The trees have been here so long and me, I’m just a punk drop-in. I do not expect them to accept me all at once. I know better than that. Still, I feel they are beginning to at least get …
Flag Stop
The sun was high, the sky was clear, and doings were slow at Froame depot. In fact, doings were nil. Nevertheless, Chick Curry sat at his desk, upright and alert. There was a local freight due, and he would soon …
Terminal Velocity
No one survives a mid-air disintegration. Let alone the fall that follows. Nobody. Ever. The blast, the sudden decompression, the fire, the exploding cabin, seats, struts, aluminum shards, carry-ons, bodies: it kills, instantaneously. No one survives.
But I did. Maybe …
Sic Transit
The banana segments resembled a fallen column. They lay on the plate in a neat line, as if recently toppled. Brandmeier stared at the pieces; could the temple have been that far gone by 800? He put a segment in …
Just Passing Through
Cold as hell. A cold hell? Sure, why not? No better way of saying that this was as evil a night as he could remember. Everything was late, railroad upside down. Damn snow. Well, as his mother always said, you …
Detachable Legs
People are squalid creatures. We live in microscopic filth and dead skin and nail shavings and tiny flecks of excrement and flatulent stinks and nose dribblings and vicious exhalations. Think of what lies on a bus seat: particles of human …
Deaths I Have Caused
When a cow shits on an anthill, does the cow feel guilty? For killing all those ants in one fell poop? No. That’s absurd, right? But we humans—we feel guilty all to hell for fouling our nest. Guilt consumes us, …
Afternoons Are For Sleeping
The new drummer was all wrong. “Hold up, guys. Okay, hold it!” Exasperation burred Stick Lewis’s voice. It was a mid-afternoon rehearsal and we were all ragged after two lousy one-nighters with bum turnouts. The air was chilly but sticky, …
The Fish Tender of the Alhambra
Many were the devices of Redentor Herrero Gueres, Funcionario Official del Patrimonico de la Nacion. Fish-tender. Responsible, completamente, for the feeding and the well-being of all the fishes in all the tanks upon the grounds and precincts of …
No Man Is Not an Island
Geikken never saw anyone he knew. But then, he didn’t know anyone, not anymore. Still, they were out there all right, the ones he once knew, and he kept his eyes sharp for familiar bone structures. It was all in …