Unreleased short stories on a variety of themes in a variety of styles. It’s a real Bertie Botts situation, if you know what I mean. If you don’t know, you best get the hell out of here and either to the nearest library for an education, or more importantly, to a hospital for a brain scan because you may have lost a decade or two.
Full length work available upon request. For permission to reprint or disseminate, please contact.
Have some forkfuls of short stories. I would feed you pie, but my spoon can’t seem to get through the screen.
Afters
“But she was dead, her eyes were bulging and fishing, robin’s feathers falling out, sticking by pinions and slick with sweat from Alegria’s hands, which closed in vises, knuckles powdered with phosphorus.”
Heavenly
Denisovium
“When she pressed the slip of paper into my hand, I didn’t know where she had gotten it. We weren’t given anything. We didn’t own anything. Not even our uniforms. We were property just like the Organization who taught us. Who made us into our best selves.”
Bex
Union Station
“Then shouldn’t-have-but-did came with a roar, an inhalation of wind, it came ahead of schedule, departing from railroads tracks, departing from convention and normalcy, and kept marching onwards, off the tracks, derailed with in every sense of the word.”
Guillermo
13th Street
“Though, I’ve been chucked head over heels enough times, and in contemplation of one’s feet and the impending grounds, it gives one an appreciation of both helmets and controlled circumstances.”
Coco
Letters to the Muse
“You’re still ringing round my head like a bell. Softer today, tongue muted, vibrations soft and carry only as far as my ribs. Wonderful in the soft echoes that roll in my lungs, that tumble through my skull, that turn in the red of my veins.”
Coco
The Hook: A Retelling
“The headlights wandered as they always did to the hidden parking line, marking ghastly silhouettes on the trunks in the forest, deep and dark. The car was a turquoise blue, like the Mediterranean, a thousand miles to the south, nothing like the dark blue of this night, a blue with danger on the edges, crackling and electric, which some might mistake for sex.”
Marisela
Milkweed
“It was spring. It was cool. There was a breeze blowing from the northeast corner of the garden. By now the milkweed was waist high, stalks bursting with red and yellow stellated blossoms, and the butterflies were gathering. Cabbage whites, heady with nectar lust, Swallowtails black and gold, darting and dancing, in erratic drunken glows from orange tree to milkweed and back. She stretched out a hand, the monarchs were her favorite.”
Her
Lagoon
“In the early morning lights she was silver, the fog cold and pearling on her skin. The grackles, white feathered and big headed, parted as she dipped farther in. She could feel the rush of spring in the bite of the salt water on her skin, thick mud holding her ankles firm with each step so walking further in was warfare.”
Gull
Eighth Day
” Great panes of glass molded into a single clear sheet looped in a dome, images of children flitted across, perfect golden children of every shape and imagination, different in shape and height, almond eyes and wide, small brows and narrow, silken sheets of black hair and tight kinked curls, the only similarities shared was a singular perfection across every child, the symmetry of form was eye catching.”
Jack
Crispr
“Alex is a real pig in a wig. Max nodded. She leaned against the locker. What’s they CRISPR you for anyway? Max sniffled a little, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. MS. Shoot, that’s real. She nodded. Wish they CRISPR’d some brains into him.”
Max
The Machinist
“The hand had looked so helpless laying there, denuded of a body. There was an astonished quality to severed limb.”
Lyell
Silver Breaks the City
“There was death nearby, Elias could feel it in his teeth. The trees above him cut dark shapes into the dawn, the stands of clustered ashes leaning into each like strangers, the sun was breaking over the buildings that bordered the length of Central Park, knife slashes against the black blister of the city night, and he would have to flush himself back into the underground before the light made everything bare.”
Elias
Error Drorp
“Kritter was thoroughly in a mood. She was generally in a mood, for being seven involved enduring a significant amount of injustices, both parental and sibling inflicted. Besides that, and perhaps, more importantly, she was not in her bed in her house about to eat breakfast, which is what should be happening on a Tuesday at 7:30.”
Kritter
The Psychopath: A Retelling
“She remembered she had not locked any of the doors or shut any of the windows. Her mothers would kill her if they found out! So she ran up the rest of the stairs, two at a time and burst into her mothers’ room, sure enough the window was wide open and clapping in the wind, the rain pouring in. She shut it and locked the sash. The rest of the rooms were fine. But then, she remembered the downstairs doors. Cold and wet, she trudged down the stairs.”
