Tag: relationship

All Stories, General Fiction, Humour

Goodbye Wall Street by Edward S Barkin

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A few years ago – actually a few more than a few – I was ever so close to becoming a full-fledged drone in the beehive of modern-day America.  During that time, I was still merely an apprentice — one of many youthful human resource units at the disposal of a large and powerful Wall Street corporation.  My job was to sit at a desk ten hours a day and do various unimportant things.  In return, I received money.  Not that much of it, but just enough so that I didn’t have to worry constantly about how much I was spending.  Forty thousand a year, let’s call it, though it was probably only thirty-eight at best.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Historical

Plumbeck the Fiddler by Tom Sheehan

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Watching every move about the campfire, studying each face lit up by the flickering flames, the fiddler Sam Plumbeck idly held onto his instrument, waiting for the proper moment. Time, he could feel, was pressing down on him; it had different parts that moved in different ways. The stars all the way to the horizon dip were many and miraculous, the horses silent for the most part even though a coyote cry filtered in now and then, and the darkness beyond wrapped them like a giant robe spread under those stars. He had ridden in, apparently aimlessly to all the trail hands, and joined up with them on their way back to their ranch, the promise of music being hailed by all the hands who had delivered the herd, were through with the drive. He alone, out of all these trail hands who had hit the jackpot, knew what was coming down on them. Nothing is supposed to be perfect or fair; at least this side of heaven, or the mass of a blue sky, or the dash of sunlight on a rainy day. And he, just a picker of strings, with not a coin of the gold in the lot having his name on it, could only wait it all out, hoping for the best and only seeing the worst coming up.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Hail Caesar! by David Louden

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typewriterI had been at University six months when I got the call to tell me my old school friend Eamon Donovan had died.  Drug overdose.  He wasn’t the partying kind; it was a different kind of drug overdose.  An entirely intentional one.  Eamon was from the north of the city, like me; The Bone.  That particular stretch of hopeless home-front had given rise to a nasty habit of suicide.  In the years I had been out of my working class no-man’s-land I’d stopped counting the amount of associates who had taken the off-ramp.  It had become so frequent that it had been dubbed the North Belfast Green Card.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Sleep by Cameron VanderWerf

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By dusk, he could feel the coming of another sleepless night, so after Helen left for her book club meeting—stooping from the weight of the pregnancy—he left a note on the kitchen counter and walked out the front door. It was a beautiful evening, and maybe that was why he didn’t feel like sleeping. The dying light in the west cast a rusted glow from the horizon, and the air was warm and slow. The only traffic on the road in front of his house was a beat-up brown station wagon gliding past. He watched it disappear up the road, no trees to block his view.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Last Look by Tom Sheehan

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Shots had been fired in Black Limb, a town in the Dakota territory, a bank teller and a bystander wounded, the thief caught in the middle of the robbery, knocked down by, of all things, a woman sheriff with a badge worn on a most prominent chest, dark and beautiful eyes seemingly full of pity and something else the unsuccessful robber managed to draw from her, him the handsome dog, handsome robber George Crown brought to his dusty knees by a woman sheriff, a knock-out sheriff.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Imaginary Friends by Julianne Carew

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typewriterAuburn hair and freckles sprinkled across his face, a red hat that he was never without and grubby sneakers that were ripped and torn, I first met Alvin when I was say, three or four. Alvin simply emerged in the middle of the grocery store parking lot that was really a sandbox that only I could see. He tapped on my shoulder as my mom was loading bags into the backseat of the car and from that moment on, from the second I laid eyes on his crooked teeth and goofy half-smile, we were inseparable.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Dead Man’s Last Home by Michael Glazner

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Clint’s sleeping body takes a breath, stretches and rolls over. The large man wearing a white coat scribbles notes on his pad while the dim sunrise light peeks through the window. Clint’s body rolls back to its original position. The white coat checks his watch and then checks off a box on his notepad.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Catch of the Day by Tom Sheehan

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typewriterThree of us for dozens of years were tight as a fist. No one could break us up, and a few had tried that on a few futile occasions, even when we gentlemen were fly fishing on one or more of the local streams, dawn afloat, May alive after a harsh winter and a tough early spring. Patterns were set betwixt us, like specialties of the house or garage or personal workshop, toil and turn at obstacles and unfinished tasks were before us who by each one’s choice in life’s work had brought the gifts of ideas and applicable and talented hands to extend those gifts. For each one of us possessed odd and different talents in electrical, mechanical and brute strength applications and peculiar other interests like coin and stamp collecting, scrap book organization and minimal, but touching artwork by a loving touch, family interest passed down from a parent or an older sibling.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Guy and The Baby Doll by Edward S Barkin

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He had lost all interest in the newspaper, even though it was the Sunday edition and contained fourteen sections in all.  When he had bought the paper late that night, he had assumed he would read it from cover to cover; but in actuality he had read only two articles — one about how the stock market had dropped 350 points the previous day and another about how the CIA was pushing for a looser interpretation of the law which prohibited it from engaging in political assassinations.  If he had been either heavily invested or a liberal, one of these articles might have stimulated productive thought in his mind.  As it was, however, the only thoughts which he entertained were homicidal or otherwise insane.  Continue reading “Guy and The Baby Doll by Edward S Barkin” →