I have been a prolific writer since I was a child, so there's a lot to check out here! First up just below is a special audiobook presentation of my unpublished novel. Then there's . . . well, let's not call it a blog. It's not a blog! Just some things I've written, collected neatly in an area. 😅 Finally, I've included a small sampling of some of the many micro fiction stories I've "published" on Twitter.
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STORY CUBES
Once there was a king. He had lots of money, which he used to buy lots of jewels and beautiful things. But he wasn’t happy. One morning while he was eating breakfast, a bird landed on his window and began to speak to him. The king was shocked, because he had never seen a talking bird before. The bird told him that if he wanted to be happy, he had to go out alone, without his guards, and find a magic golden cup, and drink from it. Then he’d be happy forever. The king figured that since a talking bird was pretty astonishing, he’d better listen to what it said. So he left his castle alone, and went off in search of the cup. By and by, he met a witch in a forest. He told her what he was looking for. So she offered him a golden cup, and he eagerly drank from it. But the cup contained a terrible poison. With the sound of the witch’s laughter ringing in his ears, the king stumbled out of the forest, feeling sicker and sicker, as the poison worked its way into him, like a virus. When he reached the edge of the forest, he collapsed. His body turned into an egg. The egg hatched, and a black bird came out. The bird flew to a castle and landed on the window. Inside, a king was eating breakfast. The king had lots of money and lots of beautiful jewels, but he was not happy. So the bird told him that if he wanted to be happy . . .
MARRIAGE
Waking his wife increasingly began to resemble an exorcism. When he opened the curtains, she’d hiss and spit as the light hit her, scrambling away like a demon from a cross. She’d sit in the dark moaning softly and murmuring unintelligible words, words that may well have been in an ancient language for all he knew. She’d stare at him through eyes that somehow seemed both wild and vacant, drawing in shuddering breaths that sounded almost painful. Only when he brought her her coffee, her holy water, did she begin to spasm, tremor and gasp as the dream demons of the night before slipped away, restoring her humanity for one more day.
EX
He breathed broken promises. He sweat lies. He dashed hopes with his eyes, crushed dreams in his hands. He clearly ate women like her for breakfast, because she smelled them on his breath. When she was with him, she felt completely alone. So when she left him, she took nothing. He had nothing to give.
PERFECT WORLD
He wanted to exist in a land with no future. There would be wind, but it would hang motionless in the air like glass, unable to go forward. There would be oceans, but never waves. The entire world would be a snapshot of itself, framed on the wall of a universe that was moving far too quickly to stop and look.
LUCK
Cleaning up the bar after St. Patty’s Day always left her wondering why people say “the luck of the Irish.” All the crushed, trampled, crumbling shamrocks looked like nothing more or less than broken bits of dreams to her, as if the Irish gave up on luck for the rest of the year, in favor of the usual painful struggle.
RAIN
Acid rain is extremely dangerous. We learned about it at school, the day Johnny dumped my lunch in the trash. When it acid rains, you have to stay in your house. Not everyone has an acid-proof house, like us. Those people gotta go to the community shelter. I brought some to school in a jar for show ‘n’ tell; an acid proof jar. I hope it won’t make too many bubbles in Johnny’s 7-Up.
GOOD GIRL
The radio was blaring, too loud really. Her mother had told her not to play it that loud. She was on the floor, cleaning up the mess. “Always clean up your messes,” Mother always said. She was a good girl, really, and she was wiping up her mess. Wiping the blood off of the floor with some paper towels and making sure that Mother was comfortable on the linoleum tiles.
SUCCEEDING
The taste of victory was the sweetest that she had ever known. The applause was thunderous. She felt that if they clapped any harder, the roof would cave in. “This is what I strived for my whole life,” she thought. In the back of her mind, she knew how many people she had step on to get to the top. But it was okay, because she had wiped them all off of the bottom of her shoes.
DREAM
I was having one of those dreams where you think you’re falling. I loved it. I loved the feel of hurtling through space at a million miles an hour. I hated to end it by opening my eyes. Strangely, I was still falling. Then I hit the bottom. In dreams, you never hit bottom. Warm, sticky fluid ran over my eyes, distorting my vision as I looked at the cliff above me and realized I was not in bed.
