grab and go
Only two weeks of summer vacation sat between me and school when I breezed through the doors of the Autumn Springs Assisted Care Center. I found Miss Cheryl at the front desk, going on with another nurse about her daughter and the latest drama with her no good boyfriend. I smiled, pretending not to listen... Continue Reading →
I didn’t plan to become a superhero, but all that changed when I got bit by a hooker down at the pier down on Southport. Her teeth feel like a sheered Budweiser can. She locks her arms around my throat. I feel her tiny frame on my back, her heals on my legs. Her wheeze is like... Continue Reading →
This trailer ain’t but so big, and with four girls, it’s all I can do to keep them from fighting every day. It’s summertime, hot, and they mope around, a hurricane of blonde heads, whining, complaining about how they’re bored, painting my toenails and hogging the TV. Otherwise just being pests. If only I’d had... Continue Reading →
*Click to hear this story read over at Immortal Works. I take my desk roughly two minutes after the bell rings. I start by flipping through a Vonnegut novel that makes hardly more sense than my profession. They trickle in, slow, casual, all with that strut and a laugh. The shield that masks the... Continue Reading →
I woke up, jolted by the cry of my mother’s distress. Her shrieks came in rhythm, rising and a falling, and for a while, at the groggy edge of my slumber. At first I was neither awake or asleep, inbetween dreams and I that someone was in there, just down the hall, torturing my mother. It wasn’t... Continue Reading →
Alex Trebek rambles on, another gracious anecdote that carries us through commercial break. I’d always thought these little chat-ups were fake, but the guy is full of himself, extolling the virtues of Malaysian fruits to the giggly delight of Sue, a teacher from Milwaukee. My mike pack digs into my sweaty back. It’s the first taping... Continue Reading →
“You’ll never get me to tell you where the jewels are.” Mom’s little party is popping. Candles, wine, drunk wannabe writers. Mom-the-truly-awful-playwright likes to get buzzing and have people “bring her writing to life.” Now, Sci-Fi-Eddie is fending off the advances of Lydia-the-memoir-writer. Eddie’s taken the role of Clyde Clisbee, a down on his luck... Continue Reading →
"My life is not an original song. But the words are all my own. I don’t know about this.” Heather looked up from her notes. “No?” Chase Chaplin. In her apartment, on editor’s orders. He turned back to her fourth story window. “I was hoping for more of a punch, you know?” Heather set the... Continue Reading →
“NAPALM STRIPPERS saved my life.” The guy caught me by surprise, just after that disaster of a workshop. Nothing grabs this new batch of aspiring writers. Not for long. Not me, a relic, standing up there trying to explain what makes good memoir writing to a generation of Twitter posters? The worst part was that... Continue Reading →
They found us. But it took long enough. And it wasn't until after I'd texted the news station with leads and emailed the papers from his phone. Risky, yeah, but what was I supposed to do? Things were moving slow and I needed to quicken the pace. That Amber Alert did the trick though. Should have... Continue Reading →
Lunch Break Fiction 