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month

March 2011

31 posts

84…85…87 Damn its cold in here. It’s the weekend and I know no one is going to come into to unlock the freezer. So I am stuck. What do you do at a time like this? Sometimes I wake up in the morning, drive my car to work, and realize that I forgot to bring my card key for the building with me. I have to drive back, or borrow one. I either get written up, or I am late to work. I miss the big meeting...

I had been working undercover in Bangkok for two years with miles before we discovered Destiny, the prostitute that would break our case. Working undercover in the Sex Capital of the world is a nasty dirty place. Every night I went home, my chest felt like an infected junkie’s arm who has been stabbing a needle into the raw festering wound for 5 years. I felt dirty. I was dirty....

Information Overload

The date is November 18th, 2010 and I have discovered a secret code in all the newspapers of the world. Nothing on this day happened of any importance. Like the vast majority of human history it was only filled with hundreds of thousands of people getting married, and being born, and quitting their jobs and dying. Kings and kingdoms will all pass away. But if people are immortal,...

As a child, it never occurred to me that I would eventually be selling catheters door to door. As my own kidneys fail, I walk around trying to sell people who live in giant sunny retirement communities new models of piss bags. “Hello sir. How are you doing. Ain’t she a beauty? What do I have to do get you to drive home in this new ’57 convertible. Of course it comes in red!” “A station wagon sir?...

Going Where No One Else Will

“You can’t do that!” said the mousy old woman. She only came up to the waist of the immense Baron, but she managed to give the impression of a haughty mother looking down at her naughty child. “Madam. I understand perfectly your concerns. Believe me, I don’t wish to see anyone starve either. But this is one of those things that “Has To Be Done”. The Baron tried to give his kindest...

The little bluebird chick had lived its entire life in the context of a bundle of sticks up in a tree. He hadn’t moved more than a few feet where his egg was laid. His spindly weak legs could barely hold up his weight. Every birds knows about it, as surely as they know which way is north in the spring and south in the summer. Every bird knows that someday it’s going to have to fly....

I have lived here longer than any man. I am the son of the first men who walked the earth. Before my fathers was the long darkness and lost memory. The sky was dark this morning, but now it is not. I saw in that sky a noisy god. On the other side of the world are the Mammitue and they do not have a god like this. I was standing the ridges above the village where I...

In Between the Big Top

Behind the curtains of the Big Top is a world weirder than any clown-car escapade. Shifting between dream and reality, between fantastic gold and flimsy tinsel. There are still freaks, walking miles above your head, but they are no longer larger than life emblems of exotic escape. Now they are just regular guys, which you will find is a lot more complex and dark than any gothic...

Why do All my Stories have Bus Stops in Them?

A long time ago, there was this thing called Manifest Destiny, which was the idea that America would spread from shore to shore, but it wasn’t quite right. America had always spread from shore to shore, since it first rose up out of the ocean. Streaked across it were veins, herds of buffaloes pumping across the plans, hummingbirds streaming from cold winter pines, and hunters...

Around me is nothing but waves. My eyes sting from the hot light flashing off the water. My skin is hot and rough from the salty wind and sun. There is a low creaking from the boat as I stand up and the horizon rocks up and down and threatens to tip over me. I reach out and grab onto the small unvarnished pole that serves as a mast. The cotton sail flaps slack in the wind and makes a sound like a...

Every single grade school classroom is plastered with some slogan about how smiling will make your day. “Smiling takes fewer muscles than frowning” – though sitting there with a dumb look on your face takes even less “Smile and you will feel better”—sometimes. “Smile and make the world go round”—and sometimes you don’t even try and make sense. Smiling is more than just showing your...

This story is a long series in poorly executed pieces in which I am still trying to tap into this idea that has nawwed deep at the back of my mind every since the summer I turned 16. I hope someday that piece gets finished. Working in fast food is not the worst job in the world. It’s no worse than any other. The worst part at first is the fact that no one really treats you like...

The man took three huge strides across the room to where his computer sat. He turned around, scratched his chin and looked at the ceiling. For, like a couple of minutes. While down on the ground sat a grey Cat with a tail that twitched at the tip. Cats do this when they are annoyed. When the human won’t pay attention and instead is staring at the ceiling is one of those...

Hitching Part 2

You hear a lot of weird things from hitchhikers, and the first thing you learn is to not ask questions. They are just passing through. I don’t question her further. We sit in silence for a while. The hum of the vibrating cabin over takes my hearing, and enter into a little bit of a trance, like sympathetic resonance with the world. But as I notice that I might be...

Hitching Part 1

This one took longer than I expected. So I am making it a two parter, so I can do it justice. Oi! Look at that! Now if I just had the motivation to sit down and write some real stories amirite? Montana is a stupid state. I have been driving for six hours, and I haven’t found a rest stop yet. I have considered pulling over to the side of the road, but these narrow long black ribbons...

