Todd Floss here. A quick note about my future. I plan to write a few fiction novels now that there is a huge need for them. I’m shooting for high six figures for the first one. Toby Vonnegut’s book Ass in the Chair: Writing Your First Blockbuster was a big help to my thinking, so I’m way ahead of the curve. I have sixty-eight ideas as of noon today. My plan is to print the ideas and tape them on my living room wall. In that way, they will be staring me down. I’ve dipped into some fiction novels recently and made a few artistic notes. I want bold colors on the cover, and I’m aiming for 250 pages, but I could go 400 if the “characters keep driving the plot.”…
...continue reading
“See you tomorrow,” says Grandpa Julien, as his fake daughter drops us at the door for our usual weekend visit.
He waves as she skitters down the steps. The stinkers. I sling my backpack hard into Julien’s messy living room and stomp into the house. He looks the same as always with his rumpled velveteen jacket and a wild geranium in his snow-white hair. Mom and Julien pretend he’s our grandfather. He is really our father. Mom was really just a model for his paintings. They’re not related.
Yesterday I found out about the big lie. How doesn’t matter.
“Gampa!” Sprout jumps into his arms, reaches to jiggle the flower in his hair, and slides down his body to the ground.
Slinky, Julien’s ancient Siamese cat, rubs the side of her body against my bare leg, then disappears before Sprout can grab her tail.…
...continue reading
That damn commercial. It kept airing in between game shows, its sentimentality breaking up the raucous flow of applause and flashing lights and cartoonish contestants. A little girl calling her grandmother on an iPhone and telling her about a sunflower she drew at school while the grandmother looked out the window at the lone sunflower in her yard and smiled. After about its 50th airing, Lottie powered on her father’s old desktop computer and ordered an iPhone on Amazon.
She hadn’t made a call with it yet, but she had managed to download Facebook. She filled out a few of the information fields — full name (Loretta “Lottie” Finster), occupation (retired financial advisor), relationship status (single), and education (Pine Valley High School, Dartmouth). The app suggested some friends.…
...continue reading
Did I feel reformed? I can’t say. But, as I watched those heavy, black gates dizzyingly sweeping to a close, one thing was certain – I never wanted to see them again. That day, with the last rays of the sun, a period of my life ended that I wished never to relive or recall again.
The railway station was teeming with people, fortunately for me. After all, where could a person hope to attract least attention if not in a crowd? Nonetheless, there must have been something very singular about my appearance, for I noticed that even in the midst of their busy operations, they managed to throw a furtive glance or two my way – a distinction awarded to no other person.
There were still two hours before the train was due.…
...continue reading
Hell is nothing like what anyone says, Michael thought as he walked through the large iron bar gates. They were cracked just enough for him to slip under the chain linking them together. He stood there for a moment. As he walked down the cobblestone street, the thought solidified in his mind. Not like anything anywhere. Plato has described a giant layered prison of sins. The vikings told of a barren, cold wasteland at the bottom of the universe. And every sunday morning preacher or day-time televangelist warned of fire and brimstone and demons ready to torture the damned.
In reality, Hell was a vast city, made up of buildings and monuments from every architectural movement in history. As if they had just been plopped there from the living world, large gothic cathedrals stood next to roman temples; log cabins neighbored domed babylonian mosques; even a handful of Sears and Roebuck Home-kit houses were sandwiched in between Addams family style mansions and small wooden huts.…
...continue reading
The old man crouches beside a straw basket, weary from his travels, his skin glistening with sweat. Children run past him, tumbling through bright saris hanging from twine. Squatters look over his clothes, the few possessions he’s carried for miles on his orange turban. He closes his eyes and blows into the tip of a pungi, emitting a low humming sound. “Come one and all to see what the divine Nagas reveal! The guardians of water have surfaced from great depths to tell us their secrets.” A crowd slowly forms around the old man. He plays the reed instrument, carefully, teasing out the high notes; the music is strange, hypnotic. “But beware! The Naga’s message can only be understood by the one it is intended for.”…
...continue reading
Laura liked to think she was honest with herself; it was everyone else she lied to. In the end, what difference would it make? It would only cause everyone to worry and fuss and make a big deal out of it, and she just wanted to live what little life she had in peace. Was that too much to ask?
Actually, if she was honest with herself, she needed to acknowledge that it couldn’t be a secret forever. Questions would start popping up on the lips of busybodies, especially as she started to appear as sickly as she felt. She would cross that bridge when she came to it, though, throwing back her shoulders in the meantime, facing her encroaching doom head-on, albeit alone.…
...continue reading