Stories. Mostly fiction.
A short comedy-horror story, now available as a Kindle eBook.
Hellhound and graveyard guardian Grimur fell asleep on the job. By the time he woke up hundreds of years later, the graves were gone and humans had developed automobiles. He had two options: check in with Beelzebub for his next assignment — never pleasant — or lay low for a while…
“Which is better, a flush or a straight?”
Raul ruffled the tops of his cards and bit his lip. He nudged Hammersmith, who was staring into the rafters of the theater, his jaw slack.
“What?” Hammersmith asked groggily.
Julia returned from the bathroom and opened another can of grapefruit soda.
“Which is better, a flush or a straight?”
“How the fuck should I know?”
Hammersmith got up to stretch and threw his cards carelessly on the table, revealing three jacks.
“Damn, you fold with a hand like that Hammersmith? Damn.”
“I don’t fold. I just don’t want to play cards anymore.”
“I get your Cheetos.”
“Whatever.”
“What do you want to do?” Julia asked, looking at Hammersmith while laying her head on the table and allowing her arms to dangle to the floor.
“The play, man! Let’s do the fucking play!”
“Why do you have to use the f-word all the time?” asked Raul.
“It started with a routine-sounding letter from my health insurance company. I opened it quickly because I was in the mood for a snack, and there was a little picture of cherries on the lower right corner of the envelope indicating that they had used cherry-flavored paper, my favorite. I learned that I would need to get a full DNA sequencing done by the end of the year. Reasonable enough, I thought, as I tore off little pieces of the letter and let the sweet and sour cellulose dissolve on my tongue.”
Or get the Kindle ebook here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08LTQBXSC
When I swung forward, I leaned back so far that the trees were upside down. I enjoyed the giddy feeling in my stomach, but eventually the rope burned my hands and I got off the swing and swayed, slightly dizzy, on the ground. The rope was tied to a tree limb at the top and to an old tire at the bottom. I looked down the gentle hill at the carpet of brown and yellow leaves which gave way to grass and then our house and then more grass and then Freeport Drive and then the hill where I rode my bike and the freedom of being 10 years old in Burlington Massachusetts circa 1980.Continue reading “Freeport Drive”
Yuri led an ordered life. He woke up at 7 am, and his breakfast always included half a grapefruit eaten with a serrated spoon. It took him 12½ minutes to bike to his job as a network security consultant and 13½ minutes to bike back (he lived uphill). The hour before bedtime was spent reading on the couch in his living room. At 11 pm he went to bed, and, because he slept soundly and didn’t dream, the time until 7 am the following morning didn’t exist for him.
Then Yuri got a cat…
Read the rest at Crack the Spine
The bell above the door rings as Fran enters the small store wearing a purse over her shoulder. She approaches the counter, and Steve, who has been leaning on the counter with his chin cupped in his hand, straightens up, looking mildly surprised.
“Good morning,” says Fran.
“Mornin’.”
“I’d like to buy something, please.”
Read the rest at Story Shack
“Excuse me, sir.”
“Yes?”
“This is going to sound strange, but what year is this?”
“Not at all, it’s 2917. October 6th.”
Read the rest at Bartleby Snopes
“But does it work?”
Dr. Seaver leaned back in his chair and blew on his mug of instant soup. The steam fogged his glasses. “Of course not. It’s just a thought experiment.”
“Oh,” I said, picking up a doohickey on the professor’s desk. “Of course.” The doohickey, or maybe gizmo is a better word, had protruding wires and springs and blinking lights that changed pattern as I turned the thing over in my hands. Dr. Seaver watched me indulgently.
“It’s based,” he continued, “on a faulty premise: the idea of the circular spectrum.”
“The what now?” I returned the gizmo to its spot.
“A boy adjusts the position of a box of tissues on his desk and sits cross-legged on his bed. It is a Sunday afternoon and he has nothing else to do. The door to his room is closed, and nobody will bother him before dinnertime. He has all afternoon to make the box of tissues move with his mind…”
We entered the sandy arena three abreast and stopped in the center. We raised our trumpets, flags adorning the extra-long bells, and began to play. I have always gotten a thrill from the bright sound of tightly harmonized trumpets, especially when I have helped produce it. Halfway through, the two trumpeters on the outside turned to face opposite sides of the arena as we built to a climax.
When we were done, we marched out of the arena, through a hall and up some stairs to a small unadorned room, a closet really, where our instrument cases were kept and where we spent most of our time. We listened to the muffled noise from the arena as the knights were trotted out and attempts were made to whip the audience into a frenzy, waiting for our next cue.Continue reading “With Fanfare, and Without”
David Hammond 