Category Archives: fiction

Ligature Marks

I was almost strangled to death once. A lying little toad named Oscar Costa tried to garrote me with a length of orange extension cord. My full name at the time of this incident was Emily Brinks. You read that right; I wasn’t given a middle name and at school I was bullied and pickedContinue reading “Ligature Marks”

The Hungry Little Monkey

After many years of guilt and shame over never having written a story about a mail-order monkey, I have finally written a story about a mail-order monkey and the weight of the world has been lifted from my shoulders. This is what I was meant to be all my life: A man who wrote aContinue reading “The Hungry Little Monkey”

The Chatter of Dragonflies

Dr. Penny hung around the Dumpsters behind Cornpone Grocery all day every day that long simmering summer of 1971, recording the scissoring sounds made by the wings of dragonflies as they whizzed past her precise, scientifically-calibrated microphones.  She was attempting to test her hypothesis that dragonflies communicate using their wings—composed of sensitive veins and membranes—toContinue reading “The Chatter of Dragonflies”

Ptoth-15 and the City of Piss

A science fiction epic for the epoch! The One: Ptoth-15 moved with dwindling vigor across the ashen surface of the moon. He didn’t need to breathe anymore thanks to the (rather rushed) ritual at the Pillar of Pleura but his twin bladders both felt set to burst and if they started leaking their warm biogenicContinue reading “Ptoth-15 and the City of Piss”

The Job Interview

I’m nervous at a job interview, desperate to make a good impression. I really need the gig. My bank account has been wilting like a weed during a drought. The office is spare, stark, and cold. There’s nothing on the walls but beige paint. The Hiring Manager’s heavy mahogany desk stretches empty before him, aContinue reading “The Job Interview”

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”