I’m in the club. In the home of smoke, dope, short, short skirts and low-cut, nipple revealing tops, iron-hard six packs, bulging biceps, desperate dealings, shitty, shady pick-up lines and nine-millimeter lethal put-downs.
My stomping grounds. I embrace my ex. Look over her shoulder for my next ex to be.
I’m bouncing to the beat with a hottie that got potential and a none slip differential – and then I’m not.
Raine was in the next town when the accident happened. She pulled over at the roadblock where a man in uniform with a very big gun said, “There’s been an accident at the plant, Mam. Evacuation underway. You can’t pass.”
I find the cinema just minutes from the busy train station. There’s not a soul in sight, but I am nervous, so I fold my umbrella quickly and creep down the narrow stairs. There is an umbrella stand at the top of the stairs but I can’t risk having it stolen. I like the soiled posters lining the walls, wonderful Japanese erotic noir. I go immediately to the window, where I am greeted by a silver-toothed little man whose boyish grin reminds me somehow of Mickey Rooney. No name-tags in this joint. He is middle-aged. His teeth glisten with silver and gold like the Mexican lady serving my favorite burritos in La Puente. He doesn’t look up. He reaches for my five-thousand yen note with two hands extended. He smiles wildly, perhaps idiotically. He pulls out some bills. “Just one? Is that right?” “Yeah,” I say. His furrowed brow suggests deep thought. He looks at the fiver I have handed to him. He strikes a few buttons on his calculator. Suddenly, he hesitates and then reaches into a little drawer beneath the counter. “It’s 2,000 yen at this time, you know.” “Yes, that’ll be fine.” He opens the plastic pouch to his right, pulls out three one-thousand yen notes, folds them and counts them twice before handing them over. We don’t make eye contact. I thank him in my poor Japanese: “Arigato gozaimasu.” He bows slightly, still grinning from ear to ear.
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Traegger Cable, too, took in that loveliness, the sheathed agreement of their first meeting, how yellow clung in curves, arches, turning darker where it was darker, tossing daylight about her, splashing it around, washing the lithe frame she carried with sunlight. Her hair, once again, shook loose, a forgotten attendant that sat lightly on the forehead, wind-worked as ever, playing a game, being innocent in the very breath that created motion. Cable someplace, somewhere, had seen this pose, this framed moment. He struggled to find who or where, at what point of travel such a sight had been captured that it now came back to him so richly.
Continue reading “Chapter Reaching for a Novel Part 2 by Tom Sheehan (Adult Content)”
Morning came bright and eager, and the barest chill bit the air, as Cable looked out over the small piece of Sunquit visible from Frank’s deck. From every quarter came evidence of the storm, debris scattered as if giant baskets had been emptied on the land. Trees had been ripped out of the ground and tossed singly or in piles, their limbs shorn of leaves, bark stripped in huge rents. Every point at the high water mark was littered with wood, huge planks torn from God knows where, boards of every description, two by fours and moldings and fashioned woodwork and now and then large sheets of plywood scaled to a hard resting place, partly buried in sand or debris piles. He could see boat parts of upper decks driven high up on the shore and thought of the agony associated with each piece, the drama which might have surfaced at their rending. Continue reading “Chapter Reaching for a Novel Part 1 by Tom Sheehan (Adult content)”
Man’s inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn!
The world is not a happy place. I don’t think it has ever been.
The barber-striped blades of the level crossing fell and, one breath later, civilisation fired past like a bullet from a gun. I waited, Rum tensed at my side, and then continued on, releasing the extension lock on his lead, the swish of his ribboned tail communicating his pleasure at this small freedom. At the crest of the road, I stepped, and Rum bounced, over the sagged section of fence wire and into the field. The land lay fallow, my Hunters squelching in the waterlogged grooves of the soil, dull and lifeless in the shadow of the fir forest. On rare summer days, when heat distorted the air into ruffled fabric, the line of firs shifted and undulated, an emerald curtain revealing another world – which, for me, it did. Every morning, I came to learn more about its indigenous race of insects – gods of nothing, my husband called them – while Rum conquered the undergrowth with a raised hind leg, each of us in our element. My latest academic paper was on the Andrena fulva – the tawny mining bee – due for publication in the forthcoming volume of Entomologist’s Gazette. I never used to believe that I had the intellectual capacity for science, but time taught me that brains came second to commitment and, after six years married to Paul, I was more committed to my work than ever.
Maybe it was the mini-roller coaster in Coney Island.
The one before the crazy spinning turbo that had fucked up his back with an unexpected jolt.
Maybe it was the…
Gary still had some paper to use up. He didn’t want anything to go to waste. He had ordered personalized stationery for years and relished any opportunity to use it. This particular batch featured a thick black line across the top of the page with his name standing out in the most powerful font he believed to have ever existed. He had decided to hand write it, Gary was quite proud of his penmanship and had received countless compliments about it over the years, along with decorations from his school days. It went as follows…
In our small town with its lone radio station, Wilbur was something of a celebrity. He was the sound effects man for our radio dramas, but this doesn’t do him justice. He could reproduce any sound without relying on the use of hammer-on-coconut for horses’ hooves and similar mechanical tricks of the trade. Wilbur produced every sound required with his voice. Small wonder our town dubbed him ‘The King of a Thousand Voices.’
Continue reading “The King of a Thousand Voices by Larry Lefkowitz”
literally stories 