebaker Wagonaire, with a blue covered bible in the back seat, onto the right shoulder of the interstate and, after looking to his left to be sure no other cars were coming, walked to the center of the southbound lanes and fell to his knees. He had been returning home from late religious services at …

The jukebox in the corner of the diner was blaring. “For God’s sake, Ray Dan, you picked the only diner in South Alabama with a jukebox? You know I hate them things in diners.” “I didn’t know, I swear. Promise. Maybe the pie is good. Joe Willy, here, take a look at the menu.” The music quieted and the two …

Harold flew out of a giant oak and landed with his feet on the ground. Three toes forward and one back. Like a Spartan with a red plume, he raised his head and showed off his vermilion dome. He flapped his wings and propelled himself onward. The turkey gobbled as he pranced across open ground, searching for grasshoppers. Children chattered …

I’m Alejandro. A dog. Chihuahua, to be exact. My owner, Al, is an upholsterer. We live together at his house. It’s big! Al has a friend, Chuck. I don’t like him. Sometimes when Al isn’t looking, he kicks me. One day, Chuck drops by. He doesn’t call. Just stands on the porch and bangs on the security screen. I run …

I do not keep birds in cages. People resent my attitude as a type of sheer sentimentalism. They remind me that fauna were created for their service and entertainment. As for my vegetarianism, it is a blasphemy against the generosity of a god who sanctioned animal slaughtering. Sheep are kindred spirits, admit the animal-loving, but they were born to be …

July 9, 1969. We were sitting in the top row of the nosebleed seats at Shea Stadium, watching Tom Seaver and the New York Mets lay a serious ass kicking on the Chicago Cubs. With each low flying plane that passed overhead, coming out of LaGuardia Airport, the entire upper deck shook. Some flew so low we could see passengers’ …

Today, Atena will massage me for the first time in three years. COVID lockdowns and travel restrictions caused me to be stranded in the country of Cáscara for over two years. Atena, when the shutdowns were lessened, moved to another province in Orotina to escape the concentration of contagion. She has such good energy. She is divine. As she massages …

My husband, Bryan, plays the bagpipes. In the house. On the weekends. It’s all my fault. When I gave him the pipes and arranged a teacher, I hadn’t thought things through. “I’d sure like to learn to play the bagpipes,” he said. And I’d misjudged my future obligation to the instrument. I thought purchasing the pipes and finding the teacher …

It was fortunate when Peter Williams chose our newspaper, and specifically me, to tell his story. Now I was visiting him on death row, one day before his scheduled execution. A guard led me through a series of locked doors to a ten-by-ten room, painted battleship gray, with two olive folding chairs and a chipped steel table bolted to the …

As signs of winter deepen, our yard could be mistaken for a small mammal petting zoo. We have already had one serious bout of ice and snow, but in our yard, it’s raining squirrels. At any one time, dozens of them rush around as if it’s Black Friday, pushing and shoving, barking at each other for the last discounted acorn …

Seth wasn’t convinced that actualizing his ancestors’ birthright meant humanity would maintain nirvana. His was no dreamworld; it was filled with school and household chores. Quadratic equations and dirty kitty litter boxes marred felicity. Besides, he had asked Sandy, Derek, and Rob, during playground time, if they had ever felt the oft-referenced beatitude. Sandy complained of an extracted tooth, Derek …

There has been a murder in Block 87. A few miles away at PS 52 (Peace and Security branch 52), the gunshot finder pinged faintly at 4:13 pm, a green dot blinking on its screen like radar. A hovercraft with two officers, Badges 1087 and 3495 (a trainee and his female superior), was summarily dispatched. “Code Red,” barked the PA …

Boozy lived on the edge of the village by the local watering hole in a tree house, that’s right a house woven into the strong, fabric limbs of an old oak tree. The tree had been named Brunhilde—the Princess found in ancient Germanic heroic literature. The tree had withstood category five hurricanes. Boozy, an orphan, had lived under that tree …