Dejory
Headlights: A Retelling
“With a deep bellow, the horn of the truck sounded and followed him back into the right lane. It was definitely following him. Definitely. The next offramp sign burst out of the darkness, and James took it hard, veering right onto the side streets, shuddering to a halt and the red light, the truck with a grumble was still on his tail, coming off the freeway with a burst of speed, headlights flicking on and off.”
James
Mirror
“She opened her eyes, they were liquid chrome, above them the universe stretch, her eyes spilled over, she felt the silver run down her cheekbones, pooling up under her lip, down her neck, in cool, running streams, there was so much in her that was spilling outwards, there was so much her that flowed, down the hollows of her collarbone, the runnels of her breast, past her belly, the cavern above gleamed in repose.”
Mirror
Doors
“It’s easy to feel when the world goes mad. Or maybe me. Doesn’t matter which. I can feel it in the air. The air I can see. Every molecule, perfect and glimmering. Frozen. I can stretch my hands out and bat them back and forth like baubles, and when I walk to the door, I turn behind me and a comet’s tail fans out from the couch. I press my face to the cool timbers of the door, how steady and thick you are, to hold the deep of space back. My ear seals to the crack and I can hear the stars rushing by, the roar of meteors passing. What a door it is. That’s what doors do. Hold things back. Or maybe they are meant to open.”
Me
“For a while, forgetting worked. They had their wonderful life. But the question, it grew and grew and grew in the man’s mind. Scuttling around like a beetle. Chirping like a bird. Chasing like a butterfly.”
The little boy
Electricity
“The crowds began to filter toward it, great packs of people, the city drew silent and black as it was sucked toward this idea, this faux entity. Doors were shut and no noise came from behind the shutters, even among the Reek, where no one ever slept.”
Evie
St. Morrow
“Still Alphonso stood one hand resting on the feedroom door. He was staring down at the bales, normally a tidy stack leaning up into the roof, but today, today there was a messy sprawl of the first bales, sweet green of the alfalfa scattered to the floor, and nestled in it, a small child, a boy, no more than six.”
Alphonso
An Amazing Series of Blunders
“The amount of persecution faced by Celestina Flatley on a daily basis, was staggering to her. Absolutely blitzkrieg levels of blisteringly white hot starfire directed at her and only her, while life staggered around in other currents, passing her by. A woman of many talents, but few lucky breaks. They way she figured, the best things in life came down to luck and geography. And she had been passed by by both, duck duck goosed out of a cush gig, like that Anderson Cooper fellow with the piercing blue eyes and cheekbones, and instead buried in the mountain of elephant dukey that was this particular Tuesday.”
Celestina
The Hitchhiker: A Retelling
“He turned around. The back seat was empty, no girl, no board, only a damp patch of water, gently beading the leather seats, the smell of saltwater and something sharp like ozone.”
Lincoln
Ice Storm
“She reached out for the hand, the figure was gleaming, and clear, crystallized and symmetric, so beautiful. So endlessly beautiful. The roar of the mountains, she had never known before, the roar was a voice, the pines tops, swaying and breaking in the grip of the storm, the gullies crying and thirsting for changes, waiting the shed the weight, shaking themselves free, it had a voice, deep and endless, and it was speaking her name.”
She
Eagle Peak
“The California afternoon, though the heat was high, the hottest part of the day. She knew better than to wander. She knew better than to go alone. And yet. The heat of the mountain seemed to be reflected in the small canyon where they sat. She found shade beneath a small oak, the strong trunk winding up, the bark of the tree rough against her back, the centuries of growing and wildness bursting through it. Birds called, small sparrows, brown and bright, hiding from the heat, their wings folded as they chattered to each other. She watched them, feeling her body sway and cool.”
Hiker
In Vitro
“She ran her fingers down the optimization list, sliding along the glittering projection, past the Sixth Day Logo, through to the embryo specifications, the modifications were basic, nothing too manipulative for the day’s agenda. Twenty AT straighteners and a single base pair switch for the remaining fifty, but…she looked down at the end of the list. Baby 64et12z was far more complex than the rest, an enzymatic tailing along with a rather finicky end capping reaction which would require primer setting. She sighed softly. Outliers. She would be working through lunch on that one.”
Maritzas
Coco Boyle 