Cameo

Naked and perspiring, she sat against the headboard and produced a slightly crooked cigarette from behind her ear. “You had that in there the entire time?” She placed the cigarette in her mouth and shook her mass of dark curls. “Sadly no matches though.” He reached into his bedside drawer and retrieved a chrome lighter. …

Plum

I stand unsteadily and adjust to the city’s animal wakefulness. The floor trembles and my head aches. Below me tides of commuters sweep through the city like a brutal but dispassionate cancer. Forgoing this and in tribute to the day’s beginning I open a window and light a cigarette. Noisy motorcades crawl through the heat …

The Writer’s Odyssey

"At the end of a stormThere's a golden skyAnd the sweet silver song of a lark" Appropriate, if a little overstated. STX-NomadVII banked the internal comment as ahead a solar flare lashed space like a giant flaming whip and scorched the purple cratered surface of Halcyon Seven. The atmosphereless world trembled beneath his tracks on …

Cast Pearls Before Swine

I staggered out of the cab and spilled nickels across the asphalt. The driver didn’t flinch as I threw a bunch of dollar bills - at least five too many - through his window. I began my precarious shuffle walk across the manicured lawn. I slipped a little on the sprinkler hose before making it …

Prologue to an End

These mountains will be our ossuary; the sky our cleric. I see my men desperate for death. The waiting has gnawed at their sinews. Three thousand steel cuirasses glint in unending light and hope imbues none. My men. My nation. Doomed to dread and ruin.  “How will you go about it my love?” She speaks …

Take me there

The smell on his fingertips. A miracle. A curse. A memory cast on a roiling river of regurgitated treacle. Neon signs coaxing it through tarmac air pockets by seductive osmosis. Getting gas. Nothing else like it.  At least not for Ryan. He screwed the cap back and sauntered into the store like a pimp returning …

Making the case

He was knocking back beers like he owned the joint. Lucky prick, I thought, as I seriously studied his broad's legs, which rode high, up into the stratosphere, until some sheer red number clouded paradise. As is usual with these sons of bitches, he had a fine woman propping him up like he wasn't the …