Originally published in Bewildering Stories. Go to part 1 | part 2… Bernard I never get the chance to just lie there and enjoy the morning. Some bastard was honking his horn. It wasn’t one of the cracked, gargling horns that you get on all the old cars in the valley; it was one of …
Originally published in Bewildering Stories. Go to part 1 | part 3… Essa The first real pay check I ever got was from a Starbucks in Renton. For two weeks, I burned my fingers, smelled like milk, and flirted with the addicts. Then, on a Friday that I had woken up on convinced that it …
Originally published in Bewildering Stories. Go to part 2 | part 3… Bernard I am a man of my failures. I don’t mind saying it. I didn’t mind, when the rivet gun stopped echoing, saying it to Lane. He gave me this look, more You’re a man? than What failures? Then he went back to …
Originally published in Bewildering Stories. “I knew something was wrong when the gun spit flowers instead of bullets,” said Troy. He was sitting in the grass on a hill overlooking Brahmton, Mississippi. There was a zeppelin drifting overhead like a cloud, blocking out the sun. “Not flowers, exactly,” Troy went on. “Just some green vegetable …
Originally published in Bewildering Stories. “Hey God. I think I’m ready.” “I told you not to call me that, child.” Its voice wavered on the personal pronouns, tearing into — what was the last figure? — eight million part harmony. It started doing that a couple weeks ago, explaining that there were sufficient letters of …
Originally published in Bewildering Stories. They were brothers, Tag and Joffrey, but they had come from different mothers. Both of their mothers were dead, having passed away on the same day from the pains of childbirth and the rage that, at that same moment, there was another woman caught in the same labor. Tag and …
Originally published in Bewildering Stories. A blown kiss. “Hi, beauty. You look tired. Did you hear the news?” The Man doesn’t pause between ideas, shoving them out of the airlock a step ahead of him. They’re faster than the kiss. The Woman is hunched heavy over a pad at the dining room table, an aching …
Originally published in Bewildering Stories. It was a Saturday when I went out to work on the hole, but I was in my Sunday clothes. Dad had made me throw them in the dryer and put them on hot, because he said we were going to be late for saying goodbye to Lucky. I sat …
Originally published in MungBeing. Go to part 1 | part 2… It was snowing hard the day of the annual Winter Parade. I met Harald in the park after church. He had already staked out a good spot underneath a big elm right next to the sidewalk. It was our tradition to dive for candy …
Originally published in MungBeing. Go to part 1 | part 3… Aaron Telco was a decent guy when I knew him in school. He was three grades older than me, so he would have been perfectly justified in acting like a dick around my friends and me, but he always wore his age with grace, …