Recent Entries

• (III) The Reluctant François

  July 31, 2013

  "Five out of six people who ever lived are dead." François looks at the prompt, then at the professor, then back at the prompt.  Prompt?  This isn't a fucking prompt.  A prompt is a fucking question, not a ten-word statement. The very fact that François has ...

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• (II) The Reluctant François

  July 31, 2013

  François sits at his desk, his feet flat on the linoleum, back rigidly upright.  The fluorescent lights above fishbowl on the tile below, deepest at the center--their hum is hiding beneath the low chatter in the room.  He bounces his head from his left shoulder to his right, and ...

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• Backed Out

  November 18, 2012

  My white-knuckled hands give the steering wheel a snakebite, and the vinyl mutters protests at the unnecessary stress.  I want to scream, so I do, and the pedestrians in the crosswalk leap in surprise and one woman spins about so suddenly she drops her designer purse (which upsets her, as he...

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• Fireproof

  July 16, 2012

  It has become increasingly evident that this bus driver has lost his mind.  Either that, or he's paid by the mile.  He has the massive diesel beast mostly in the shoulder with the left wheels in the road on the other side of the curb, so the bus is tilted like a Formula One car…

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• The Train to Bratislava

  June 24, 2012

  I am aware that her and I are no longer moving.  Or the rest of us, for that matter.  Still, I don't look up.  The fat copy of The Pale King in my hands has only begun to reveal itself to me, and I already know that we must be at the Slovakian border.  They…

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• Spreading Sheets on the Beach

  April 15, 2012

  Russia is a peculiar place. You fall into a rhythm.  When you wander into the middle of a race, you either change your gait, or end up in traction.  Here, on the periphery of the city, it's slow.  The unintelligible language changes its cadence, the people take the stairs one at a ...

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• Launchpads

  February 25, 2012

  Alexander Ivanovich Kuznetsov has a very peculiar feeling.  He's not certain from whence it came, or what it means, or where it may take him.  Only, when he counts the twenty-eight rubles for the trolley, and when he stands by the sooty ashtray and quickly devours his vending machine ba...

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• Yerba Buena

  January 10, 2012

  I watch the muddler plunge into the highball, and I can smell the lime as it releases its juices.  San Francisco was once known as Yerba Buena, I think, as I sit at a bar with the same name.  In San Francisco, the California Current keeps mermaids on the beaches.  Here, in San Juan...

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• Plotting Earthbound Meteors

  November 19, 2011

  Shackled to pretense, now, and peeling away the playfulness and pensiveness.  I save money.  I have a steady job with a guaranteed contract.  I drink responsibly.  My best friend is my girlfriend.  The marvels of the world are manipulated and I've lost most any sense of w...

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