The second time that I opened the door to the Procyons’ house, I still saw no family portraits. However, I noticed a bottle of liquid soap had been left on their kitchen table. The Procyons had hired me via email. Their instructions were to accept offers no less than five per cent off their asking price and to encourage tenders …

My grandmother was the best. Everyone in our small town called her Gramma. Well, everyone except her grandkids. She was Buzzy to all of us. I was her first grandchild, and like all firsts, I was special. For reasons that are now cloudy, I called her “Buzzy.” She loved it, and as the other grandkids came along, they too, called …

I’d had two run-ins with the grump & they were far from pleasant. First encounter was at the premier of Tales of Ordinary Madness at a rundown movie house in a seedy hood at Melrose and Van Ness in the early 1980s. I had the nowhere cab gig at the time. (Stuck in it for years in order to buy …

Eighty million of them and I have to get the guy I Seig Heiled in Thailand. I shouldn’t have done it. He was just a hippie tourist. I have a beef with Nazi Germany, sure, but who doesn’t!? I mean, get over it, man. That’s what the German should have said to me, when, drunk, I met him in the …

My heart quivers within my breast. My voice is gone. My stomach churns and knots. I cannot speak all the words I yearn to say aloud. I cannot express all the emotions I have long felt and kept silently hidden. My strength faded, my mind empty. My heart shatters repeatedly at every instance of life that reminds me of you. …

The unsteady movement of his slender wrist enables me to hear the remote sounds of a piano. I am usually in another part of the very large house, but at this moment he is just across the hall, writing in the study, describing the piano music. Occasionally he looks up from the faded, pale notebook paper, gazing through the specially …

The alarms went off. People woke up to realize it was still night. Some went off to sleep again without a thought. The early birds work up, then thought it was a night nocturnal that woke them up. They went off to sleep again. Some tossed and turned, waiting for a morning that never came. People missed work, shops remained …

“I was dreaming when I wrote this, forgive me if it goes astray.” Prince, 1999 Mona was nothing special. If you saw her on the streets, you’d think she was just another Goth girl from the badlands, as unremarkable as Norma Jean before she conjured Marilyn. When she wasn’t on campus, you could usually find her at home reading over …

Saturday I got my first package from HearttoHeart.com. I was eager to open it and see what they had sent me. You’ve probably seen the ads for HearttoHeart.com. “Be GOOD to yourself. Let us send you surprise packages. They will arrive when you need cheering up.” The way it works is that they know all about you. They know when …

Eloise screamed, “Come back here, dickwad. I need you!” I left the front door ajar, although a good slam would better suit the dark thoughts rattling in my head. My leather soles slapped the concrete as I stomped down the front steps. There was nothing she could say that I hadn’t heard a million times before and I’d long since …

Peter-Paul Nilsson, the famous Scandinavian radio journalist, was conducting an interview with Dr. Ralph McGill in the back seat of a limo when the driver stroked out. The car went off the road and into the river. “Hold that thought,” said Dr. McGill, rapidly assessing the situation. As the car slowly sank, he located a tool box under the seat …

I paused to cast a subtle glance at my facade to check if something looked awry for the public eye. I quickly looked at my zip whose little ring sat snug beneath my belt, safeguarding the intimate part of my fabric. I searched for any prints that my doting dog might have left. The upper part of my cardigan was …

I don’t look like a murderer, do I? According to the State, I am. The newspapers think so. Those empty-headed anchors on the local evening news agree. As for social media, I can’t even. I know the cards are stacked against me. The killing happened last summer on the outdoor patio at the town’s favorite watering hole. I am not …

Everyone in his department knew John wouldn’t get tenure because he smoked pot in his office. John knew that too. John was tall and thin and sported a beard and long hair — too radical for a college in West Texas. He told me once about waking up in the middle of the night and smelling gas all over their …

