August 9, 2009 – 10:07 am
After weeks of rain the sun shone on the lawn one morning. Marsha went into her garden with coffee and observed the wet carnage inflicted by slugs. She observed all the holes eaten in leaves by unseen creatures. She parted rotted stems sword-crossed in the soggy overgrowth and found a yellow flower just bloomed. Marsha […]
We live in the south, where, one day, the river rose like a terrible dream of drowning, as it did every year. We took grandmother down from her house in the orange chair she loves and put her seated and telling stories about rivers in the old days onto Onesimo’s flatbed that groaned as it […]
Milo was a friendly man but he had a laugh like a slug dropped in an acid bath. If you heat the oil too much and watch as the garlic blackens soon after putting it in, Milo’s laugh is like that. Milo was tall, thin, and his fingers were long. On the subject of Milo’s […]
For this experiment we need to imagine that fiction writing conventions have been forgotten and we must invent them from the everyday. We begin with a man, a real man, who, in real life has just received a call from his daughter. His daughter calls and says, “I’m on the other side of town and […]
The dope smoker visited Computer Leon in his basement. He said, “I saw a school bus speeding by this morning. There were two kids on the roof. They had butterfly nets.” “The hell you say,” Computer Leon said. “It’s true,” the dope smoker said. “Maybe you were high,” Computer Leon suggested. “Well, I was. But […]
August 4, 2009 – 10:28 am
The dope smoker smoked some dope on his porch. He watched a yellow bus with children roar by, two children on the roof, sitting with butterfly nets in their laps. He thought, “They might fall. And their parents’ll freak. And what’ll happen to the driver, who may not even know? Or maybe he does know, […]
August 3, 2009 – 11:44 am
It was an odd storm. She watched it from the picture window in her hotel room. She saw four small figures crossing the flat desert field, the storm giving chase behind them, blue and black with rage. They were three men and a boy. From what she could tell, they were oldest to youngest, which […]
August 1, 2009 – 10:32 am
I was sitting on my back porch thinking about Henry when Leroy came with his dog and his son. “I was thinking about Henry,” I said. “Henry? I haven’t thought of him in years. We should be close enough now.” We decided then that we should finish things. Leroy’s son wept when he told him […]
I hate the way some people speak names, the way they refer to a particular individual with a sort of aggressive and perhaps undeserved agreeability, a, how shall we say, arrogant presumption or, perhaps better, with self important disambiguity. “What do you mean?” The way they use names to either assert authority or to layer […]
“You said the rain would stop,” she said. “Is that a driveway or just another turn?” he asked. “You said it would stop,” she said. He moved onto the shoulder slowly. He looked at her. “I did but it hasn’t has it.” She watched out the window. He pulled onto the road. “She said it […]
Scene 1 They ran franticly, with hair like raving monkeys, down the hill. “Did you get a shot?” she said, breathless. “Got it,” he said, his hands shaking. “I so freakin got it.” She ripped the car onto the road. He kept looking back up the hill. “I can’t believe it,” he said. “But why […]
I could tell a story about the end of the world. When Ed came into the store with a sneezing pig and a chicken with a blue sock on its head. “You can’t bring those in here,” I told him. “Jesus, Ed.” “You haven’t been outside,” Ed said. “The sun’s melting everyone’s shoes.”
The computer said, “Your password expires in 5 days.” The programmer said, turning to a colleague, “This is odd. Is it the password’s fault? Is it really a question of the password dying?” They had coffee later, which was typical. The programmer said, “We need to tell the user something. Like ‘Sorry to interrupt but […]
He gave permission for Harry to slip into the storage room and lift a bottle of whiskey, one of the finer brands not intended for drinking, “least not by my crowd,” he said. Harry snuck up to his room and hid the bottle under his bed then slept through the night. His mother asked him […]
