There’s an arc of cola in the air, a shiny brown ribbon trailed by a constellation of ice. It casts a wide shadow on the tiles below. My keyboard is right in the spill’s trajectory. I follow the floating brown bubbles to their twelve ounce origin. It’s pinched in the grip of a poor young runt. He’s a pasty faced kid with freckles on top of his acne. It looks like he’s lost his balance. Upon closer inspection, it looks like his balance has been taken from him. Taken by the fluorescent orange sneaker sweeping his ankle. I could step in, untie that gaudy orange knot at his feet, but it’s not going to put his drink back into his cup. I could move my laptop out of the splatter zone, but it doesn’t matter. Not yet it doesn’t. Continue reading Find the Time→
What if you personified all of your distractions and they literally aimed to keep you from getting anything done? I wrote a story about it. Now I’ve read it aloud.
It was five in the morning and I was hugging the museum wall. The lights were low and so was I. There was a security camera right above me. I was stuck in its blind spot, trapped inside an invisible cage that was but a few paces all around. This didn’t matter much. The air was still and so was I.
A woman’s face peered out from the dark. Her pallid skin was cracked and peeling. Her expression was vacant. The lights of her eyes had gone dim. It was Rembrandt’s famous painting the Lucretia. She stood over me in her blood stained gown, with one hand clinging to the curtain that kept her upright and the other to her dagger. Continue reading Fleeing the Beam→
The bright shiny things parade through my apartment. They skip around on stiletto heals, head to toe in sequin ball gowns. They twirl in a coordinated dance that burns a trail of glitter into my eyes. Their faces are painted with color bars. Their eyes hide behind technicolor rainbows. Their smiles reside behind florescent swatches. They twirl their fingers through heads full of tinsel.
I put my hands to my temples to frame my field of vision, but something flickers across my fingertips. Continue reading The Distractions→
My quarry shambles off the bus. His lanky frame is lost inside a long black coat. He adjusts his head cans, then buries his hands in his pockets. He nods to the beat. His feet stride with the rhythm. There’s a lovestruck couple up ahead of him. They take up both lanes of the sidewalk. He mounts the boulevard and breezes past. He doesn’t see the pedestrians for the people. The scope of his vision narrows to the crosswalk. He doesn’t bother to look both ways. He doesn’t see the traffic for the cars. Continue reading Bulletproof Cupid→
The volume went up as the Guest of Honor stepped into the party. Then the lights went down. Scarves found their way to the banisters. Layers found their way to the floor. Buttons were undone. Belts were unbuckled. The Guest of Honor peered into the coat room. His was the coat that made the pile spill to the floor.
When he ambled down the hall, heads peered up. People watched from their blind spots. Arms uncrossed. Footing shift. The guests repositioned themselves to stand full front to him. Their guards went down. Heads began to nod. Eyes began tracking movement. The guests started to promenade from social click to social click. Everybody was open for business.
Wheels turn. Gravel pops. It takes a while for it to come to a complete stop. Something has been delivered to the main gates of your Imagination. Its snout casts a long shadow over your Ideas. Its wooden mange creaks in the breeze. It’s a three-story stallion looming over the birth place of your fiction. Guards report whispers from its nostril. They report the sounds of footfalls and metal unsheathing. Suddenly the horse, is all that your Ideas can focus on. Continue reading Compartmentalize→