“I’m taking the boat on a maiden voyage this afternoon,” Thomas announced. “Honey, you only picked it up yesterday, shouldn’t a used boat be checked over before it’s taken out on the ocean?” “Checked out, shmecked out. You’re just like your dad. It was fine before it was taken out of the water, it’s fine now.” He looked over the …

Camp Ahltaha was on Fairview Lake, in what William Carlos Williams referred to as “The ribbed north-end of Jersey.” I was the ‘pioneering’ merit badge instructor there during my 16th summer, teaching Boy Scouts useful knots. We also tied sticks together (“lashing”) to build ‘structures,’ which fell apart immediately. We shared the lake with Camp Nobebosco, where “Friday the 13th” …

“I’m here for those flappy boys,” the cop said. I didn’t know what to do. Didn’t know how to react. “M-my birds?” I asked, incredulously. I’d just bought them. Parakeets, two of them, annoying little buggers – but I thought that was all. Little did I know. First night I had them, it was Bedlam. It was two women, turns …

My morning routine became non-existent after my husband died. I’d only sit there drinking coffee, staring off into space, as Dexter looked on, expecting breakfast and a walk. I did eventually provide both, but not as usual. Time had no meaning. At some point, I met Ghost. Now, about five years in, Ghost texts me twice every morning, just before …

The concert was sold out seconds after the tickets went on sale. Some fans paid over two thousand dollars for front row seats. On the day of the concert, ticket scalpers were getting a lot more. The ironically named Sound of Silence was the hottest band in the entire world. The MC strode across the stage, bowed to the audience, …

It was no small scene when they woke. The dead lay in pine boxes. Decomposing bodies leaked through holes at the bottom of their coffins—maggots had tunneled through contaminated soil and suckled on the evil roots of trees. Worms transformed into snakes. The snakes slithered back into the boxes. They ate at the foul-smelling flesh. Brains left behind bled into …

“There was broken glass all over the kitchen,” I told my husband when he returned my call. “Both windows were shot out. I found BB gun pellets on the floor. I keep finding shards, so I am sweeping again. That’s why I have you on speaker phone.” My husband hated the hands-free mode. For him, my voice was garbled whenever …

Helena packed her things for the roof deck: water, phone, goggles, new swimsuit. The deck had a pool, one of her favorite features of their apartment complex. She swam almost every day, as soon as the sun came up, as soon as you were allowed to swim, except on Sundays. On Sundays, she always made Sam breakfast first, carrying a …

Well then? What did it matter whether she was living or dead? My mother’s pictures were strewn across the iPhone screen like innumerable stars in a night sky. When I viewed them, they looked exactly the same as the ones who were still living that I had not visited in ages. In stillness, it didn’t matter. They all looked alike. …

There was no Anvil Chorus from the doorbell ringing but I hear my front door open (remind me to oil the hinges) then I hear a woman yelling, a man yelling back and there went my nap for the day so I hopped off the top bunk went downstairs and these strangers, he with a golfer’s cap, plaid Bermuda shorts, …

Ray Dan got up from the breakfast table when he heard a vehicle bouncing up the driveway. Before he got the door fully open, Blake Shelton belting out “God’s Country” filled the kitchen. “I swear Ray Dan, don’t you go bringin’ Joe Willy into this house when all I got on is this robe.” “Honey, maybe you could get something …

If Maddison had not once known someone called Henrietta, she would have thought that there was not a soul in the whole world who was currently called Henrietta. Perhaps in the time of crinolines and night carts, but not social media and lattes. And there was the Henrietta, who Maddison once knew, when they were twelve, and taking dance lessons …

Life was good at that point in my life. I didn’t want it to decline. I thought if I just don’t do anything I might be okay. But I doubted it. I’d tried to lay low before. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, they found me. The people found me. My old dog found me. Seemed the more I tried to …

Robert awoke into a mirror world. Everything was the opposite of what it had been, and yet exactly the same. The sun was rising in the west, yet hadn’t it previously risen in the east? Or had it always been the way it was today and he was just confused? At least it wasn’t rising in the north or south. …

