The eighteen wheelers sound as if one may soon graze the edge of my bed, and the air conditioner rattles like farm machinery in dire need of oil. The motel rug reeks of mildew, and a distant whistle wails every ninety minutes or so. I’m almost home.
When my father passed away a month ago, I knew I was destined to see the farm where he was born during the Great War. Don’t ask me why, but like a butterfly hell-bent for Mexico, I sensed the fates had ordered this trek.
My cat suffocated in my hair last night. I could not feel her struggle in my sleep, paralyzed by sleeping pills and anxiety. She loved me with all her life. I was followed no matter where I went. Even when I showered, she sat on the sink and waited. I used to set her on my shoulder while I planted celery seeds.
“Name?” the receptionist asks.
“Conrad West.” I study her face. No blink of recognition. I sign the waiver and give her the phone number of my wife, who will pick me up.
I look around the waiting area, deciding where to sit, and choose one of the sofas that face each other. Between them, a curved coffee table holds neatly stacked magazines. From here, I can look through window-walls that join in a 90 degree angle. The view is spectacular. In the distance, the Cascades, green from the spring snow-melt, rise against a blue, blue sky. Soon they will purple over with vetch and when they burn in the summer heat, we’ll call them golden. Below the hills, I watch cars moving along I-5. Picturesque, but closer I would feel the treachery. The noise, the smell, the speed of trucks that carry food, fuel, lumber into thirsty California.
I can hear her, the woman upstairs. Especially on a Friday or Saturday night when she’s entertaining a guest. The two, the woman and her guest, trade small talk. Over drinks, most likely. I only catch a line here and there, especially if I’m watching TV. Eventually the small talk dies out and the entertaining goes horizontal – I can tell by the rhythmic squeaking of her sofa-bed.
Water featured prominently on Literally Stories this week with three of the five writers navigating a course over, across, and even through it, in yet another flange of diverse stories and storytelling styles.
I found the blackest, blue-black woman in the world, at least in North America. When she took me between her thighs and into her heart, I reached a level of pleasure, satisfaction, and lust I had never experienced in my forty-five years of life.
Continue reading “Blackness by Frederick K. Foote – Adult Content”
For more than a month that horizontal plane, the cold, hard iron blade of the sea, has scythed around this lonely spite-filled ship, the Meeuwtje, the Seagull. Our only constant: that unwavering edge. If only we would come to it and tumble off into the void.
I am consumed with the vilest thoughts; acidic loathing, a derision that stoops my shoulders. This sinful, wind-blown bastard-mongrel pack with whom I share this stinking pile of creaking timber, rope and sailcloth!
Continue reading “Cold, hard iron blade of the sea by Shane Bolitho”
The left side profile of Lang Kim’s head was square in my sight. The pull of my pointer finger only a fraction of an inch towards me would blast a 5½ inch .50 caliber round through his brain. As I was trained, I lay as a stone, forcing shallow breaths of air in and out of my lungs to minimize movement. There would be no suffering. He wouldn’t know what hit him. I often thought about that split second when life left the bodies of the victims I killed, wondering which realm of the theoretical afterlives their souls entered (heaven, hell, purgatory) – if one existed at all. It didn’t matter. I forced the thought out of my mind. Do not think with your emotions, I was trained. I was a killing machine. Through psychological regimens, I grew numb to the emotional pains that entomb most ordinary people. And as stark a confession it is, I felt free. Free from sorrow, from grief. Guilt was as far away from me about killing as a distant galaxy. I was cold. And had I any emotion in me at all, I would have recognized my state as love, the love of killing without the slightest remorse. I had no wife and no children. An orphan with no-one to experience these things called emotions with; if it were ever possible for them to dwell in me at all.
On our first date we went to a gallery of photos of sultry women from the 1960’s. You were hungover and thought the walls would collapse in on you. Afterwards we took a bus to my house where we kissed and seas of fish swam between our mouths.
When we thought about doing this I considered researching, re-reading and trying to come across as a damn sight more intelligent than I am. I therefore decided to do this off the cuff. That is what it is all about. In my lifetime I have read over 400 books and I would not be able to hazard a guess at the amount of short stories. Within all of the short stories published on Literally Stories, I remember some. Those are the ones that I would like to consider.
literally stories 