Stories. Mostly fiction.
The sideshow acts had been run-of-the-mill. I saw a bearded lady and a man who ate glass. At the end of a line of tents sat one with no sign. The barker invited me in and I asked what I would see.
“Something that must be seen to be believed.”Continue reading “Dixie”
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
A man eating a slice of pepperoni pizza looked closely at one of the disks of pepperoni and was surprised to see that what had at first looked like a fleck of oregano was actually a very tiny man, also eating a slice of pepperoni pizza.Continue reading “By the Slice”
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…”
The rumbling started yesterday afternoon, just a little while after I arrived. Within the space of a few minutes the house got dark, but Grandma didn’t seem to notice anything until she saw the clouds in my eyes.Continue reading “Thunder in the Distance”
Over the chicken wire, under the fence post, across the field towards the huddle of trees in the distance. My heart flutters as I follow, because I’m following her. There is a still hum to the field as bugs hang in the air. The grass is as high as my waist, and when I see her almost to the trees I rush too much and fall. My hand is scraped and little beads of blood sprout at the base of the palm. I stop for a moment in the lee of the grass where it is cool and even quieter.
When I get up she is gone. I resume my run, ashamed and cautious and heart fluttering heavier than before.Continue reading “The Path”
David Hammond 