On Timekeeping

In addition to the clocks – which on first glance were so dense as to appear to actually make up key sections of the room’s structure – there was a loveseat upholstered in the same chintz fabric that curtained the window. A generous strewing of what used to be called occasional tables had been pressed into service as repositories for clocks of the smaller variety. It was an old-style drawing room, the kind that only old women still have, until they die and their grandchildren refurnish it as a modern living room complete with television set and at least one recliner. And in a chintz-covered chair sat, indeed, an old woman. 

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[buy Across Worlds: A Romance Anthology]

 

 

 

 

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Wendover Street

Lifting his face and sniffing, the Beast could pick up traces of morning departures. They were rich with anticipation, pregnant with the snappish arguments of road trips, the disappointing arrivals at places which, after all, weren’t different enough from home to matter. There was, already, the resigned dread of Sunday evenings after a weekend filled with busyness. The Beast could survive on such fumes, like a fruit fly, but he wouldn’t say it was much of a life.

Read in: Paper Dragon Volume 8: Horror.

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 [read Paper Dragon Volume 8: Horror]

   

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Flight Recorder

The problem, or a problem, with air travel was the absolute necessity of demonstrating competence at the basic tasks of flying. She’d followed the signs at the airport (which was always and ever under construction, littered with brightly-colored temporary signage helpfully pointing the way to nowhere), she’d passed efficiently thru security with comradely nods for the staff, who were just doing their jobs and weren’t responsible for the indignities of standing in socks waiting for someone to scrutinize the contents of her bag of toiletries. She’d moved aside sympathetically for the elderly, belligerently confused couple who were being escorted thru the security checkpoint by a uniformed airport employee. It was easy to feel confident at airports, especially since she was the type of person who always read the signs and therefore almost always knew what to do next. 

What she wanted from the weekend was to know what to do next. 

Read: Mande, Fall 2024.

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[read Mande: Episode 2]

   

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In The Belly

We haven’t left the house for six and a half days. We were only snowed in for three but it hasn’t been warmer than minus ten since the storm. The people in town dug themselves out in a day, but town people are like that; always wanting to get somewhere else. In the country, you start getting strategic: how often do we have to go start the truck to keep the battery working, whose bad knee or incipient cough excuses them from having a take a turn. 

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[buy The New Territory, Issue 16: Cut to Joy]

 

 

 

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By The Chimney, With Care

The children listened. Faintly, there came the sound of sleigh bells, muffled by snow. We sighed silently in relief, even as we kept up the chanting of the ancient carol, without even a single stop to interrupt its discordant wail.

Read: Christmas of the Dead: Krampus Kountry

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[buy this anthology from Wicked Shadow Press]

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recitation

wonder how many times i'm going to write this line:

i'm never going to get what i want

before it stops feeling like a cut,

like a piece torn off

i'm never going to get what i want

does it get easier, writing it? does it

start to feel true, as factual and inoffensive as

gravity, climate change?

she's never going to give me what i want

i've tried handwriting it, typing it,

reciting it, practiced saying it calmly,

an observation through glass

she's never going to give me what i want

of course i've tried screaming it

she's never going to

but there's no one to scream to

give me

like when you try to scream in a dream

what i

but nothing comes out except a gasp

want

and then you wake up

risk management

all i want
is to say i love you
to people i love
but somehow i know
it would lead to bloodshed
which would be okay
if i could be sure
it would just be
mine