DEPRESSION
What they don’t tell you about depression is that it never goes away. You can sublimate it with medication. You can distract it with shiny new toys, or sex, or travel. If you’re talented enough, you can even act as if it’s gone. But it keeps you chained you up in its own dark basement, and it controls all the slack. The worst part is that sometimes it cracks open a window, so you can glimpse the world you’re missing out on as it passes you by.
LISTENING
It wasn’t long before every child in Coranville was talking about the Simorta murders. Everyone had an opinion. Everyone was trading theories and guesses about “whodunit.” But not out loud. Never out loud. Out loud, parents would silence you with their eyes and glance over their shoulders nervously, afraid of who might be listening.
DEAD-ICATION
Shoving dresses and skirts aside, he sighed and reflected with some bitterness on how people always felt sympathy for the victim who came home and experienced the jump-scare terror of a man popping out of the closet with a knife. Yet, no one ever stopped to praise the amount of patient dedication it took to hide in a closet all afternoon.
MOOD
“‘Stressed’ is ‘desserts’ spelled backwards!” Cindy chirped cheerfully. “So what do you say we solve this mean little ol’ problem with cake?”
Lydia glared at her. “Oh yeah? Well ‘mood’ is ‘DOOM’ spelled backwards. So ask yourself if I’m really in the mood for your goddamned cake right now.”
Cindy backed off.
NO REST FOR THE WICKED
He bolted his coffee, then quickly brushed off his horns in the mirror, ignoring the agonized screams coming from his briefcase. He sighed, checking his watch as he picked up the pulsing case and headed out. He had to collect sixteen more human souls by 5:00pm, then meet his wife at the massacre.
ARACHNIFESTO
We predate humans by millions of years. Our bodies are perfectly adapted to our environments, and create construction materials stronger than both kevlar and steel. We can be dropped from tall buildings and survive. Some of us can nearly fly. We demand that you surrender your deadliest weapons: the magazines and the shoes. Then this world will be ours.
MOTHER
“It’s too dark out there,” the boy whimpered, squeezing mother’s hand. “We can’t go out there.”
“I’ll turn on the lights.”
“No! Then we’ll SEE IT.” He hid his face on mother’s leg.
“Yes. I want you to see.”
When the lights came on, he saw that mother’s hand and mother’s leg were all there was of mother.
DON'T CRY
“Don’t cry, dear one.” The woman smiled widely. She wore a long white gown and had a crown of white roses in her hair. “I’m here to guide you.”
“But where am I?” The little girl looked around her and saw nothing but Nothing.
“You’re dead, my dear. And you know that all good little girls go to Heaven. But you haven’t been good, have you?” The woman’s smile widened ever more to reveal many rows of sharpened teeth, and the thorns on her crown gleamed in the light. She reached for the child with icy white fingers. “Don’t cry, my sweet. Scream.”
SET-UP
She had always wanted to kill someone. And now, after weeks of bragging about her jewelry collection on social media, posting pictures and videos of herself with her house and her street in the background, and leaving her front door slightly ajar, she would finally get her chance. She waited calmly in the darkness, but as they entered her sightline, her smile lit up the room. Then she opened fire.
ECSTASY
When he entered her, she was plunged into ecstasy. She’d never felt so alive, and so free. He moaned and wrapped his legs around her as if he’d never let her go. He never wanted it to end. She arched her back and felt and felt as if she was floating into the air.
“Look mummy! I found two bugs stuck together!”
GENERATIONS
“Whatever. We done here?”
Instead of answering, she simply stared at her son. She saw beyond the eyeliner, the nail polish, the piercings and the anger. She saw the baby she had birthed and the child she had raised alone.
Decades later, staring at his own furious daughter, he remembered that look on her face in that moment, and he understood.
FAITH
To prove her faith, she stepped out onto a narrow ledge and prepared to jump. She ignored the people who called her crazy. God would carry her away. Sure enough when she leapt into the air, she felt herself rise higher and higher. But her body hit the ground far below, and that’s all the earth-bound fools could see.
