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The clouds hung low, frothed by the cold December wind. Here and there, thin patches showed the ghost of a white, unwarming sun—a corpse adrift in an inverted river. Jarvis pulled his tatters close.
“How many days to summer?” he groused. A small crowd mumbled at his passing.
“If I was homeless,” one of them remarked, “I’d go south.” Read the rest of this entry »
The Mural
The mural’s colors were garish and rich—deep bronze Indians circling the bright white canopies of a wagon train. Behind, the green trees seemed fluorescent against the shade of a deep wood.
Covered in gray dust and aching from the day, Joe stopped to consider this reconstruction of his people’s history. The romanticism. The racism.
A proud, untrammeled tribe seemed to wake in his heart.
But it was an odd stirring, and as Joe looked ahead, up the boardwalk to the squat row of beige townhouses with their faded lawns and collected refuse, he suddenly bent to unlace his boots.
When he stepped through—onto the cool grass, into the caravan—they were all that he left behind. Read the rest of this entry »
A Place to Rest
The whitewashed walls of the old mission emerged from the mist, slow and shy like a wary ghost. It was boarded and broken, abandoned by man and god alike.
“Suits me,” Dan grumbled. Three days in the hot sun had just about baked his brains, and death had seemed near enough, until the fog rolled in and pocked his skin with dots of dew. Half a day of blind shambling later, the desert brought him here.
Unless he’d died. Unless this was heaven, and the rolling mist the veil.
A bell rang softly inside, and a light came on. Read the rest of this entry »
Carge’s Cart
Carge pulled his cart. The wedgestones helped the wagon to climb—up the narrow street to the pit, and the furnace that warmed the governor’s halls.
On cold days the hill would ice, and if a body slipped it would slide like a lifeless luger down the hill, bumping over the stones and knocking now and then on a villager’s door. If Carge was lucky, the body would wedge in a doorway just one or two landings down; if he was really lucky, it would slide clear to the bay and be lost.
Carge shivered and wished for trees.
This quick story is for the Friday Fictioneers. The prompt was the picture up there at the top of the page (by Kent Bonham). Let me know what you think below, and click the link monster to read the rest of this week’s stories!
Jonathan Livingston Warrior Seagull
This is an open letter to the scum of the earth, those vile criminals who would prey on the weak and innocent: Your time is up. I am Jonathan Livingston, Warrior Seagull, and I’m serving up cold, hard, beaky justice.
I eat trash like you for breakfast. And lunch. And dinner. I am a master of disguise and fluent in 43 languages, including Emu, Flamingo, and Swedish. The wind is my only friend.
I know no fear and I feel no pity. Actually, I don’t understand any abstract concepts.
I am a bird. Watch your back… and shoulders… and head. Read the rest of this entry »
Marceau
His body makes angles
obtuse and acute
suggesting walls here
and doors there.
He pinches at fireflies that give off no light
and chases them
down
flattened
stairs. Read the rest of this entry »
Gracie’s Fall
Gracie drifted from the sky and landed, quite elegantly, on the point of one toe, then smoothed the pleats of her milk-white skirt with a satisfied sigh.
The sole spectator to her amazing feat (and her lifting skirt), Matt gaped.
“Hello there!” Gracie said gleefully.
“Are you an angel?” Matt asked. Gracie giggled.
“You’re silly,” she said. “Goodbye!” And she skipped down the street with a look of wonder on her face. Read the rest of this entry »
Too Many Flowers
The bee loomed tall in the evening sun: 25 feet long, with a black and yellow frame and wings of molded plastic.
“Cool, huh?”
“You sure get worked up about your ichthyology,” Bann complained.
“Entomology. How do you still not know the right word after twenty years?”
Bann shrugged.
“It reminded me of our first date… Remember the bees at the orchard?”
Bann nodded.
“Where’s the stinger?” he asked, but then his eyes went wide Read the rest of this entry »
Resurrection and Digestion
“I don’t like it standing there,” I said. “It’s an ill sign. Satan takes the shape of a goat sometimes, doesn’t he?”
“I say it gives me hope,” Jim replied. “Thor’s chariot was pulled by a pair of goats.”
“So?”
“So, every night he would kill and eat them both, but making sure to keep the bones intact. Then, every morning, the goats would come back to life again.”
We were silent a moment, as the wind pushed the shadows of the elm. The goat grunted and nibbled the grass.
“Guess we should’ve eaten Frank,” I said.
Sometimes I just don’t know what to do with a Friday Fictioneers picture, and this is what we end up with. It’s also incredibly late! But read the other stories—they’re bound to be better (Photo courtesy of Randy Mazie).
Scaffolding
“I used to work at that grocery store,” Sue says. She crosses her legs and a shoe goes tumbling to the roof below. The scaffolding sways.
“Yeah,” I say.
Way up here, we’re weathervanes. We’re aligned with the wind and following it out, fleeting. Our words disintegrate and become silence.
“I used to smoke behind that fence,” I say, “between classes.” Sue nods. The gray clouds roll overhead.
“Sad how things change,” she says. “Sad how nothing’s what you remember.”
We look at our town, our memories stretched upon the frame of the present. We’re not ready to climb down. Read the rest of this entry »
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