I first saw the sculpture about a month ago, walking to the Cumberland Farms with Matt to get beer and some papers. It was shimmering under the late day’s sun in the back of a fenced-in yard. Even from a distance, I could see the long spindly legs of the black metal spider clinging to the delicate netting of its web, waiting for prey. I was mesmerized.
Acton had never spent much time contemplating writer’s block. This had everything to do with the fact that he had never previously found himself its victim. Perhaps everything is too strong a word. Acton had no trouble considering the ins and outs of things and events he had no personal experience with—although these things and events necessarily carried with them some intellectual element that sparked his curiosity in the first place. Writer’s block, as an idea, had never presented such an element to command his attention, and on top of that, it seemed too cliché a notion to even deserve it. Nevertheless, the prejudice of abstraction doesn’t always hold up under the weight of actual experience, and he now found writer’s block to be a fascinating object of examination.
Acton was at his desk, unable to write.
I take the skins of the women my lover loved. I flesh them until they are paper thin. They are folded stacked in a box at the back of my closet. The box is cherry wood and the lock is made of gold. I know it should be silver, because silver contains powerful magic, and sometimes I hear the skins shifting and whispering to each other.
Think what you want.
He left me no choice.
We are now at week 208. How time flies when you are having fun. I suppose it depends on the fun. If it is backwards time travel, would that phrase still be relevant? I watched ‘The Inglorious Bastards’ the other day. Wasn’t Rod Taylor a handsome man? I mean in ‘The Birds’ and not as an Australian Churchill.
Continue reading “Week 208 – Writing, Typing And Refusing The Nipple.”
This story has been removed at the request of the author
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He wasn’t the guy we expected, that’s for sure. He looked like he’d never worked a day in his life.
“The idea is to make everyone fall in love with you, understood?”
“Easy enough,” he said. Cocky bastard.
They had clothes and stylists galore waiting for him. He ignored most of what they told him as if he knew better. Maybe he did. Charisma is a very indefinable quality.
The first time he walked out of the back and I got a good look at him, I was floored. He was drop-dead gorgeous. I nearly forgot what the hell we were there for.
Continue reading “The Guy Who Showed Up For the Job by Mark Joseph Kevlock”
I see ghosts. I hear their voices. Watch them move across my vision. Sometimes they talk to me, but it isn’t them. It’s people from the past. They’re frozen in my memory. A word, a touch, a phrase. The what if’s and what might have been.
Well here we are at week 207.
It must be a good seven days since our last posting. (Or a pish seven days for those readers in Scotland.)
I was listening to some Blues when I began to write this and John Lee Hooker came on with ‘One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer’ and I just thought that this was in the wrong order. The Bourbon would argue with the Whisky and you would end up enjoying neither of these. The song should be ‘One Bourbon, One Beer, One Scotch’ that would be more tasteful.
Continue reading “Week 207 – The Blues, A Hangover Cure And Bedding The Elderly.”
Steam played across the water’s surface in lazy swirls, nudged by the breeze and stretching away like cigarette smoke. Behind the hedge, lips pressed to her kneecap’s polished, taut surface, she could taste salt on her skin and, somehow, it mingled with the vision of dragon’s breath steam above luminous water to punch a sudden ache in her throat. Smelling chlorine, she longed for the sea, for sand that grew cool as she dug her feet deeper, and her father’s hand on her bony, eight-year-old spine, walking her towards a quiet tideline.
Here we are at Week 206!
Like ‘Gremlins – The Next Batch’ – We’re back.
As in ‘Poltergeist’ – We’re here
And like ‘The Fly’ – If you send us Romance, I’ll ‘Be afraid, very afraid.’
I’ve been watching a few films lately, just to get the days in.
It was good to see the old site creak back into life on Monday.
Continue reading “Week 206 – Returning, Shitty Tinsel And A Lactating Dilema”
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