Category: Fiction
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No One Makes Money at Landlocked Bars on Holiday Weekends
If I only knew the time, he thought, I would know it all. Standing behind the bar on a slow holiday weekend he would wax philosophical. Something outside would catch his eye and the thought would skip away. Like how the awning of the place retracted with one of those poles you slipped through a…
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Talking in My REM Sleep
In another life and with another brain I would have made myself pupil and master of language. Instead: I tiptoe on the precipices of residual memories that spill out from suppressed synapses. I desire nothing but the nine-minute intervals between hushing the waking bells I’ve fooled my mind the night before into believing will penetrate…
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Bagel Bar
After that first night not sleeping, they went for breakfast sandwiches at the cramped bagel joint overlooking Main Street. The two of them ordered at the counter, but Clyde waited for the tray of food to be prepared. He took the tray and approached the empty stool next to her hoisted bottom and dangling legs.…
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Gas Money, Honey
Eastern Pennsylvanians love their hoagies. I’d pulled into a gas station after driving six hours north. The place advertised 2 for 1 liters of cola and state minimum cigarette prices. A ‘70s style goose sweeping across a setting sun illuminated above their door. Mosquitoes flocked to its luminance. I parked the car in the rear…
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Ringtone (Killing Trevor Pt. 3)
Henry hadn’t set an alarm for a reason. That waking up to a machine nonsense was only a necessary means to an end. A crutch to maintain his place in the realm of responsible adulthood. That morning, he wanted to see how far his body could go naturally catching him up on the sleep his…
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Thirst (Killing Trevor Pt. 2)
She opened the door to the gas station half expecting the counter to be unmanned. Phillip, the greasy-haired attendant who worked the night shift, had a habit of stepping out the back to smoke a hand-rolled cigarette, leaving the counter empty. He’d stand within earshot of the bells that hung from the front door and…
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Headache (Killing Trevor Pt. 1)
The rain pounded on the metal roof of the car. It smattered against the glass. Filtered by those creeping droplets on the windows, the streetlight shadows animated the surfaces of the couple’s still faces. Cynthia, her thinly plucked eyebrows raised, looked at his hands as they gripped the steering wheel. A nervous tick of his,…
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A Line at Twin Rivers
I look up from my watch and hock a wad of phlegm into the mulch trying to seem more ticked off than I am because we’d been standing in line for forty-five endless minutes. I could have watched half a movie in this time. I keep thinking about and that thought makes me irritable. So…
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Pink Bow Untied
Rain would have been more fitting. Clouds. Torrential downpours. Some freak hurricane. Not this nurturing warmth that was carried in the breeze along with the songs of springtime robins. The boys were out with their father picking up new fishing poles and getting something for lunch. Patrick felt it best that Isabella, his wife, the…
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Top Score
Whenever I would get to see you, when it was our time, I felt I was stepping up to the challenge of an arcade pinball machine. Feeling below the cabinet for that hidden power switch, I’d seek you out. Reaching into my coat pocket for my busted burner phone and punching in the sequence of…
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Burning the Tracks
A red glow washed over the amorphous designs on the table. Thin, bent tubes housing neon bordered the metallic siding. She sat in the hollow space carved out by the fish tank wall wrapping behind their customary booth. He hadn’t answered her question, the question she had asked him her to pose. She knew he…
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The Only Three Hobos in Boulder
“Who are you?” “I am just a man.” The long-trunked, dark-skinned man who the gruff guy with anger in his eyes called Cisco pleaded for more of an explanation with childlike inquisitiveness in his glistening eyes. You know how when a kid’ll ask you something you know you shouldn’t tell them the real answer to,…
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A Plate for Pickles
There are many things Nancy does regularly. She looks out the window in her flat for hours on end. She sees people leave for their jobs in the morning. She sees them return to their homes in the evening. She cleans her flat every morning. She picks up the phone and has lengthy conversations. She…
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Diving Sticks and Other Recollections of Public Pools
I once cracked open a diving stick and emptied the sand from it for no good reason. I walk past the fence of the public pool and am hit with a burning sensation within the caverns of my nostrils from the day I first jumped into deep water without holding my nose. Instinct exhales the…
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Bad Business
Habit had me walking home along the trolley rails late at night when no one else was on the road. A girl with a bag hanging on her hip was coming down the hill next to my building. She saw me stepping off the rails and onto the sidewalk. She passed my door as I…
Sophisticating the Rudimentary 