San Luis Obispo, California – August, 1939
Inside a private screening room, MGM chief Louis B. Mayer and his right-hand man, producer Mervyn LeRoy, have just finished watching a test print of The Wizard of Oz. Mayer is not satisfied with the cut and has instructed the projectionist to run it again, this time with the sound turned off.
Continue reading “RuPaul Saves the Universe by Michael Patrick Marino”
Continue reading “A Walk in the Woods by Adam Kluger – Adult Content”
The local bus huffs and heaves its way into Way Stop, West Virginia. It halts with a shudder and a sigh in the mid-morning sun.
I collect my duffle bag and straighten my fatigue uniform jacket. On Main Street, there’s an honest to goodness general store, a diner, Bob’s Gas Station, a few empty store fronts and two small white churches almost directly across the street from each other. The June morning is moving toward hot. I move toward the diner for coffee and directions.
Continue reading “Mourning Becomes Her by Frederick K. Foote”
It was a snowy Saturday and I was headed to King Carol Record store on the Upper East Side to check out what new albums were in. Zig-Zag Records was nearby so I could swing by there as well.
It was the 1980’s and I was totally into music like the Talking Heads, Duran Duran and Devo and all the other bands that were becoming popular on a new channel called MTV.
It was late afternoon and I don’t remember if I was baked but I’d say the odds of that were 50-50.
Every day I get to work and there’s dead guys all over the floor. I hate those fuckers, with their naked pink tails and stupid broken necks. Most days I don’t even want to come in. Dead guys, everywhere.
The kitchen I work at is in a busy corner of the city. It’s dirty but I don’t mind any, mostly because I’m a dirty boy myself. A dirty bird.
“Please! Please!!”
“I’ll get the pliers.”
“You really are the type of individual who goes home of a night and masturbates over the bodies in your basement, aren’t you?”
“Of course.”
“… Please, don’t hurt me!”
“Shut your hole!!”
Continue reading “All About the Truth by Hugh Cron – Adult Content”
As an undergraduate at Bryn Mawr College, Clementine Hamilton had majored in psychology. For the department research requirement, she had pursued her studies in abnormal psychology, so she was aware there was no formal diagnosis for what she was. There were elements of obsessive-compulsive disorder in that her need for constant stimulation was recurrent and persistent, and the impulsivity aspect of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder characterized past behaviors. If she had been forced to ascribe a name to it, it would have been something like ‘stimulus deprivation disorder,’ and the symptoms that had manifested themselves over the years were readily measurable.
Stuttering lights crossed the night sky as the drones floated above the spidery criss-cross of network cables, just a few inches above my head. I kept thinking about the cameras pointed at my house, wondering if I would get to see the recording of that moment when my life changed. I followed the movement of the hovering four-armed machines until my eyes stung.
3 AM. Time to eat. I went back inside my house and ate a dozen cold chicken nuggets from a box lying on the counter. My appointment with the filing officer was at 7 AM. I couldn’t sleep, even after dinner.
Hey Sully:
Hoping all is well atop the literary world. I told you if I got really bored I would write a story about you but instead of a story– all that you inspired was a tiny little poem. Check it out!
She boarded the bus in a good-bye city, roots shallow as a water lily, a few coins to rub together, sites set back on simpler times.
Past the maze of town, the buildings stretched out and faded away, giving in to twilight, a few weary stars freckling the top of her dirty window. People settled into the dimness, part of a kindred clan, hurtling towards whatever dreams waited to disembark.
literally stories 