Moe and the Burning House.

Bursting into flame is probably the warmest feeling you can have. It’s like a ripple of heat taps along your spine. Moe could smell his eyebrows singing and spark. He had been standing in his living room, looking at the corner where she had sat before he had left, and thinking about why he had left, when the building went up like a tinderbox. He had been gone three...

A Letter from Zeus

“Hello Fair Maiden” he said. He was a long legged man with a long nose like a horse and dark brown eyes. He was peering over the wall of the enclosed garden of the Princess who had been spending her time in the yard brushing her hair. Princesses lead pretty boring lives. “Excuse me?” She looked up a little confused. “Never fear my Maiden. (You are a maiden right?) I am Mercury. I am here on behalf...

Conversations with Unfunny Friends

“So whaddya think?” “Well um…” I replied slowly with some thought. Its difficult to say these kinds of things, especially to a friend. “Great? I have been working really hard on it” she said. She leaned over expectantly hopeful and eager. She had what? Three days before she had to perform this stand-up routine as the opening act for the...

The young boy stood at the base of the overgrown mountain path. He had been dropped off by the circuit bus that travelled through the rural wilderlands giving monthly pickups for the isolated mountain farmers. The young boy had grown up in a mountain of concrete. He had lived in an average house on an average street down the road from his school. His father had been a clerk and his...

It's been a long time

There was blood running down his face. The tree branches scratched his face and he could feel bits of dust scratching his eyes. His throat was coated in thick warm spit and his lungs burned hard shards of air. He could hear the baying of the dogs in the back of his head. They were steadily gaining ground on him. At first they had been just distant yips and yelps far...

When his time comes.

“His feet are really cold Daddy.” She was holding flying squirrel. He had hit our window during the night and had been laying on the sill for a couple of hours. She had found it laying there, breathing softly. I held the little ball of fur in my hands while she leaned over it poking it with her finger. His little chest moved in tiny quavers, and his delicate feet were cold from the icy...

Nothing can touch me. Nothing can touch me. I have been writing for several days now, and everything I write comes true. The typewriter is a late model grey plastic block that weighs as much as the desk it sits on. The air around it smells like electricity and the sharp smell of ink and ionized air stings your nose when you write on it. Everything I type becomes real. I write...

Book Recommendations

I have been looking at this book for about five minutes. I keep reading the back cover over and over again, but each time my mind wanders and I forget what I am reading. I am in the self-help section. Which is nearly as bad as being caught in the “human sexuality” or “You must be a Terrible Person and a Real Loser” section of the book store. I was walking outside, and lost in...

Letting People Down

There is this cold dull burn in my chest that is sinking down the abyss of my stomach. My jaw tightens and I swallow back some air. There is a cold crawling realization overtaking me. I should’ve shut up about four minutes ago. It’s hard for me, as such an insecure and infinitely cluttered person to make a relationship work. I think I am really nice girl. Not...

Hospital: Part 2

I feel so alive, as if things really will turn out right. Everywhere I go, my feet click brilliantly off the fresh clean floor. I finished mopping early. Now its just taking out the garbage in each of the patients rooms, and I can go home. I work in a hospital, but I am hoping to be able to get off early. I like my job here. I keep things clean. That’s an important job, ...

Hospital: Part 1

I am outside on a “smoke break”. I quit smoking about 11 months ago when the war broke out. I wanted to do my part for the war effort. We couldn’t waste money on smokes when we could use it to send a package to our son. Plus, I wanted to be well when he got home. I work in this hospital, but I have been on this break for the past 45 minutes. I don’t think I am going...

The forest hums at mid-day with a deafening roar of insects. It’s everywhere, kind of like a massive warm buzz that you can fall over into. Wenceslaus’ mind was wandering, as always. It was currently in some blank nirvana. He was tramping and tripping through the underbrush, looking up in the air. Inexplicably he would catch his huge clown shoes on underbrush and nearly fall over....

I’ve been on a military transport vessel for a week and half. I spent two months in basic training, and now I am being shipped out to North Africa to fight. I have never held a gun before. Basic training was like a frenzied school play, where everyone was trying to learn their parts right as they walked on stage. We have been practicing our forms with broom handles, and wooden cut...

Monkey Business

By the time you reached the tree, you knew they were going to follow you anyway. This wasn’t going to stop them. It didn’t matter though. You had to do something, even if it ended up being nothing. Your hands claw at the soft bark. You can feel the skin underneath your finger nails getting scrapped up and bleeding. But the cold pain at the tips of your hands only fires you to move...

Her head leered at a broken angle and her eyes rolled up in her head, exposing only white orbs like the noonday sun on the last day before the world exploded. I killed her. Lets first make that clear. She is dead and it is because I killed. Not however, because I crammed down her throat an expensive antique watch I received from an uncle. The chain hangs out her mouth, and glints...