STORY CUBES
Once there was a king. He had lots of money, which he used to buy lots of jewels and beautiful things. But he wasn’t happy. One morning while he was eating breakfast, a bird landed on his window and began to speak to him. The king was shocked, because he had never seen a talking bird before. The bird told him that if he wanted to be happy, he had to go out alone, without his guards, and find a magic golden cup, and drink from it. Then he’d be happy forever. The king figured that since a talking bird was pretty astonishing, he’d better listen to what it said. So he left his castle alone, and went off in search of the cup. By and by, he met a witch in a forest. He told her what he was looking for. So she offered him a golden cup, and he eagerly drank from it. But the cup contained a terrible poison. With the sound of the witch’s laughter ringing in his ears, the king stumbled out of the forest, feeling sicker and sicker, as the poison worked its way into him, like a virus. When he reached the edge of the forest, he collapsed. His body turned into an egg. The egg hatched, and a black bird came out. The bird flew to a castle and landed on the window. Inside, a king was eating breakfast. The king had lots of money and lots of beautiful jewels, but he was not happy. So the bird told him that if he wanted to be happy . . .
WEAVER
Every strand, every filament, every molecule of the architectural marvel limited humans call a web comes from the orb-weaver’s body.
It’s not a home, it’s HER. It defies gravity, catches light, feeds multitudes.
She doesn’t weave webs, she weaves miracles.
She waits for a tendril to tremble, weaving structures in her mind unfathomable to human eyes.
One of her eyes can see potential futures, including one in which her silk skyscraper stands for æons, then crumbles to dust.
She is content. It’s enough to know what could be.
THE FUTURE
The child raced away, giggling like mad, hiding in plain sight, twirling in circles. Smiling, his grandfather patiently kept pace as best he could with his stiff knees and finally scooped the boy up. “Careful. This isn’t soft, like grass.” The child stared at him. “What’s grass?”
EX
He breathed broken promises. He sweat lies. He dashed hopes with his eyes, crushed dreams in his hands. He clearly ate women like her for breakfast, because she smelled them on his breath. When she was with him, she felt completely alone. So when she left him, she took nothing. He had nothing to give.
LOOKING BACK
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IN PASSING
They always met in the library, passing notes back and forth.
"Do you like me?"
"Yes."
"Could you love me?"
"Maybe."
"But we're friends?"
"Secretly."
"Forever?"
"Unlikely."
PERFECT WORLD
He wanted to exist in a land with no future. There would be wind, but it would hang motionless in the air like glass, unable to go forward. There would be oceans, but never waves. The entire world would be a snapshot of itself, framed on the wall of a universe that was moving far too quickly to stop and look.
MORNINGS
Mornings were unpleasant, to say the least. There were always distasteful messes to clean up, and alarming mysteries to solve. His anxiety, already raised to a fever pitch by nightly somnambulism, was only heightened now that he had to figure out what to do with all the bodies.
CONSTELLATIONS
“Constellations lie to you. They tell you that stars form pictures to reflect human life and human achievement. The truth is stars don’t notice what we do. The universe is indifferent to our accomplishments.”
“Honestly Tom, none of that excuses you not clapping at my graduation.”
FAVORITE
“The beetle,” the entomologist cheerfully explained, “is God’s favorite creature. There are more species of beetle on the planet than any other animal.”
The beetle crawling on her hand began to shiver. He’d had no idea he was the chosen favorite of God. It was a lot of pressure.
BJÖRK
It was fitting that they met at the concert, because their relationship turned out to be exactly like Björk’s music: it made no fucking sense whatsoever and often involved weird outfits, but they simply couldn’t get enough.
FINGER-LICKIN' GOOD
She licked her fingers and tasted bone, blood, chicken grease, motor oil, candle wax, orange zest, olive oil, and aloe vera. It had been a hell of a dinner party.
LUCK
Cleaning up the bar after St. Patty’s Day always left her wondering why people say “the luck of the Irish.” All the crushed, trampled, crumbling shamrocks looked like nothing more or less than broken bits of dreams to her, as if the Irish gave up on luck for the rest of the year, in favor of the usual painful struggle.
PROPHESY
You will meet yourself on a dark path in a dark wood on a dark night. You will be holding a long, sharp axe in dripping red hands, and you will be weeping.
PAINLESS
My death was painless, relatively speaking. I honestly wouldn’t know, having never died before. But I imagine that on the grand scale of painful deaths, with a zero being “in your sleep” and a ten being “flaming body tossed into a woodchipper in super slow-mo,” it was about a two.
