“Good Morning Mr. Schmertz. This is Dawn with Orlando Marketing and Tourism to let you know you’ve just won an all-expenses paid discount opportunity to visit one of our luxury resorts in the Greater Orlando Area…let me axe you …would you be interested in speaking with one of our senior sales agents…”
“What time is it?”
“It’s 6:15am Eastern on this beautiful Tuesday morning…how are you doing today sir?”
“Go fuck yourself and never call here again.”
As all accidents are about to happen, or strange encounters take place, fate stands at the edge of the road waiting to announce itself, an unseen signpost, an unseen hitchhiker. Such was the plan when Banford J. Hibbs pushed his wheelchair out of the driveway and onto the sidewalk. Both his legs had been left on the rampant sands of a Pacific island half a century earlier. He did not see the boy with the white cane until he had almost knocked him down.
Continue reading “The Tale of Trot and Dim Johnny by Tom Sheehan”
He believed he would win, he believed he would live. Right up until the end when finally he understood, he had believed. It wasn’t possible to accept anything other than life. Just to breathe and to be was all he knew. It’s all we know isn’t it?
Continue reading “He Believed He Would Win by Diane M Dickson”
The ache my father left fled one day when I wasn’t paying attention. Perhaps it’s because we didn’t bury him. We couldn’t afford priority shipping so after a thirty year absence he arrived via USPS, on a Saturday morning, in a box sealed with tape that read “human remains” in blue block letters. I didn’t know they made tape for marking the packages of dead people. I didn’t know they put the incinerated bodies into a plastic bag inside of the box. It was dark grey and heat sealed as if someone had manufactured what was returned to us. I didn’t know that human remains were so heavy, or that when you lift a box containing the dead you’re acutely aware that this is something you once longed for; that this as close as you will ever again get.
Vince hid the look of disbelief as he stared at the twenty-something punk who had just asked him the ridiculous question. Worse, had done it with a smirk that told him right away what he already suspected from the beginning.
He didn’t have a chance at this job.
Craterville came up like the rock came down, in one helluva hurry. When the dust cleared, there was a town where the hole used to be, and a hundred or more shafts were slicing down into the earth. After six men were shot, five of them bushwhacked, one surprising a thief deep in his digs, the saloon owner, Harry Wilkes, called a meeting of town businessmen. Wilkes once was a conductor who got off his train one day outside Omaha and never got back on.
Continue reading “The Craterville Catastrophe by Tom Sheehan”
They vanished. One by one. The first to disappear was Pedro Nogales. Jaime Morales said he couldn’t imagine why his cousin Pedro had taken off like that. Without a word to anyone. Even more puzzling, everything that mattered to Pedro, including his favorite wide-brimmed straw hat, a black leather-look jacket he’d saved months to purchase and a shiny red polyester shirt he wore to birthday parties and dances, had been left behind.
It was my wife, Esme, who suggested we get a pet for our children. “It will teach them responsibility,” she said.
“Sounds good,” I replied. However, I was not actually paying attention when she brought up the subject because I was going over my notes for a lecture on string theory. So, it came as a complete surprise when Esme and the twins arrived home from the pet store with a ferret.
Continue reading “Quantum Hamsters and Other Pet Anomalies by Hermine Robinson”
Day #16
The Little Rules of Engagement Handbook—Rule #1: Once you have arrived at your assigned location, hunker down and wait for ancillary instructions from your Assignment Coach.
4 a.m.
The crows quarrel over dead rat scraps in the gutter.
CNN, I haven’t turned it off for two weeks. Images of desert proxy-wars, percolate through the cable; ISIS driving US Iraq-abandoned Humvees and armoured vehicles; teenage recruits firing AK-47s into the Mosul sky; American Republican Party candidates debating penis size.
The assignment is to instigate a shakeup, by diverting the ginger haired sociopath’s motorcade down the street below my window. I have his picture taped to the wall, a smug man orbiting himself. He’s been granted Secret Service protection. That may complicate things. There’ll probably be revolution if I accomplish my assignment. A master class in failed democracy, for all those who care to attend.
Continue reading “The Little Rules of Engagement Handbook by dm gillis”
One night in a cramped office I was contemplating suicide while entering food prices into a restaurant database. I’m a manager and my neck and lower back were throbbing and aching. Scroll, click, type. My eyes felt like they were bleeding. Someone knocked on the door.
Continue reading “Can I Still Work One Day a Week by J W Kash”
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