Slice of Life – Page 2 – Crumbling Asphalt

The Smell of Flies

We sat. The Styrofoam cooler was there with Pabst Blue Ribbon tallboys. It was like drinking canned tap water. I stretched my legs and a fly buzzed between us. “Ugh, a fly,” she said, waving it away. “I hate the smell of flies.” “The smell of flies?” “Yeah.” “Flies don’t smell.” “Hell if they don’t.Continue reading “The Smell of Flies”

The Umbrax Shift

It’s five o’clock. We’re sitting on her front porch, drinking peppermint schnapps with warm Hawaiian Punch chasers. Somehow, for some reason, she acquired six cases of Hawaiian Punch juice boxes. That’s two hundred and six individual drinks. None of the boxes include those little bendy straws on the back, so we’ve been poking open theContinue reading “The Umbrax Shift”

A Zima Buzz

We’re sitting on her front porch again, drinking foul Zima she’d picked up somewhere. I didn’t think they even made it anymore. Maybe they don’t and these bottles were sitting in a forgotten storeroom for thirty years. It tastes like it. We have eight of the awful things on ice in the usual Styrofoam coolerContinue reading “A Zima Buzz”

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 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”

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”