Maurice moves upon the South Louisiana Cajun Prairie swooshing in and out I see him from time to time Sporting a new body, sleek and fine But still soaring naked He once told me that bodies were meant to breathe By that he meant bodies weren’t meant for clothes Maurice died from blood cancer in 1999 He was just shy …

It all started with an essay that one of his students wrote for a composition test. It bore no relevance to the topics proposed, so it naturally got a zero for being off-point, but it was easy to recognize who wrote that irrelevant piece because that test was preceded by a CD that introduced the topic to a very unsuspicious …

It had vanished! Only the blank canvas stared back. A hard surface, white: 40-inch X 30-inch, now empty. An ugly space! The image had vanished! Rohit was devastated. How could it be? No sign of vandalism. Nothing! No knife cuts. No defacing. He felt distressed. Modeled after Albrecht Dürer’s Self Portrait at Twenty-Eight, it showed Rohit directly facing the viewer. …

That evening she hurriedly exited home from the backside door, unmindful that her husband was not at home. Defying her age, she rushed and managed to reach the confessional just before the priest was about to move out. What she had to confess was the same every week. She had bad mouthed her husband every day and night, abusing and …

The Boss droned on. “Yes, and next quarter we project earnings of…” Stifling a yawn, he adjusted his tie and feigned attention, nodding occasionally like a good employee should. In his mind, though, it was different. In his mind, he journeyed back across time and space to Walden Pond and the home of Henry David Thoreau. “Hi. Welcome.” Thoreau greeted …

I rapped on my son’s bedroom door for the third time. “Jamie, get up now!” I heard him mumble something and listened for telltale creaks of the mattress. There were none. I’d had enough. I knocked once and opened the door. The smell of socks and sweat assaulted my senses. “This room’s a dump,” I said. “It’s almost 6 pm …

The Dog, he’s a good boy, well-behaved, even does a trick or three, but I can tell, his limit of patience is tried by this faux Golden Crown, a buttercup yellow, fluffy-to-the-touch duck called Peep. She’s put him in an unenviable position as it’s twenty minutes since lunch and a dog’s gotta do what a dog’s gotta do. Gentleman that …

On the whiteboard, using an erasable Sharpie, Lewis replaces the Science of Embalming with The Business of Mortuary Practice. He calls for a ten-minute break before the next lesson, his feet swollen in tight shoes. Students glide out of the hall and Lewis sits by a table beaming his laser pointer on the ceiling: it has failed on several occasions. …

Lottery numbers were picked that year in July for the draft. He was old enough to be in the group so his number was drawn. Now, all he could do was wait to see if he’d be called or not. It was a long, hot summer. The relentless sun beat down unmercifully. The air was wet with humidity, like a …

We planned the retirement celebration for 10:30 in the morning before lunch on Thursday to have the largest number of employees. Too many took off on Thursday at lunch, if they had expendable leave, and didn’t return until Monday; had we selected another day and time, many would still grumble because that’s what they did. The grumblers had been the …

I didn’t know much about the history of Holland, Michigan, when I made my first solo road trip to The Tulip City to visit Mike, my little brother. A yearly festival draws busloads of mostly senior citizens to the picturesque downtown and surrounding area, but I wasn’t making the trip to see the flowers or buy wooden shoes. Mike and I …

There are very few things in this world that are still free, and we covet the few that we have, like good conversations, hugs, and the fried sausage samples at Costco. “Freedom is having your own individual toothpick, Charlie Brown,” said Lucy, adding, “That’ll be five cents please.” I learned a lot about freedom in a course I took in …

The New Delhi based son, while chatting over the phone with his cousin in Ernakulam, Kerala, South India, got wind of some serious problems brewing between his parents leading a retired life. He was embarrassed to probe for details though an uneasiness hurriedly ran in his veins. He got so worried that, putting aside his family and work commitments, not …

