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
Category Archives: Shorts
Breaking Up With Your Story
You clock out of work. The punch card weighs heavy in your hand. You go straight home. Your Story has been waiting up, pacing the apartment, peering through the blinds. There’s a pair of empty wine bottles in the sink. Incense sticks line the coffee table. They’ve been ashed all the way down. Candle wax has dripped across the varnish. Three empty sleeves of Girl scout cookies lay crinkled on the couch.
The Detective
The downpour has pedestrians popping their collars. It has late starters piling on the layers. The Author puts his heart on his sleeve. The Detective puts his chip on his shoulder. One shuffles into the tavern. The other ambles.
They take their stations at opposite ends of the bar. The Author is an open book. His stool spins around every time the door chimes. He catches each patron with his puppy dog eyes. Then he hunches over his memo pad with his hands in his cardigan, an over protective father guarding his precious pages.
In the Halls of Sleep
The dream always sets me in the middle of the building, far from a source of natural light. The space yearns for windows, for a skylight, for a glass panel above the doorways, something. Instead there are miles of low hanging ceiling tiles, oppressive fluorescent lights, industrial air-conditioning vents. There are a few scant variations in the terrain. Dips in the carpet. Steps that lead to lounging parlors. The seats are chiseled into the floor. There are plants drooping over the edges. They starve for photosynthesis. For all I know, I’m deep underground. Continue reading In the Halls of Sleep
The Tooth Abductee
Another night another dream about teeth. They fall from your gums. A rotten, cracked, ivory rain. Coffee stained marbles rattle down the drain. They fill up the bathroom sink. Look up. Your reflection smiles like a Jack-o-lantern. There’s a hail storm brewing between those lips. Continue reading The Tooth Abductee