Category: fiction

Fiction: Going Gently

Posted on by bryon

The cell door swung out, and Sherdon saw a beautiful young woman standing in the opening.

“Philip? I’m Jana, and I’ll be with you this morning. If you’ll stand up, please?”

She had a pretty smile, but she was not overdoing it. As the jailer handcuffed him behind his back, Sherdon noted that Jana’s dress was both low cut and short, but only pleasantly so, not enough to be titillating. The jailer led Sherdon out of the cell and Jana took over, putting her arm around him.

“It’s sunny and warm out in the yard. That’ll be nice after the cold cell and this hallway.” Continue reading “Fiction: Going Gently” →

Fiction: Frontier Security: An Allegory

Posted on by bryon

Mayor Harvey Pendleton banged his gavel a dozen more times. “Order! Order! I said, ‘Order!'”

The sanctuary, the largest available room in town other than the saloon, came to something like a hush.

“Now I know everyone’s upset, and I know most of you have never been to a town meetin’ in your lives, but there are rules about how this works. First and foremost is you speak when you’re spoken to and not otherwise. If you want to talk, you raise your hand and wait until I call on you, just like back in school. That’s the only way this can work.”

He cleared his throat and lowered his voice just a little. “Now,” he said, and he paused, thinking of what to say next. “Now. I know that everyone’s still atwitter about what happened last Tuesday. It was a dark day when the Fu Shi Gang came to our town and burned the hotel and shot all those folks. Why, I’d known some of them for years myself.” He cleared his throat again. “It’s hard. Hard losin’ ’em to that rotten rabble of Chinese.”

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Fiction: The Rodeo

Posted on by bryon

“Welcome back. For those of you just joining us, today on NewsTalk 102 we have Sheriff Ralph Tarbridge. I want to turn now to a sensitive topic: this weekend’s Tri-County Rodeo. Sheriff, as our listeners know, the rodeo used to be the biggest event in the tri-county region. In recent years it’s developed a reputation for being the deadliest place to be on Independence Day weekend.”

“That is, unfortunately, true, Keith. There’s been a murder committed at the rodeo each of the past three years. So far, despite the assistance of the FBI, the murders are unsolved.”
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Fiction: A Dangerous Occupation

Posted on by bryon

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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Fiction: A Quiet Cup of Coffee

Posted on by bryon

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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Fiction: Little Drummer Boy

Posted on by bryon

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.
Continue reading “Fiction: Little Drummer Boy” →

Fiction: The Orient Club

Posted on by bryon

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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Fiction: Stringing Him Along

Posted on by bryon

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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Fiction: The Beholders

Posted on by bryon

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.”

Fiction: The To-Do List

Posted on by bryon

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!
Continue reading “Fiction: The To-Do List” →