August 14, 2009 – 9:21 am
The old vampire entered the room somewhat clumsily. Immediately, he knew he was being watched, that there were cameras hidden in the room, and so he was somewhat self-effacing or self-aware. His clumsiness was therefore partly a result of and aggravated by his self-awareness or self-effacement. Because the old vampire knew he was being watched […]
August 13, 2009 – 1:00 pm
I saw John Peck on an evening trail. John Peck almost didn’t recognize me as the last time I’d encountered him he’d been on a late train going north, perhaps twenty years ago. John Peck had been a tall boy with aggressive eyebrows and a way of resting his palms on his chest when he […]
August 12, 2009 – 10:11 am
She came into the bedroom of the new house and said, “Do you hear that?” “It sounds like scratching,” he said, swinging his long legs out of bed, their new bed, for a new house. Downstairs, he put his ear to the living room wall. “It sounds like it’s coming from here,” he said. She […]
August 11, 2009 – 7:51 am
The Typhoon moved in too quickly and too late in the day for people to prepare. Some children, when asked, claim they slept through the night, heard what sounded like sand falling and calls from friends so distant they must have come from the darker pockets of dreams. As it happens, when people crept out […]
August 10, 2009 – 9:42 am
The curve of his neck reminded her of trees and how they bend in the wind. When she scratched her arm or leg, he was reminded of his fear of swarming ants. The vacant look he sometimes got on his face, which angered her at first, reminded her of her nipples after a hot shower, […]
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 […]