People stared us down; they sat on our faces. They came across our seats when we were having morning coffee. One person tried to shoo us away because they needed the table. No, this was our space! We weren’t going to move even an inch, I told my husband. But people were becoming relentless and crazy. They didn’t move an …

It was one of those days when I forgot everything and had to leave the store because I forgot a mask. So there I was, sitting in my car, rain pelting my windshield as I poked holes in a bandanna with a pen cap to thread bakery string through them to make a half ass mask. I was only going …

Mick went out that evening. There was the Purity Restaurant over on 7th Street and 7th Avenue. Mick was a little down on his luck, figured 7, 11…dice, numbers like that. The Purity used to be owned by a couple of Greeks and is now owned by a couple of Italians. It also relocated from Union and 7th recently in 2005 to 7th and …

We were fooling around in bed one night, me and Tim, when we came up with the idea. Where did it come from? Maybe it was the weed we’d smoked, pretty good stuff, and like Tim always said, Garbage in, garbage out. Obviously, the idea was anything but garbage. Well, there we were, no clothes on and I looked down …

The knocking woke me from a deep sleep. I glanced at the bedside clock. Three AM. I stumbled to the front door and looked out. An apparition was half turned, smoking a cigarette. I could tell it was a guy. He made furtive eye contact with me. I flipped on the porch light illuminating a man dressed in worn camouflage. …

An increasing amount of sweat dripped into the scout’s eyes as he spied the enemy’s position on the ridge. As the sun rose higher in the sky, the temperature climbed. Hot or not, the weather be damned, this mission was life or death. He was their best scout, the one who could find a hole in the other side’s positions. …

As the pebble from the tree fell, the apple from the deepest dungeons of the Gaia sprouted a tiny leaf. When the sky was green & the seas were yellow. Violet was the sun, and red was the night, a worm of utmost beauty, conceived in the minds of the writer and her influenced romanticism, wiggled its way through the …

Johnny looked at the various cases of our dad’s butterfly collection and said, “Remember that character, Buffalo Bill?” “Weird,” I replied. “I was just thinking about the same thing. I first saw that movie while on a date with Will Wreck.” “Will Wreck? You dated him?” he asked, with a hint of incredulousness in the asking. “I know, right?” I …

You’d think after being something cool like a Roman gladiator, or majestic like a golden eagle, shape-shifting into a hockey puck would have been a letdown. But we shapeshifters don’t get to call the shots. We have to take what we get and this time I was a hockey puck, an inanimate object with no heart or soul. It was …

From Meth Mountain Chronicles I wanted to be a pacifist, he said to no one in particular. There were five of us in the bar if you include the barkeep who kept on cleaning the same five glasses again and again. One guy stood at the bar drinking whiskey and rye, nearby another sat on a bar stool and every …

My young son, Len, asks me whatever happened to the lost continent of Bezokoz. In class, he said, the teacher made a passing comment about it and shrugged off any questions. She said that Bezokoz was nothing more than a footnote, then explained what a footnote was. He stands before me in the living room, his pajama plaid pants, now …

People don’t usually vanish if you turn around. George and I started back to our cars from the diner after lunch. He used his walker on the narrow sidewalk and urged me in front of him. I was thinking how difficult and how wonderful our lunch was that day. I had been in an emotional spin from arguments with my …

When Peter was arrested, at first I was shocked. Shortly after, a numbness set in as I listened to other opinions on the event. My friends said there’s no way he did it. Peter was our friend, they remind me. He was gentle and trustworthy and he would never do something like that. I reflect on the sneering remarks they …

On May 29, 2017, CEO Jeff Goldenbaum of GoldTech, one of the world’s largest technology companies, said something he would later come to regret. When, in an interview, he was pressed on GoldTech’s complicity with exploitative business practices and inhumane working conditions and low wages in the impoverished countries where many of GoldTech’s devices are created—he simply said, “business is …

