Hank Kirton

Loose Change

The adult dropped out of a red dream and came awake wondering where he was. He lifted his head with groggy, imprecise panic and focused his eyes on the darkness in front of him, searching for something familiar, something tangible to grasp. As the world emerged, he saw the gray drapes, slightly luminous from theContinue reading “Loose Change”

Like a Tapir in the Bathtub (redux)

Harvey Flense sat dejected on his favorite barstool, wondering what he did wrong. The blue girl was gone. She left with abrupt indifference. Cocktails gave his words the confidence to come out but as soon as the slurred sounds hit the atmosphere he regretted them. Wanted to reel them back in. Take a retroactive vowContinue reading “Like a Tapir in the Bathtub (redux)”

The Plummeting

From a great height he plummeted, did Norman Johnson, a man who thought he had nothing to live for anymore. Annie, his wife of thirty-six years had succumbed to pancreatic cancer and the prolonged loss was a violent rupture in the soft center of his feeble being. It was like watching The Sound of MusicContinue reading “The Plummeting”

Link Day One

At around ten thirty Link went ahead and lit a new cigarette. He could only smoke in the house after his grandmother went to bed. She went to bed every night at precisely nine o’clock and that’s when Link could smoke in the house. At nine o’clock Link could also watch his porn on theContinue reading “Link Day One”

The Suicide, the Lobster and the Getaway

All I can do is render the events as they occurred. It was drizzling that fateful, shellfish day in 1958 in New York City, when 38-year-old Evelyn Gush stood on her 19th floor ledge, shouted something about Bishop Fulton Sheen, and then stepped off the edge, hurtling to the terminal pavement while onlookers screamed, includingContinue reading “The Suicide, the Lobster and the Getaway”

The Inappropriate Laughter of Monkeys

Bowing monkeyward, as he does every morning, Caleb Strepthroat, a porcine conundrum with thick yet opaque features that avoid reliable description (bean & bacon soup and a whiskey sour being the meal that comes closest to describing his icy heartfelt Meg Foster eyes), feels a sharp ping of gristle pop in his gut and hisContinue reading “The Inappropriate Laughter of Monkeys”

Hollandaise

TWO-FISTED WAR STORIES My friend Bobby’s grandfather once told us he’d spent a week in Nazi-occupied Holland. “Were you in the army?” we asked. We were kids. Added up, we amounted to around sixteen. That total would reach eighty-two before Bobby died. “No,” Bobby’s grandfather said. “I was just hanging around.” “Did you check outContinue reading “Hollandaise”