SLEEPLESS
Instead of counting sheep, she started counting all the times anyone had deliberately hurt her feelings, insulted her, attempted to shame her and tried to humiliate or just plain embarrass her. Before she was done, she was so furious that she wondered if she'd ever sleep again.
SONGS
He sang children’s songs not to recall his own childhood, which was lost in a deliberate and meticulously constructed fog, but to remember all the children he’d made sure would never sing again.
APPLYING YOURSELF
People like to say that applying for a job is like throwing spitballs at the ceiling to see what sticks, but he preferred to think of it as screaming pertinent facts about himself into an abyss and waiting for the abyss to answer.
RAIN
Acid rain is extremely dangerous. We learned about it at school, the day Johnny dumped my lunch in the trash. When it acid rains, you have to stay in your house. Not everyone has an acid-proof house, like us. Those people gotta go to the community shelter. I brought some to school in a jar for show ‘n’ tell; an acid proof jar. I hope it won’t make too many bubbles in Johnny’s 7-Up.
GOOD GIRL
The radio was blaring, too loud really. Her mother had told her not to play it that loud. She was on the floor, cleaning up the mess. “Always clean up your messes,” Mother always said. She was a good girl, really, and she was wiping up her mess. Wiping the blood off of the floor with some paper towels and making sure that Mother was comfortable on the linoleum tiles.
SUCCEEDING
The taste of victory was the sweetest that she had ever known. The applause was thunderous. She felt that if they clapped any harder, the roof would cave in. “This is what I strived for my whole life,” she thought. In the back of her mind, she knew how many people she had step on to get to the top. But it was okay, because she had wiped them all off of the bottom of her shoes.
DREAM
I was having one of those dreams where you think you’re falling. I loved it. I loved the feel of hurtling through space at a million miles an hour. I hated to end it by opening my eyes. Strangely, I was still falling. Then I hit the bottom. In dreams, you never hit bottom. Warm, sticky fluid ran over my eyes, distorting my vision as I looked at the cliff above me and realized I was not in bed.
SWEETHEARTS
They met at age five and fought all the time. They dated in high school. They reconnected after college. They got married and fought all the time. They had children who fought all the time. The fights never ended because each harsh word and insult was really an expression of love.
SPREADING
Santa spent Christmas Eve spreading good cheer to children all over the world. The now ex-Mrs. Claus spent it spreading her legs for at least three of his elves — that he knew of.
COMFORT
The sound of her child screaming sent her running not to its side but back to the bathroom, back to the pill bottle she knew was waiting for her, waiting to offer her the kind of comfort that could only be found beneath CR packaging or at the bottom of a bottle.
DEPRESSION
What they don’t tell you about depression is that it never goes away. You can sublimate it with medication. You can distract it with shiny new toys, or sex, or travel. If you’re talented enough, you can even act as if it’s gone. But it keeps you chained you up in its own dark basement, and it controls all the slack. The worst part is that sometimes it cracks open a window, so you can glimpse the world you’re missing out on as it passes you by.
ALLEREDNIC
The clock struck midnight. The filthy mice back turned into horses. The decaying pumpkin turned back into a fine carriage. The diseased rats turned back into footmen. The slimy frog turned back into a prince. Sometimes something terrible is hiding something wonderful.
LISTENING
It wasn’t long before every child in Coranville was talking about the Simorta murders. Everyone had an opinion. Everyone was trading theories and guesses about “whodunit.” But not out loud. Never out loud. Out loud, parents would silence you with their eyes and glance over their shoulders nervously, afraid of who might be listening.
DEAD-ICATION
Shoving dresses and skirts aside, he sighed and reflected with some bitterness on how people always felt sympathy for the victim who came home and experienced the jump-scare terror of a man popping out of the closet with a knife. Yet, no one ever stopped to praise the amount of patient dedication it took to hide in a closet all afternoon.
CAREER CHANGE
After twenty soul-crushing years as a corporate problem-solver, Jeff decided to spend his retirement becoming the world’s first problem-creator. He started off small, just tipping trashcans in his neighborhood, but rapidly moved up to creating large-scale global conflicts.
MOOD
“‘Stressed’ is ‘desserts’ spelled backwards!” Cindy chirped cheerfully. “So what do you say we solve this mean little ol’ problem with cake?”
