The croissant had just the right crispness to it.
” Yes, they brought the towels and thank you for doing that, but I need soap for the sink.”
The views from the 22nd floor were stunning. From the East you could see the Silver Cup Studios sign and from the other side of the atrium you could see the Empire State Building already lit up red and green for the holidays, vibrating amidst a vast New York Cityscape.
The tiny clearing off to the side was cooler than the obscenely voluminous garden with its organized cacophony of colors – massed vermilions and oranges alongside indigos, violets, and fuchsias, eye-popping yellows and the occasional calm of white or cream. Cedars bent over an exquisite pool, granite lined, with water more crystalline than glass. Almost lost between moss-padded banks that nearly met, a miniscule stream fed the pool, dribbling over mammoth slate slabs stacked like pricey leather-bound books resting on deep emerald velvet.
In the kitchen of a cottage nestled among oak trees they waited – for neighbour, for colleague; for broken doors and strangers with zip-lock bags. Jay was long gone, whipping across fields, toward the blockhouse he’d carved with nails and fire. He crawled into peace and wished he could stay, wished he could curl up on the soft, wet earth and sleep. But if he did they would find him, find him without looking and he wasn’t ready for that medicine, for any medicine – just now his liberty was a sickness he refused to cure. He dug up his plane ticket, kicked things quiet and headed toward the airport.
Man: Hello. I’m Peter. You are a lovely lady.
The lovely lady seated across from Peter: Well, thank you, Peter. I’m Georgia.
Peter: You are too pretty to be a state.
A courtesy smile.
Peter: You have perfect teeth.
Georgia: I brush between meals.
Peter: Good concept.
Georgia: You should try it.
Peter: I believe I will.
Georgia: Tell me, Peter, why are you here?
Peter (after a brief moment of reflection): I believe religion to be an archaic concept that caters to the insecurities of fragile, ignorant people. And you?
Georgia: Goodbye Peter.
Peter: Goodbye Georgia. Continue reading “From the Mouth of Peter Dowd by Fred Vogel”
The atavistic avatar dropped from space:
“I did it only to see the look on our face.”
1
On his way across the short overpass that unofficially connects Corson Street to Torqwamni Hill, Holly glances down at a small house below. It’s an ugly little fist-like rental that had gone up during the Second World War—as had countless others of its kind in Charleston. Like the caw of a crow or a bit of dandelion fluff getting stuck to your cheek, this house exists only in the moment you share with it. Yet nearly thirty years gone by, the same house had once unclenched and gave Holly a touch of honesty; thus it had it had earned in his mind its own small history.
Continue reading “The Inescapable Touch of Sunset By Leila Allison”
Over millions of years ago Breakheart Woods, between Saugus and Wakefield in Massachusetts, had been bookmarked by boulders and blow-offs and earthly cataclysm, and to this day, somewhere in its innards from those first struggles of granite and earth fire, from violent fractures and upheavals to be known again only at the end of it all, was a cave, a cave as dark as a heart, a cave that once, I believed, pulsed with a heart. Now we were searching for that cave, in earnest.
Continue reading “The Hermit of Breakheart Woods by Tom Sheehan”
Ah sir, you come upon me just as I am closing for the night. No no, it is not a problem to remain open whilst you make your purchase. Come in, I insist! I would not have you come out all this way on a night such as this and leave empty handed. Commutes are soulless enough endeavours, without being denied sustenance for the sake of an old man closing his establishment five minutes early.
People have asked just how it was that Sandra and me got together in the first place. I mean, it seems a bit unlikely, if you know what I mean. After all, there’s Sandra, small, educated, a right stunner that makes men choke on their beers at first sight, a snappy dresser that causes men’s eyes to wander rapidly southwards in the hope of even better stuff below, and a helpless looking nature which she uses to good effect when she wants somebody to do something for her. Not that she needs it, as she is quite capable of looking after herself whenever there is nobody else around.
I wondered where the wonder went. Another bottle of wine, another moment gone, carelessly misplaced along with the forgotten tomorrows. I picked at the bandage above my eye.
I thought of the millions of self-help books I had read.
“Allow yourself to go to a different place, a better place, in times of difficulties.”
“Embrace your inner child.”
“Breathe.”
“Be kind to yourself.”
“Stay positive.”
Roscoe Griffin, sheltered by the corner of the three story windowless building, waited for the procession of cars to begin drifting into the parking lot. Morning was just breaking and the autumn sun converted the chemical fumes coming from the stacks on top of the building into a mosaic of colors. Colorful though the fumes were, they held a deadly future. The smell, as the fumes drifted down, made Roscoe’s already nauseated stomach even worse.
Continue reading “Where the Air Tastes Like Copper by Lee Conrad”
literally stories 