“Here I am,” says his imperative argument in an undertone, “eighty-seven frigging years old, my knees gone to hell and back, my gut talking about all the beer I’ve sailed my life across, barrels of it talking to me all at once, and this little kid out in front of my house crying his head off. This little kid, this little shaver, one of the ones we did our thing for, our future.
Continue reading “Beau Geste Murtaugh, Veteran of Wars by Tom Sheehan”
“He’d been a philanderer for years.”
Those words spilling out slowly from my mother’s mouth, chin firm, lips straight, not a tear in her eye, about my father who had just died – came as a total surprise – especially when there was no chance to verify her accusation. He was gone, unable to defend himself. So as his son, I wasn’t sure to take the announcement as total truth or as someone’s bruised opinion?
Dick and Jane and Bob and Sally lived in a pretty little town with grass and trees. One day Bob was gone, leaving his body behind. Dick said to Sally, “Where is Bob?” Sally said to Dick, “Bob is gone.” They looked at Bob’s body, poking it with a stick. It did not move. He was not there.
Prologue: A case of the heebie-jeebies.
In a determined effort to spread inefficiency and uselessness throughout all possible universes, the Amalgamated Union of Pennames and Imaginary Friends(of which I am a reluctant member) has expanded like a toxic spill, and now includes the clientele of the recently defunct Guild of Fictional Characters. The mess has been “rebranded” the UPIFFC.
Continue reading “Meanwhile, Back at the UPIFFC… by Leila Allison”
I
Every house has this book tucked away somewhere, father tells me. Some keep it locked in the attic, while others hide it in the depths of bookcases or submerged under dusty bowls in forgotten boxes. My father, however, makes a point of reading it to us. Just as he has read it to my brothers and sisters, so he will read it to me. It’s an old leather bound book and inside is written my whole life.
Jackie Cushing was fighting it all the way, wearing knickers, him, twelve going on thirty it felt some days, dreams about Ginnie Grayson practically every night now, the morning dew being the vague remnants his father spoke about with a smile on his face, new hairs in his crotch, his mother wanting her boy to look neat, his father looking at the horizon almost saying aloud this too will pass. It was his one-shoulder shrug that carried verb and noun in its arsenal. Jackie had early discovered that his father did not need a lot of words.
“Do you want to play guns?” he asked me.
This was a complicated question, and while I stood not knowing what to say, the summer heat beat down through the cloudless Virginia sky. Twenty years has gone by now, and each summer heat wave brings back this vivid memory. It will forever be with me, as clear as it was that day when I was eight.
Estaban deTullis may not have been the most beloved man on the small island of Azure De Ponce De Leon, 57 miles south of Caracas, but that was only because of the sometimes venomous feelings harbored toward him by his often-times put upon wife and busy-body mother-in-law.
Joy’s eyes were stinging from the stench of urine. She was hoping it was from her mother’s three tiny dogs, but suspected the mutts weren’t the only ones who’d been incontinent.
Pahuac rested his head on the sacrificial stone. He would have to go through this if he wanted to find his way back home. Why couldn’t he remember?
literally stories 