Lydia glared at her. “Oh yeah? Well ‘mood’ is ‘DOOM’ spelled backwards. So ask yourself if I’m really in the mood for your goddamned cake right now.”
Cindy backed off.
9:00-5:00
He bolted his coffee, then quickly brushed off his horns in the mirror, ignoring the agonized screams coming from his briefcase. He sighed, checking his watch as he picked up the pulsing case and headed out. He had to collect sixteen more human souls by 5:00pm, then meet his wife at the massacre.
MONSTER
Jane trembled. She was terrified of the monster under her bed but she had to use to bathroom bad. Tears stung her eyes. She wished her father would help her. But he wouldn’t. He was busy doing what he did every night: hiding under her bed, waiting for her mother to fall asleep.
ARACHNIFESTO
We predate humans by millions of years. Our bodies are perfectly adapted to our environments, and create construction materials stronger than both kevlar and steel. We can be dropped from tall buildings and survive. Some of us can nearly fly. We demand that you surrender your deadliest weapons: the magazines and the shoes. Then this world will be ours.
MOTHER
“It’s too dark out there,” the boy whimpered, squeezing mother’s hand. “We can’t go out there.”
“I’ll turn on the lights.”
“No! Then we’ll SEE IT.” He hid his face on mother’s leg.
“Yes. I want you to see.”
When the lights came on, he saw that mother’s hand and mother’s leg were all there was of mother.
DON'T CRY
“Don’t cry, dear one.” The woman smiled widely. She wore a long white gown and had a crown of white roses in her hair. “I’m here to guide you.”
“But where am I?” The little girl looked around her and saw nothing but Nothing.
“You’re dead, my dear. And you know that all good little girls go to Heaven. But you haven’t been good, have you?” The woman’s smile widened ever more to reveal many rows of sharpened teeth, and the thorns on her crown gleamed in the light. She reached for the child with icy white fingers. “Don’t cry, my sweet. Scream.”
SET-UP
She had always wanted to kill someone. And now, after weeks of bragging about her jewelry collection on social media, posting pictures and videos of herself with her house and her street in the background, and leaving her front door slightly ajar, she would finally get her chance. She waited calmly in the darkness, but as they entered her sightline, her smile lit up the room. Then she opened fire.
THE WOODSMAN
The woodsman didn’t know it was one tree sharing a single root system. After he took one and made it a cradle, the forest took the cradle — and everything in it — back. After that, he saw his child’s face in every tree trunk, and heard it cry when wind whispered through the leaves.
ECSTASY
When he entered her, she was plunged into ecstasy. She’d never felt so alive, and so free. He moaned and wrapped his legs around her as if he’d never let her go. He never wanted it to end. She arched her back and felt and felt as if she was floating into the air.
“Look mummy! I found two bugs stuck together!”
TAKE EVERYTHING
I put my last hat on, fitting it as tightly on my head as it would go.
I stood in the brisk breeze and waited.
Dared the universe to take it, like it had taken everything else.
IMPERFECT SPEAKER
“Ma’am call on line 2. It’s one of your weird sisters.”
“Transfer it to my mobile! I’ve got a lunch with that clod Graymalkin in five. Yes? Make it quick!”
“When do we three meet again sis?”
“Depends on the weather and on how my afternoon hurlyburly goes.”
GENERATIONS
“Whatever. We done here?”
Instead of answering, she simply stared at her son. She saw beyond the eyeliner, the nail polish, the piercings and the anger. She saw the baby she had birthed and the child she had raised alone.
Decades later, staring at his own furious daughter, he remembered that look on her face in that moment, and he understood.
CURSED
The fortune cookie’s fortune said “You are cursed to repeat everything you’ve ever done.” He trembled, remembering some of the things he’d done. He opened a fortune cookie. The fortune said “You are cursed to repeat everything you’ve ever done.” He trembled, remembering
WARRIOR
Ryoko left Kawasaki with a heart full of longing for the life she was leaving behind. She carried nothing with her but her sadness and her battle-axe. The warrior nuns who trained her to kill alien demons had taught her well, and its blade was sharp enough to cut through her sorrow.
PERSPECTIVE
One by one his entire family disappeared into the depths. Hungry faces loomed outside, watched them fall, then eagerly grabbed their crumbled bodies to consume them. When his turn came, he clung to the rail for dear life.
