Tag Archive: fiction

read part 1 – read part 6 Mortar shells. The chatter of gunfire. Pine branches whipped against my face, sugar sand kicking up behind me and bullets ripping through the foliage. The shouts came from behind, from left, from right. In this place of peace, there was only chaos. “Go, go, go!” And I ran, ran, ran. No, this wasn’t right. This wasn’t what this place was. I stopped running and the air stilled. I heard only the echo of gunfire now, from some far off time or place. Explosions like a whisper from yesterday. But there was no pursuit. No figures on a rise. No young soldiers with weapons of wood and imagination. There were only tires in the water that had been there…
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read part 1 – read part 5 A bottle of whiskey lay half-open on a counter somewhere, the counter in a void of gray mist. In the next room, a body swollen with gas, three days dead. Bruises kissed its waist. More bottles lay nearby. Further into the void, a hole in the Earth, endless, covered with rotting wood boards. One false step … A garbage bag filled with chemicals. Pine needles on fire. A kick in the night followed by tears. A groped breast in the back of an old car. A night in a basement filled with vomit. All of these things were true. He shook his head, willed the void away, willed the truth away, but the room and the stool and…
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read part 1 – read part 4 Air sucked back into the room. Sound returned. He could see; he could breath; he could speak. Where once sat the woman of skin and shadow was now a void, a cavern of flesh where the couch had been, its walls glistening with wetness. When he was two, his mother fell down the steps with him in her arms. Or maybe she threw him. The opening seemed to cast light and dark at once, the light easing his mind, the dark both drawing him in and repulsing him. He stepped forward. Forward again. Its walls quivered as he neared. He could hear the rush of blood within. When he was six, he was stung in the face by…
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