Filed under: fiction
Did you ever have one of those days where you’ve got a 15-story drop in front of you and a guy with a gun behind you? That’s the kind of day I’m having.
I am not speaking metaphorically. This is where I am and what’s happening to me and I’m relating this to you because, well, I need someone to talk to just now. I’d talk to God … but we have sort of a history. It’s looking more and more likely that we’ll be seeing each other pretty soon and it may not go well. So I’m leaving Him alone for the moment. And you seem nice, so here we are.
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Filed under: fiction
Croxen sat down in the booth across from Pereson and, without a word, opened a vial containing a white powder and emptied it into Pereson’s coffee.
The vial went back into his left jacket pocket and he waited.
“Just like that?” Pereson asked, and Croxen nodded.
“Just like that. If you spill it, I have more.”
Pereson stared at his cup and looked fretfully around the little coffee shop.
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Filed under: fiction
The ghost was back again. Every day in the early evening, just for an hour.
“Listen!” the ghost said cheerfully.
Rat-a-tat-tat. Rat-a-tat-tat. Rat-a-tat-tat.
Warren tried to work around it, tried to do the crossword puzzle in the newspaper, tried to wash the dishes, tried to weed the flowerbed. He could hear it wherever he went in and around his house.
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Filed under: fiction
There were seven public rooms in the museum, and Jalene Naysure had seen them all a thousand times. She had gotten friendly with the curator, Aileen Royer, and had been in the private office many times.
That left one room Jalene had never seen, the one that was off limits to everyone but the curator. It was an oddly placed addition to the house and was accessible only from the outside. Someone unfamiliar with the floor plan wouldn’t have known of the room just from walking around inside. It was behind a bare wall decorated only with a little molding and two brass candle sconces.
“I’ve never been in there,” said Arnold Pinkhause, a retired volunteer fire chief and one of the volunteer docents. “Cora says it’s just storage.”
“Oh, odds and ends,” Cora Belling, chief volunteer docent, told Jalene. “Junk, really, but junk no one’s made the decision to get rid of over the past fifty years. I’ve never been in there myself, but there’s nothing worth looking at in there.”
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Filed under: fiction
Ed had been keeping a loose eye on the young black man outside his store for nearly an hour.
The man was maybe in his mid-20s and was dressed casually: tattered blue jeans, a dark purple shirt, and an old jean jacket. He was standing near the public bench on the sidewalk as though he were waiting for someone. And while he waited, he was giving a quietly impressive display of his abilities with a yo-yo.
He checked his space before doing an Around the World, making sure he wouldn’t hit anyone or anything. He Walked the Dog in a little circle around himself, and even walked it around a bored collie tied up at the other end of the bench. Then a Pinwheel and a Skin the Cat.
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Filed under: fiction
In one week, a massive hurricane swept up a continental coast, flattening and flooding; an art museum burned to the ground, taking priceless treasures with it; a national leader and his family were assassinated; drought deepened across a formerly fertile region; and the seams of a cruise ship opened and hundreds drowned.
As his mother watched, he lined up automobiles on a bridge just before creating an earthquake.
She shook her head. “He’s so hard on his toys.”
His father smiled indulgently. “Yes, but he’ll grow out of it. Besides, it’s just a training planet.”
Filed under: fiction
A stray piece of paper is more likely to be picked up if it’s light pink with cute artwork of a kitten and some handwriting on it.
That was the stray piece of paper Denise saw on the grocery store floor, near the customer service desk and picked up. Next to the kitten, at the top of the page, was printed: “Things CONNIE Needs To Do Today.” It was from the sort of notepad advertised in junk mail, and Connie had ordered some. There was, indeed a list of things to do:
1. Call Mom
2. Deposit check
3. Pay rent
4. Take movies back
5. Get haircut - Fran
6. Wash car
7. Go to work
8. Get CheezPuffers, Bloody Mary mix, rat poison
9. Meet Terry at hotel
10. Put rat poison in Terry’s drink
11. Go home, wash clothes & clean out fridge!
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Filed under: fiction
When one lives on the wrong side of the edge of the desert, and when one is as aged as I am, one accepts that he will see certain things that other people would not. Mostly this is good, as the things I see are interesting.
I was sitting in my chair in the shade of the little porch I added to my little wooden home, which is built well enough to keep out most of the wind and sand and rattlesnakes. This is where I often am when I see interesting things. This day, I saw in the far distance an upright line. As I watched, the line grew and became a man. Although he walked upright with dignity, his gait told me he was tired. By the time he reached my little home I had water from my good well and a plate of food from my little garden ready for him.
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Filed under: fiction
“Good morning, ma’am. Welcome to Op-Mart.”
“Good morning, sir. Welcome to Op-Mart.”
“Good morning, ma’am. Welcome to Op-Mart.”
“Good morning … Death.” Fred laughed. “Welcome to Op-Mart. That’s quite a costume, sir. Or ma’am. But I’m going to have to ask you to leave the scythe either in your car or over at the help desk while you
shop.”
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Filed under: fiction
For all practical purposes, it was just the two of us in the little bar in Las Tres Mujeres, New Mexico. There were five other guys in the place, but two of them had passed out, two were more legitimately asleep, and the fifth was an intensely quiet drunk off in his own little world. That left me and the Mexican-American bar owner named Germán.
The bar, El Cantinero Solo, boasted few modern amenities save the cooler for the cerveza and the satellite TV. The drunks didn’t seem to mind so I overlooked it too.
The TV was showing an American newscast; a superannuated U.S. senator was halfway through a sound bite. I’d been mildly captivated by the fifth drunk and caught only the last part of it.
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Posted on July 3rd, 2008 by bryon
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