“Damn, my Snickers bar is stuck in the machine.”
FAITH
To prove her faith, she stepped out onto a narrow ledge and prepared to jump. She ignored the people who called her crazy. God would carry her away. Sure enough when she leapt into the air, she felt herself rise higher and higher. But her body hit the ground far below, and that’s all the earth-bound fools could see.
NOW'S THE TIME
“I’m a mess,” she said sullenly. “My apartment’s a wreck, my love life is a disaster, my career is in tatters. I don’t know what else to tell you.” When she looked up, tears were streaming down her face. “Now’s the time to walk away.”
“Nah,” he said, and picked up a broom.
THE ARTIST
The painter had finally had enough. She got up and screamed, "Butterflies, butterflies! All you ever want me to paint is butterflies! You and your precious butterflies! They eat shit, did you know that? That's right, butterflies eat shit and dead decaying flesh. You still want 'em on your faces now?"
The birthday girl and her guests just stared at her in stunned silence.
REBELS
My great-great grandfather rebelled by running off to play jazz in New York City. His son rebelled by running off to play rock-n-roll in Detroit. Gramps rebelled by running off to play punk rock in LA. Dad rebelled by running off to play country music in Memphis. I rebelled by running off to make white noise machines for Seiko. They used up all the dreams.
ACTION
He paced before His father’s throne. “We have to take action! Things are only getting worse down there!”
“I gave them free will. Let it play out.”
“You made Me die to teach them a lesson they never even learned. I should be there! I could help!”
“Wanna go back?”
He hesitated.
REALIGN
He knew she was wrong for him. She was January, he was July. She was a skyscraper, he was a mineshaft. If they couldn’t meet in the middle, maybe they could unscrew the planet at its core and realign the hemispheres. Then maybe she’d be a sky dive and he’d be a free fall.
CRINGE
“OK, what about this one: ‘Come to Doug and Linda’s House of Etches! We’re Etch-zactly what you’ve been looking for!’”
The look Linda gave him made him cringe. In those moments, he knew she regretted marrying a guy who made etches and puns, when she’d had so many other options.
STRONG
As his brother dunked the ball again, Lee asked him, “If you had to choose one, would you rather be mentally frail and physically strong, or vice versa?”
“Mentally strong.”
“But then you couldn’t play basketball.”
“Sure I could. The body is just a slave to the mind. If the mind’s strong enough, the body can do anything.”
STICKER
“Would you like a sticker?”
Rob was indignant. “Are you seriously offering me a sticker? I’m 36 years old!”
“Oh, just hush up and take the sticker.” She smiled and stuck a long, glittery train on the back of his hand.
He started to protest again, then stopped himself as he noticed how the train sparkled in the light. The truth was that absurdly enough, he actually did feel better.
NERD
Her Jr. Entomologist badge jangled as it hit the ground.
Lee stomped it. “Nerd!”
She picked it up. It was bent and battered, but she could tell that it still had power. She made her wish.
Lee screamed in agony as a giant mosquito pierced his neck and drained him. His empty husk thumped once as it hit the ground.
SMOKE
“I didn’t know you smoke.”
“Is it a big deal?”
“I hate smokers.”
“So you hate me?”
“Well, I either have to hate you, or I have to admit to faulty logic and attempt to rearrange or utterly reestablish my preconceived ideas and prejudices. Guess which one is easier.”
OTHERS
When he closed his eyes, he heard voices in his room.
“Is he asleep?”
“Yes. Bring the others.”
They were not his parents’ voices. He never heard his door open, nor shut. He never heard footsteps. He only heard his beating heart as he trembled and waited for the others to come.
MAGIC
Ted971 beamed as the partygoers cheered. The trick had gone perfectly. “See?” he gloated to his assistant. “Rubbing a lucky human foot DID help us!”
Sue1399 rolled her eyes. “Don’t get your ears in a knot. Bunnies just love seeing you pull a human out of a hat.”
THE BOOK
She read every page in the book of her life with wonder. It was written so beautifully, each minute struggle portrayed as an epic battle fought with no weapons but those that fate provided. On the final page, it described her standing right where she was, in front of a vast bookshelf, reading this page of this book. The final line in the book said that she turned back to the beginning and read it again. So that’s what she did.
