“You could eat off her floor,” Miriam often said in a half envious way, if Dora was present, and in a half mocking way when she was not. “I drove her home that day when her car wouldn’t start and honest to God, you’d think that floor had never been stepped on. I mean, it was like a mirror it was so shiny!” But what Miriam and her coworkers did not know was that Dora actually did eat off her floor.
The gang from the boatyard, by God you had to love ‘em, the lot of them, every man jack of them; braised, poured, scratched, abraded, welded, mucked about by all of life, you had to love ‘em. Up front you have to know that those who had gotten nicknames felt honored, for that moniker stuff usually came from within, a private medal of sorts, earned without hoopla, seared forever. Those who hadn’t been so acclaimed patiently waited some kind of anointment, slow in coming, taking over like a root, underneath everything seen or known. Some of them had names like Max, Slad, Wilf, Muckles, Shag, Ronnie J, Slip, a feast of designations varied as character. And the sole captain of his own boat in the lot of them was Shanklin Garuf.
To a man, you had to love ‘em.
The truth is I’m still haunted by them, even though it’s been months since they left the Royal Bargains Dollar Store.
Continue reading “This Land of Milk and Honey by Mary J. Breen “
Cliff’s grandfather built Hook Run Farm on forty-two acres thirty miles east of the city, a half-hour’s easy drive most days. Now, when dirty winds shifted at night to flee the west, Cliff lay beneath beige-gray sheets and sniffed a once forgotten childhood memory: a decaying mouse he’d found inside a discarded soda pop bottle. Borne atop the newly bloating stink of Grandpa’s barn and paddocks, this recollected scent visited every evening. Rich, sweet, corrupt, ageless.
Continue reading “The Grave Digger’s Lemonade by Michael Grant Smith”
Here we are again. Another seven days have flown by and we are into Week 136.
Gwen gave me my inspiration this week when she bought me a Mark Billingham novel. I’ve read most of them. ‘Scaredy Cat’ was a superb book and Tom Thorne is a brilliant character! But I’m finding it very difficult to read a full novel at the moment. I reckon it’s all to do with the vast amount of short stories that we’ve read. (Nik is the man for the sites statistics!)
It is a totally different discipline. Not only writing but reading. Shorts have to grab you quicker than an enthusiastic lady of the night. Novels on the other hand need to groom you…Well you know where I was going with that!
Continue reading “Week 136 – Novels, Shorts And Accomplished Acting”
The suspect scanned the interrogation room through a pair of thick-lensed, gold-wire aviator glasses. His wrists were cuffed, chained to a handle on a metal table. A detective sat opposite him. He wanted to know about the head in the refrigerator.
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I don’t hear the car. The storm has swallowed the world in a white noise that bites at my ears. It pulls up ahead. Silent. Expectant. Home is a 3k walk away, and a slick trip down the mountain. A beautiful vista on a mild day, tortuous when a storm came to town.
People are acting like this is a party. All dressed up like it’s Mardi Gras, in their kookiest outfits. The people who have home DNA splicing kits have been playing around, giving themselves leopard-print skin, rhinoceros horns sprouting from unexpected places, or chameleon eyes that dart off in different directions – one looking right at ya, one directed hopefully to the sky, waiting to catch the first glimpse of the aliens arriving. It’s pretty unconventional for a little outback town like Tanloch, but it’s like everyone wants to be more than just human, now that extra-terrestrials are arriving. Some are holding up signs, saying things like “Please Save Our Whales”, “ET take us home!” and “I, for one, welcome our new alien overlords.”
Long before the birth of God, the Torqwamni People crossed the land bridge that connected Asia to North America and glacier-surfed south to the Puget Sound Region. They eventually settled in an area known today as Philo Bay, which became home to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard (PSNS) and its attending city of Charleston, Washington, toward the end of the nineteenth-century.
My father was struck speechless for the first time in his life on the day that my mother fell through the ceiling.
Continue reading “It Had to Be Done by Robert Douglas Friedman”
literally stories 