literature

SHORT STORY – DETACHED

 

 

The ninth story from my short story collection Middle of Nowhere is up on my site.  In “Detached,” an intense filmmaker keeps tabs on his wife by filming her every move until he begins receiving videos in the mail from someone filming him. Available now as an ebook on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Detached-ebook/dp/B00CP6GWR2/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1368454514&sr=1-1

 


 

THE CAMERA WATCHED THEM EAT DINNER LIKE IT DID EVERY NIGHT.  Sadiora made a steak au poivre for Nick and a salad for herself.  Another camera in the kitchen had filmed every detail of her leaving the steak on the grill for too long instead of cooking it rare like Nick preferred.  They sat facing each other, each at the end of a long table in their large dining room that echoed every sound.  She was blindly stabbing at the lettuce on her plate when she lost grip on the fork and it clanged against the floor.  Only then did Nick look up.

“I’m going to get a new one,” she said, picking up the spinning fork while watching her reflection in the camera’s lens.  She could see her frizzy hair that always seemed out-of-sorts, an untamed animal atop her head.  Her long painter’s fingers covered up the strawberry birthmark above her collarbone that looked as if she’d been beaten there.  But it was her mouth that saddened her the most: tiny lips that made her smile barely there and not worth the attempt.

The camera’s red light continued to beam a bull’s-eye on her forehead.   She swept by its scrutiny and escaped to the kitchen.

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SHORT STORY – COOKIES

 

The seventh story from my collection Middle of Nowhere is up.  In “Cookies,” a Girl Scout troop leader becomes involved in a bitter cookie selling scandal that rocks her suburban community and makes her an outcast.

 

COOKIES


            THE CHOSEN MOVIE TO BEGIN JANINE ACORN’S ANNUAL SLUMBER PARTY FOR HER SENIOR FLOWER PATCH SCOUT TROOP WAS GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS, A PICK FROM JANINE HERSELF, THOUGHT TO BE MOTIVATIONAL REQUIRED VIEWING FOR ANY YOUNG FLOWER PATCHIAN.  The girl who sold the most cookies this year was being rewarded (through a major pulling of strings) to be an extra on the tweentastic show JHS McKinley, a huge jump from last year’s Space Camp fiasco, a prize met with yawns, and worse than that, the lowest Flower Patch earnings since the foundation of the troop in 1972.  Janine was determined not to let another cookie-selling train-wreck resurface this year.

Mackenzie Phelps, the little snot, was the first to make a face at Janine’s film choice.  She had recently lost all her baby fat and gained a holier-than-thou-attitude.  Evidently, she had gone to sloppy second with an older boy under the bleachers and astounded the other girls with repeated stories of the way his pierced tongue felt against her nipple.  It angered Janine to hear it told in whispers during supposed arts and craft sessions, but if Janine was honest, at twelve years old Mackenzie Phelps already had bigger breasts than she did.  Janine couldn’t remember any man in her life who’d been all too excited to go to sloppy second with her, especially her ex-husband Ron, who treated her breasts like doorbells, because in all honesty, there wasn’t much else he could do with them.

The other girls, high on root beer floats, whined along with Mackenzie who stood there with a told you so kind of look.  She had pretty, blond hair, styled at some high-priced salon that her mother frequented and wore a tank top, which allowed her bra straps to peek through.  Janine didn’t even bother wearing a bra that night.

“Is anyone cute in Glenn Larry?” Jamie Lynn asked, a dim girl who looked all of eight.

“It’s Glengarry.  Alec Baldwin is in it.”

“Who?”

That remark made one of Janine’s eyes twitch.  She longed for a smooth cigarette, or any oral fixation, but satiated herself for the time being by nibbling on her bottom lip.  The girls began complaining as a chorus, but Janine raised one slender finger and prayed it would silence them.

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SHORT STORY – WHAT I’VE LEARNED FROM WHAT I’VE LEARNED

 

Here’s the sixth story from my collection Middle of Nowhere.   In “What I’ve Learned from What I’ve Learned,” Tex is a misanthrope who falls in love with a wacky girl named Ginny who is his complete opposite.

 

 

WHAT I’VE LEARNED FROM WHAT I’VE LEARNED

 

 

I’LL TELL YOU FROM THE START THAT I DIDN’T WANT TO GET MARRIED.  Didn’t want none of it.  At least not the way it happened.  Never pictured myself in a cowboy hat and fringes getting married by the oldest lesbian ministers in the West.  Meet a girl, fall in love, and spend the rest of our lives together, except somehow it all happened backwards.  Well, sort of.  I mean, I met her, and she was nice, and pretty, too.  I wouldn’t have done her at my cousin’s wedding in the coat closet if she didn’t have a good face.  But to be honest, I had also sucked down about a half dozen Cape Codders that night.

Her name was Virginia, which bothered me already.  I once dated this girl Alabama, who was a loon, and had sworn off other girls named after states.  Alabama stole utensils.  All the time.  I caught her slipping forks into her pocketbook when I came back from the bathroom at the fancy restaurant I took her to for our two-month anniversary.  She wasn’t even embarrassed.

I convinced myself, though, that I could live with a name like Virginia because it was a state I’d been to and had a very good time.  Alabama was a state that I had never been, nor planned on going.  When I told Virginia that, she said I was funny, and after mentioning that her hair smelled like peaches and summer, I was on top on her with a fur coat on top of me.  

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SHORT STORY – LAZY INSANITY

 

The fifth story for my collection Middle of Nowhere is up! In “Lazy Insanity,” a young man with lifelong dreams of becoming an Air Force pilot accidentally cuts off his pinky finger and learns that now he can never fly. With no other aspirations, he begins to go crazy as he searches for meaning in his life.

 

LAZY INSANITY

  

            ZEKE HAD ALWAYS BEEN AN ODD GUY.  He was an odd boy who grew into an odd teenager and was destined to become an even odder adult.  He used to blame it on his pinky finger, or really, his missing one.  When he was ten, his mother Diana asked him to cut up the celery for his father’s salad.  She gave him a knife big enough to see his reflection.  As he studied himself and the abundance of freckles on his nose, his pinky rolled off the counter while the celery stalk remained intact.

Since that unfortunate day, he blamed any problems on that missing member.  “It put me off balance,” he’d say, pointing to his squash-shaped head.  It only proved worthwhile for grossing out younger kids in the recess yard, but that got old soon.  It did, however, destroy his lifelong dream of becoming an Air Force pilot.

“Air Force pilots have all their digits,” his father said, shooting him in the heart one day over a dinner of beef stew.

“They don’t have to,” Zeke said, quiet enough so his parents had to read his lips to understand.

“Nine won’t cut it.  Never will.  The training is rigorous and you have to be able to grasp things with both hands.  Not just left, not just right. Both!”

This immediately turned Zeke’s life upside down.  He stared at the stub that remained from his one glorious pinky and realized that if he never made that salad for his father, a different and more pleasant story would be told.

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SHORT STORY – LAGOON

In the third story from my collection, two adolescents caught up in a first love retreat to the lagoon where they had their first kiss and learn the ugly truths about one another.

 

LAGOON

 

HERE WE ARE.  You told your ma you were at Sandy’s house and she believed you again.  Duckweed has covered the lagoon and made it nuclear green—the bullfrogs blend in.  I see one of their long, pink tongues snare a fly and wonder what it’d taste like.  The sky is white but the sun is strong and the clouds look like smudges.  You just took my hand for the first time.  Even after this day’s over, I know in my head that I’ll keep these lazy moments with you—I’ll think about them till my memory’s all gone.

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