WATER
Science and religion agree that in the beginning, there was only water. It’s older than any life on Earth, and it’s all one entity, constantly cycling. It can’t be destroyed; it just changes form. It saves and it kills. We are all water. It made us, and it can take us back.
EDITING
The editor blanched as she looked at the giant manuscript her longtime author had messengered over. She knew by now exactly what to expect: another thousand-plus pages of multiple storylines that went nowhere, characters who served no real function and a slew of elementary spelling and grammar errors because he “hated those wiggly colored lines.” But to her surprise, it turned out to be just a stack of blank paper with a note on top: “Gotcha! Just wanted to say thank-you for making me a better writer.” She felt herself choke up with tears of both appreciation and relief, even as she unconsciously reached for her red pen and crossed out the hyphen.
MARRIAGE
Waking his wife increasingly began to resemble an exorcism. When he opened the curtains, she’d hiss and spit as the light hit her, scrambling away like a demon from a cross. She’d sit in the dark moaning softly and murmuring unintelligible words, words that may well have been in an ancient language for all he knew. She’d stare at him through eyes that somehow seemed both wild and vacant, drawing in shuddering breaths that sounded almost painful. Only when he brought her her coffee, her holy water, did she begin to spasm, tremor and gasp as the dream demons of the night before slipped away, restoring her humanity for one more day.
SHE (Part 1)
"Morality is too complicated," she complained, as she cleaned the viscera off of her knife.
SHE (Part 2)
"Rest in Pieces," she snarled, as she swung the axe.
PREPARATION
She wrinkled her nose as she picked up the underwear from the floor using as little skin as possible from her thumb and pinky finger. On her way to the washer she tripped over his boots and as she recovered her balance the undies swayed, revealing a wide, wet skidmark. She mentally filed all of it away, knowing that when he eventually became her ex-husband, she’d need these memories to distract her from the pain.
EMOTIONS
Watching his son zoom around the house making silly noises always made him feel mixed emotions. He was annoyed by the noise, jealous of the freedom, anxious that he might hurt himself, curious about what he might be thinking and relieved that he would be the last one.
THE INFINITE
They flew to an island, drove to the lake, boated to the island, biked to the lake, swam to the island and walked to the lake. There in the surface ripples was a sky in a star in a sky: a world bent on its own axis, reflecting its own reflection, recursing infinity.
ENGAGEMENTS
He slit her throat in broad daylight, in front of a crowd. People stopped to watch, pointing and taking pictures with their cell phones. No one screamed or called the police. They assumed it was some kind of publicity stunt for a YouTube prank channel. “Oooh, let’s get one for the ‘gram!” a girl shrieked, posing with her friends behind the blood-soaked corpse. He smiled. His Twitter engagements were about to skyrocket.
PURSUIT
I ran, panting and wondering how long my leg muscles would stand the strain. My fault for eating seconds all the time. I dodged and ducked, straining my ears to pick up the sound of footsteps still following me. A tree root brought me to the ground and when I rolled over, cold steel met my chest. There was pain. There was blood. Then, there was nothing.
MILK
Her face went pale as she looked at the milk spilled across her floor. She didn’t want to cry — she wanted to scream. There was no one else in the house. She distinctly remembered putting the milk in the refrigerator. She swallowed heavily and picked up a knife as she heard the floor creak behind her.
LOVE
She watched her daughter laughing with her boyfriend, touching his face. She had always felt that true love had to be tested by conflict, or it could never pass the test of time. She pondered that while she contemplated the used thong and unopened condoms she’d placed in the boy’s backpack.
WORDS
“Don’t hold my hand so tightly,” she snapped as her impatience mounted. “You’re a big girl and there’s nothing to be afraid of! Walk on your own!”
Those words came back to haunt her when the police asked her when she’d last seen her daughter. She hadn’t even looked back.
PARTS OF HER
She rose from the slab, vomited gore, & her dead eyes found her master. His grin twisted in triumph as he beheld his creation. “How are you, my love?” He stroked her stitching. How was she? Parts of her were sore. Parts of her were in agony. And parts of her were hungry.
OPTIONS
She’d never wanted a child. The instinct to mother others had never once manifested itself in her psyche. And now as her belly began to swell with an unwanted child that the law forced her to keep, she began to contemplate alternative options, all of them final.
