Category: Short Story
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Chlorine and Sea Spray
A four-star hotel had its foundation near where the Pacific laps the mainland with a ravenous host of frothy tongues. Two skinny hoods skated past on splintered boards with rusted bearings that squealed, hungry for replacement or grease whatever remedy would silence their pangs. Their hunger was osmosed through the feet of their riders. The…
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Cloth Doll Daughter Story Discussion
A slender woman standing in front of the chalkboard points her chin toward a boy seated in the second row of desks. “Go ahead.” “That’s not the way I see it,” he says, pulling his right arm down and crossing it across his chest on top of his left. “So,” Miss Marcy begins, “what do…
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Willow Creek
I remember when Stacy and I would go down to Willow Creek to skip rocks. I’d get mine all the way across; hers would only travel about half the way before descending out of view. “No one’ll ever try to skip that one again,” I’d say as the stone tucked itself in to the muddy…
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Pinball Wizards
We all had it in the back of our heads that this wasn’t all that good for us, but we also knew that if we didn’t do this here and now, we’d wake up one day thirty some odd years down the road and see a void where there should have been late-adolescent excitement. So…
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Man Oh Man(ia)
You’re updating your resume again. You have the urge to write down under accomplishments starting from A to Z: Alcoholic (recovering), bulimic (recovering), cutter (recovering), drug addict (recovering), etc. Or, you want to throw in there, “Has managed, with the help of doctors, chemicals, and family, to keep bipolar disorder from ruining life and the…
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A Cabinet of Coffee Mugs
My father was a quiet, weathered man. Ignoring conventional rules you find in writing manuals, it would be accurate to use the old cliché that he was akin to a closed book. He was reclusive, but pensive. He had been places. More accurately, as he used to tell me, places had visited him. He did…
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The Webber’s Sorrow
For the malice Nature thrusts upon us no remedy exists. Time, I have come to believe, is the closest aid in relieving the pain of those circumstances in life over which man has no control. Although time is a concept, an unseen hand in its own nature, it is a healer. What comes to mind…
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Doe Re Meandering
It’s still not clear to me exactly what I was doing driving around that night and when it comes down to hard facts, I could care less. I spent a number of purposeless hours behind the wheel during those months. Maybe it was the result of a living in a small town past my prime…
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Trying to Read on the T
I’m outside of my apartment for about three minutes before the trolley stops and its doors bend open to let me in, but I’ve already begun to perspire. The wetness around the base of my neck quickly absorbs into my black shirt collar the same way it’s been feeding the cotton pillowcases on my bed…
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Fingertips
A slight, dry wind flowed through the trees and under the sky, pressing black dresses against long legs, making hair frayed and frazzled. Morning commuters buzzed along the streets. Oblivious to the chaos beyond the windshield. Trapped in the awful moment, a day set aside for teardrops and sorrow, a girl got out of her mother’s…
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Ear-buds
A few nights ago I entered my apartment building listening to some music on my iPod. It wasn’t loud to the point where I was about to blow the wee speakers out (which happens way too often), but Mozart’s “Symphony #25” was all that was audible. Now, I consider myself to be a safe person. Growing up in a…
Sophisticating the Rudimentary 