fiction

Samples of various unfinished noodling. Some gives a good chuckle, I’m told.

As I have no sense of humor myself, I have no idea if this is true.

Boxed contents below, each with their stories’ opening salvos of prose, are links to the full content.

life down in the last mines

We were sitting in the common room, mostly just watching the dirty mop water dry across the cracked linoleum. It was the dulling end of another Wednesday afternoon, about the time the muted words began to trickle loose from one side of Gomez’s mouth, as he stared resolutely out the wide windows, up into the dawn of twilight falling on the lawn like fog.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking,” he murmured. “Please fasten your seatbelts and prepare for a touch of turbulence. Nothing to worry about, though, folks. Clearer skies ahead.” With one index finger, Gomez rooted deep in his cavernous ears, the long, fat digit twisting like a slow drill. I was once of a mind that he was searching for something in there; I now believe he’s trying to push something back in. ….

the dining guide to the stars

It even began badly. Piloting, on his own, against stringent advice, Clyde brought their craft down atop a man named Ted, who’d been out riding a stolen three-speed bicycle drunk through the rows of a grape vineyard.

Ted’s last words: “Oh, sweet Mary, mother of …”

Inside the ship, some discussion.

“Mother of whosit?” questioned Rufus, rifling then through the provision bag.

“No,” corrected the clipped voice of the language prompter, “mother of who is fine.” …

the soul places a tall order

The perimeter is crumbling, and memories of my feet throb like a haphazardly drilled tooth. Inside, the pygmies munch dried figs, tossing the stems into piles, fodder for the soulful winter fires. Small men, small fires. And I have pounded on these mythic gates until my hands are great red ribbons, hurling the fruits of my years in decline – a lifetime of stolen Gideon’s Bibles splotched in paper-cut blood, box wine and Tabasco – over intractable walls. But in the end, I am the circus freak, the giant. There is only mild cursing from within, and the occasional fig flatulence; the gates do not open. Dwarf heathens. Pagan cherubim. No doubt they’ll burn the scripture, too. Just wait till God finds out.

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