MATRIPHAGY
When Jo’s kids swarm around her, each demanding something of her, she thinks of matriphagy. Some animal mothers make the ultimate sacrifice: death. Then each child feasts on her body.
Jo needn’t ask if her children would do it to her. The answer is in their expressions.
RECURRING
When he saw the red door, he didn’t want to paint it black, he wanted to scream. It was the same red door he’d seen every night in his recurring dream. Each time the dream began, the door was pale yellow. Then the blood would start to flow.
DAUGHTER
Watching her daughter reject food was always half worrying, half entertaining. On one hand, seeing her puckering up her little cupid mouth always made Nora smile. On the other hand, where would it end? Anorexia? Bulimia? Or worse — modeling?!
BIG GAME
Now he’s a true warrior. A conquistador. He’s on par with the big game hunters of old. He sees a trophy hanging on his wall. In his mind, a medal dangles from his neck. It’s inscribed with the exact date and time that he killed the fly.
DECLARATION
“My cup runneth over with love for you. My heart brims with love for you. My soul swells with love for you. My eyes weep with lo—”
“Jesus, OK I get it. You love me so much, you’re oozing. Calm down, and get yourself some paper towels.”
FUN!
“Heads or tails?” he asked with his usual lopsided grin.
She gave him a playful shove. “He’s human, you silly ass! No tail!”
He chuckled and snatched the screaming man by the hair, twisting his head like the lid on a candy jar until it popped off. “Heads then.”
NAILS
Her singing voice was like nails on a chalkboard, but he’d never tell her that. He clapped politely with a handful of others and smiled at her from his seat in the audience. He could still feel her nails on his back. He could still taste her. If polite applause was the price he had to pay for those sensations, he’d pay it with pleasure.
DISCOVERY
During the blackout, when she went to find her flashlight, she tripped and fell over something. She landed in something wet, warm and sticky. She groped around, feeling hair, a face . . . and teeth. So many teeth. Heart pounding, she backed away and waited for the lights to come back on. But when they did, there was nothing there.
WITH A TRACE
The Mars colony was established in 2135 with three hundred settlers, all of whom abruptly vanished in 2137. Investigators who landed months later only ever found one trace of them: 2,998 fingers hanging like icicles from the abandoned structures, swaying in the cold Martian wind.
PRIORITIES
“Ladies and gentlemen, allow us to demonstrate the safety features of this aircraft. In the unlikely event of an emergency, cell phones will drop from the overhead compartments. Tweet something profound or capture a gorgeous view of the water for your followers on Instagram as we plummet into the sea.”
THE CONTEST
4.603 billion years had passed since the staring contest began. He was determined not to be the one to blink this time. Keeping one eye open made it burn, and over the years, planets had started orbiting it. He especially liked the third one, so he didn’t want to lose.
COLLECT
Jim gave the other driver the finger, and tried to pull ahead but the man cut him off and forced him over to the shoulder of the road. Panicked, Jim began to roll up his windows, but the other driver put his fist in to stop it, and pulled a knife with his other hand. “You GAVE me the finger. I come to collect.”
ARTS & CRAFTS
“We’re going to do a craft project!” the teacher announced.
She passed out supplies, and each child took a molten core, then spent the rest of the art period sculpting layers around it using rock or gas. She gave them strict instructions to store it properly, but little Yaweh forgot, and the next morning his planet was crawling with bacteria.
PATHS
Tim and Ava fought a lot as kids. On the playground she’d yell, “Boys go to Mars to eat more candy bars!” Then he’d yell, “Girls go to Jupiter, to get more stupider!”
In later years their paths crossed again when Tim, now an incel, shot Ava and six other women at a shopping mall.
WAVERING
“Do you renounce Satan?”
“I do.”
“And all his works?”
“Yes.”
“And all his pomps?”
”Wait what are pomps? Like pom-poms? He’s a cheerleader?”
“Do you reject Satan, Father of Sin and Prince of Darkness?”
“Well I did, but now you’re making him seem pretty cool.”
SPELLING BEE
Her word at the spelling bee was “effervescence.” While trying to remember it, her subconscious took over. She hummed and sang and twirled in a circle. She wiggled and giggled and clapped her hands. She didn’t spell it right, but after the bee the judges gave her a special prize, not for spelling the word but for BEING it.