I am the bug finder. With the sow-bugs, jooper beetles, nightcrawlers, and dead bumble bees I find, I’ll catch the biggest fish my father has ever seen. We’ll eat it for dinner and everyone’s bellies will be full. I turn over stones and check the wet mud for the worms. The cinder blocks in the garden bed are best, but I wait until Mom is on the phone to turn them over. Then I place them black carefully so she won’t know. I don’t think, when she sees the fish I’ll bring home, that she’ll mind me turning up the wall of her garden bed. I’ve got my pole ready by the door and I’m full of energy because today is a good day for bug finding.…
...continue reading
Jeff Goldblum was maddening. Mitzy lay in bed, naked to the ceiling fan’s rotations, sweat beading on her cleavage, her stomach, everything. Jeff would not take his eyes off her, that stare so moody, so dark, just like Jurassic Park.
“What are you going to do to me, Goldblum.” She parted her dry lips.
The dark philosopher would not reply, just hummed under his breath. Why anybody paid to watch him front the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra, she couldn’t imagine. No musical talent. Just an atonal whine. No, his talents lay elsewhere and were of the pectoral variety.
How she had ended up here, trapped in her bed, held hostage by this handsome fiend she didn’t know, except she never should’ve had drinks with that man last week, the one whose Tinder profile said he was an electrician.…
...continue reading
When her parents fought, and Melissa had blunted all her colors to stubs, she would crank open the window and take herself off the trailer park, unseen. The oppressive Tennessee summer often baked the inhabitants of her two-bedroomed, ten-by-twenty-eight-foot home; and she understood from a young age that heat, combined with all-day drinking, made both grown-ups so dehydrated they were delirious even in their raving.
The first time she’d thought of this solution, she’d been nine years old and tall for her age; a peculiar child prone to fits of imagination. But who could blame her? For until then she’d known only the closet, candy pink pajamas, and Push-Pops for tea. The very shadows on the wall came alive to keep her company; they danced just for her.…
...continue reading
The leaky ceiling at the restaurant was nicknamed the fountain by the staff, and when the owner overheard them he called it brilliant. He put seats around the bucket and declared it a contemplative experience.
Here’s the thing, he said. Water and air are the simplest elements in our universe. You yourself are 80% water and 10% air. That is why, as you watch the waterfall through the air, you can contemplate yourself and reality at a deeper level than you ever could before.
The entire staff thought he was crazy until people paid double to sit in the contemplation circle. Only one girl piped up and still called it a leak, but he fired her and threatened to sue her into the ground.
It became the contemplation fountain.…
...continue reading
Of course, she would never smoke weed. Not at work at least. Nor did she vape. No. At work, she was more than content with classic Marlboro reds. Tobacco laws prohibited her from buying them herself, so she smoked them sparingly. She made sure to thoroughly enjoy every puff. She wasn’t addicted. Cigarettes were great but never a necessity. She didn’t crave the nicotine. She craved the silence.
Just being able to get away from the chaos of the store for five minutes was the whole reason she had started smoking. In an ironic twist, the cigarettes helped her remember to breathe. It was like a cancerous meditation. Most nights she didn’t ask for a smoke. After all, she was down to three cigarettes. However, tonight had been one of those nights where five to ten minutes in the alley alone would save her entire evening.…
...continue reading
Padraig, as Irish as any Joyce or Stephens, O’Nolan or Beckett, Behan or Heaney, or any saloonkeeper named Clancy, could no longer reliably distinguish the theme for Irish Spring soap from the theme for Lucky Charms cereal: somehow, the old Old Spice theme would intrude on the one and interweave with the other—maybe he did need to cut back on his consumption of Tullamore after all, or at least maybe stop cutting it with the Bushmills.
He’d not bathed or showered with Irish Spring in decades, had not managed as much as a spoonful of Lucky Charms since the age of nine, had never worn Old Spice at all, not even in high school, and had not owned a television set in over twenty years, but he had started his day with a dose of Tullamore, after scrambled eggs and toast.…
...continue reading
Andre was worried about his wife. She had been up for weeks obsessing on the idea of having children. And not just any children, but children that were stolen from her: She was convinced that eighteen years ago her eggs had been harvested from her body and implanted unwittingly in another woman.
He paced the kitchen floor. “I’m worried our conversations the last few weeks haven’t been a good idea. Yes, I want children, but I never meant to make you sick. Somehow, it’s made you paranoid and now you’re refusing to take your meds.”
“But I already have children!” She took a sip of coffee from her mug.
He was overwhelmed with guilt. A month ago, he had raised the idea of having children. They were finally financially stable, and it seemed like the perfect time, with him being promoted to CEO of his company and Kyla, his wife, ready to take some time off from her very successful floristry business.…
...continue reading