October 2009
4 posts
Looks Like Rain
On the plane, I look up at the wrong time and he spots my face. He drops a shoulder into the sluggish passengers ahead of him, those hoisting luggage and those schmoozing with new acquaintances, and moves them aside with a grin. Mostly nobody notices but a few, little old women and men who plant themselves in front of the news every night, a few of these recognize him, at least enough to turn to...
Cannibal
Gambol had no interest in children. In Bulgaria, he sighed with disgust as a sack-toting bogey limped out of the forest near a sparsely-populated village. It sang to itself softly, and lamented the death of its maker, Baba Yaga. Too many of them had traits he didn’t need. This one was just another child-scaring bogey. None of the adults in the village paid it any mind, and some of the...
Time Consuming Lester Battle
One of the most disappointing features of Lester Battle’s poverty is his inability to hold onto loose change. Yesterday, at the Ogilvie Metra station, it took the turning out of all six pockets to turn up the nickel needed for the 2.35 fare. When he wakes up this morning he’ll roll off the mattress and realize the same thing he realized last night, before he chewed his nails in the dark and...
Bertumirtha
My name is Gordon Brick, and I am a writer. A writer is just what we call those of us who go around pretending we don’t matter while secretly believing the opposite: that nobody matters aside from us. Take myself, for instance. What incredible ego must I have to take it upon myself to create people and places that don’t already exist? Presumably, were these people meant to exist, they...
September 2009
2 posts
The Five Trillion Faces of Television
Television came as close to being a man as did all of his brothers and cousins. He had arms and legs and a face that was flat and bright and capable of putting forth any possible combination of 307,200 pixels, which happened to be a lot, since each pixel had the potential of being any one of 16,581,375 different colors at any time. (His friend Calculator might have told him that the total number...
Two More for Hemmelhaut
When I have headaches, Petitioning pretty much breaks me. It’s not that it isn’t the most rewarding job I’ve ever had, because it is. It’s not that the headaches are particularly bad either, because they aren’t - when I was growing up I used to have some whoppers, and none of these are anything like that. It’s just kind of that the two don’t mix well, and...
August 2009
5 posts
Rola'a Under Siege (Chapter 1, Part 1 of 2)
Deep inside the planet’s belly he’d been forged and pieced together, a child of La’a herself. The first in eleven centuries. From his chest grew a ball of living metal, scooped from La’a’s outer core to fuse with bone and muscle. His skin was hairless and without pigment, the glow from his cooling heart only slightly dampened by his body’s translucence as he...
Like a Roach
Every time the wood flooring creaked, Raymond winced. Sorry, sorry, he whispered to himself, half hoping the woman in the other room was still awake. At least then she wouldn’t come alive with fright, which seemed to be the only way she was wound. It was always “Oh! you scared me,” every time he came home, or “Oh! I didn’t know you were here.” Raymond never...
DWOM - ending
It weighed more already, and seemed to be growing moment by moment, but too slow to catch by looking. He wouldn’t make it if he tried walking, would most likely topple somewhere along the way as he tried to keep his balance with the toddler and his cane. Driving, then. He hadn’t driven the car in almost four years - Rebecca was in charge of groceries, and took him to all of his...
Untitled Future Freezy Novel
This one strikes a nerve. A guy tries to hire me to whack his brother. I’m supposed to meet him in an alley behind a hospital. I’m careful. And since I’m careful, I got rules. First rule - be there early. Second rule - look like you belong. So when the guy comes by and I ask him for a buck, he tells me to get lost. Tells me I’m screwing with his day. I tell him to sit down...
It’s your last night in New York City. Tomorrow, your flight out of JFK will be delayed more than an hour, and you’ll miss your connection. It’ll be the first of many nights you spend in Detroit. You don’t know that yet. You have thirty-eight dollars in your wallet. The bar you’re at, called Sputnik, after the Russian satellite, is cozy and lacking in patronage. You’re here with a friend of...
July 2009
5 posts
And Saturday Became Sunday
Early Morning, Thursday - July 16th
887
He can hear her upstairs. Rattle, shake, squeak. It’s 4:50 in the morning. He forgets about it. Four minutes later she is on the stairs. She’ll see the light from under his door, and then what? He doesn’t have time to turn it off, to jump in bed and pretend sleep. The door to the stairs creaks open and he can imagine her there, just outside his room, biting her lip. She knocks. “Hey.” He...
Chapter 5
thislovestory:
The store wasn’t large, and he found the running shoes fairly quickly. “These look like your style.” “You know my style?” He frowned. “No, I mean. Well, they look like the ones I - the ones you brought in.” She smiled at him. Her face was so familiar, and it was already too late to pretend this was their first meeting. What would he do if she knew his name? “I’m just kidding....
Kings Of The Future Rewrite (Part 1)
(from here) Erich watched his master’s chest bob up and down as he slept, each breath accompanied by a reverberating snore that shook the tent walls. Erich lay opposite, his head too near the man’s foul toes for comfort. Not that he would have been sleeping anyway - the boy wasn’t one for the wasteful rest his master enjoyed so often. He usually passed the time in his head, imagining different...
The Days Go Ever On
The French woman came up to me outside of the church. I didn’t know she was French, not yet, or that we were connected, but I suppose she did. She took my hand, and I looked up. The French woman was a full six inches taller than me, and she was beautiful. She pulled me close, and I let her. “I wonder what I can do to help you. You have the saddest eyes,” she said. It took me a moment to...
April 2009
2 posts
Simulacra
I don’t know which one of me is writing this, or if I even need to. Maybe one of me wrote it already, or is planning on doing so. Maybe we all write it at some point. I don’t know, but I’m the only one of me around right now, and I have nothing better to do.
When I was little I used to dream nested things. I’d be in a supermarket, carrying a bag full of jelly beans. Then I’d wake up, a floating...
Saturday, April 4th. 917 words (DWOM).
He fell asleep in the corner reclining chair of his studio, the baby in his arms. It felt heavy, heavier than what he imagined. He closed his eyes and imagined he could see through his eyelids, could see through the dark, and the little thing in his arms glowed a bright white. He must have been dreaming by then, but through his eyelids he saw it open its own. He saw it look at him with eyes that...
March 2009
4 posts
Wednesday, March 25th. 0 words.
Tuesday, March 24th. 839 words. (ASBS)
Inside the apartment, he pulled a pillowcase from one of the pillows. He sat in the bathtub with the jacket and the pillowcase, the pillow under him. Every four or five minutes he’d pull a handful of bills from the jacket and stuff them into the pillow case. He did this for six hours, until it was full dark and he was hungry. And he would eat, would eat food so expensive it would probably...
Monday, March 23rd. 740 words. (DWOM)
He reached for the package, catching it by a corner and dragging it onto the newspaper. It moved even more now, if that were possible, as if it could tell what Gray intended. He wouldn’t be able to cut it like this - his eyes would betray him, he’d do the wrong thing. A moment passed and he decided he’d have to do it with his eyes closed, by touch. He picked up the smallest of...
Sunday, March 22nd. 839 words. (DWOM)
The dance show finished up, turning out so the voting public kicked off Rebecca’s favorite dancer. She was visibly upset, and looked like she wanted to argue. Gray looked to the lampstand, and pulled an old issue of Reader’s Digest from the pile of magazines covering it. He flipped it open and pretended to read, nodding slightly and chewing on his lower lip, trying to look thoughtful....