Tag: fiction
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Last Adventure with Ray Mundo
On the first day after our schools broke up for the summer, Ray Mundo called for me early in the morning. When I opened my front door, the first thing he said was, “Are we still best friends forever, Queen Isabella?” “Our bond can’t be broken, noble Ray Mundo,” I said. “What new adventure do…
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OBIE COASTER DOODLELOO
Each time the voice says, like echoing from a godly tin can: ‘THERE is a TRAIN APPROACHING the LOCAL track’, I feel the urge to jump. I have lived in NYC for five months and have never done it, but I still leap back from the line, yellow and bumpy like candy buttons, just…
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Moonlight
Phase 8 You had seen better days, that was for sure–nose bent, eyes bore bruises and you had forgotten how to smile. Wrinkled hands clasped a wrinkled heart as faded eyes gave your face a sickly presence. I asked your faded eyes again, “Remember? Don’t you remember?” Remember the good memories…at our favorite place to…
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Atlantic
The dark rock was rugged and would scrape bare feet if they ever dared to dance on its surface. In the creases and caverns of the rock, the seawater pooled, and over time grew algae and kelp. It sprouted glutinous leaves and slick bushels. There were places where barnacles exploded from the land, their fungal…
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Invisible Microphone
I lift her shirt carefully in the same way I did the night before, exposing this roundness new to us both. Leaning close, I speak loud in a playful accent not quite my own into some invisible microphone. “Hello baby, this is your father.” She giggles and the bump stays calm. “Dork,” she says. Neither…
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Under the Circumstances
The doorbell rang. I got up from my overstuffed chair, put King Lear down on the coffee table and peeked out the window. It was the mailman. “Well,” I thought, “service at last.” I opened the door. It was quite cool and raining slightly. To keep the chill out, I immediately invited the…
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The Sound of Bells
On the street rests crumbled relics, hardened with time, crushed and oxidized. They cannot be seen from the sagging porch facing the street but their existence is made known by the stressing sound of each individual granule as it scrapes beneath the drifting wheels of the night cruisers. Looking for a quiet place to park,…
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Harvest, 1992
A muddy irrigation ditch, a few solitary power lines and an occasional pole barn were all that interrupted the otherwise tedious repetition of flat cropland. This was fly-over country. Today however Ms. Watson’s fifth grade class, with their shouts of excitement and disbelief from the open windows of the old school bus, ruptured the monotony.…
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Treasure in My Head
We hung suspended in dark misty space, cut off from the world by the roar of the engines and the rush of cold damp air. A few lights blinked and flashed below; big guns, perhaps. All-consuming was the bitter, enveloping cold; the skin on my face was numb and lifeless from the wind. Quite suddenly…
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The Secrets of Kraken Mare
Syllar glanced out the window and sighed. Today was not going to be a great day for harvesting oil. Seeing that he was on Titan, 790 million miles away from Earth, harvesting a resource that nations had warred over for thousands of years, how could any day be a great day for harvesting oil? It…
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Metamorfossi
“You Americans need to step out of yourselves, we like you people,” George White Eye[1] insisted, his own focus lit wide, wider than the small room in which I lay. I cannot respond with his fingers inside my mouth. “You understand what I say?” I nod impatiently, just wanting to get on with it. The…