Dentist Miz Derwood Stage Manager Stagehands Warthog Narwhal Walrus  The Dentist’s Office. Miz Derwood is in the dentist’s chair. The DENTIST enters, donning his rubber gloves. He checks his clipboard. DENTIST: Good morning, Miz… Derwood? Is it missus? Or Miss? MIZ DERWOOD: Misty. Like the East River in the morning. DENTIST (adjusting his goggles) I see. He selects a snorkel …

I look out of my apartment window. It’s a white expanse. Snow, with brown patchy areas on rolling prairie treeless hills. Black dots of small evergreens dot these foothill areas. Antelope, coyote, deer and turkey, wild, may be seen. Yet today is different. Out past the rolling slope is the air force base. A large white implosion. A phosphorous swelling …

Hi. I’m thorium, the 90th element on the periodic chart. I’m a metallic mineral that tarnishes black when exposed to the air. In full disclosure, I’m also slightly radioactive. I’m the forty-first most abundant element in the earth’s crust but I wasn’t discovered until 1828 when a priest found me in the form of a black mineral on Løvøya, an …

When viewing the hypothesis through coded lens, the answer became apparent: not to walk down Toussaint Boulevard past midnight. There are villains lurking in shadowed entrances of closed convenience stores and hiding around rainy corners. Whoever breaches the boulevard’s silence by lacerating it with a wasp’s antennas, will fall in the middle of the street. The pavement sees the eyes …

Upon Meeting a Boy on the Street, While Carrying the Cremated Remains of My Alice The kid says it, and the bell can’t be unrung, “Your wife’s nothing but a pile of dirt, now.” Was it just the uncorrupted, clear-eyed innocence of a child, or did he mean to be cruel? And could a child, a boy of only eight …

Rozie vapes, tanning in high afternoon sun in a bikini, lounging by the roof-top pool on her tall apartment building. She scrolls through socials as she relaxes, surveying her skin every now and then, lavishly applying sun screen on her long hands, legs and the upper body portion. Her white skin slowly browning into light almond. She smiles as she …

Milan, Italy I’m walking up the steps of San Maurizio’s Church wearing the regulation Covid mask that moves in and out as I breathe or talk behind it. It filters the air rendering it odorless, which contradicts the clear day. I will dance the reader through the following dialog. Commence with anything, I tell myself. Anything? I ask. Anything, I …

The basement was soaked in the humidity of the summer night’s heat. At first, there was a gathering of young twenty-somethings there, carrying on like they were doing something. When all they were doing was what they had room to do which was standing next to the keg. The steps down to the basement sunk, so as she stepped down, …

I picked up the phone and answered it. It was my boss, Bob Fischer. “Hi, Jack,” he said. “Can you come down to my office.” It was not a question. I was surprised and not a little irritated. Fischer knew I was working on the quarterly report and how important it was for me to work with minimal interruptions so …

It’s seven pm, a summer early evening, the hour when the swallows that live in the carport suddenly blow across the yard in long swoops. Celia leans against the threshold of her house, her arthritic hands cupped around a mug of chamomile tea. She watches the swallows dive and rise in the air. She scans the horizon beyond the yard, …

It all began a few days after the nuptial day. He repeatedly yawned every time she started a conversation. She never intimated her annoyance at that recurrent incident to him, but kept a vigil over his sleep hours and his mood swings. She changed her domestic schedule to enable him some extra sleep. She sorted out bills and repairs without …

They took no classes together, and after that first year, never attended the same school, but somewhere, inside the scattered years of their lives, there were yearbooks. He drives slowly, much slower than he used to, even more slowly today, through the empty school parking lot for the first time in fifty-eight years. Windows not yet boarded. Walls not yet …

Nobody knows why or how. Things just happen. For all science thinks it knows, the vast storehouse of the unknown dwarfs what man knows. So, it was with concern and alarm that Dart stepped across the threshold. For it was a threshold of no return. Deep into inky darkness he fell. Swimming, in an apparent weightless condition, Dart flailed his …