“Number please?” “I’d like to make a collect call to a solo register.” “What’s the name? “Samizdat Zellner. In Chicago.” “Pass phrase, please.” “I’ll be back.” Nio heard sounds of frantic typing. “Hold please.” After […]
Category: Fiction
(Fiction) Blackout!
When I wrote Episode Four of THE MINUS FACTION back in 2015, I wondered whether a breakdown in the normal order, like a blackout, would create suspense — whether readers, who seem to live most […]
(Fiction) The Shri-class Intelligences
Balram was right about one thing. Sonrisa was hesitant to leave the farmhouse. She doubted she’d be allowed to return. She leaned her bike deftly into a turn, right, then left, moving through the empty […]
(Fiction) Just don’t let your mom find it
04Oct 14:37 I sat in the car on the side of the road for a good fifteen or twenty minutes. The Cormacks’ teenage daughter was flirting loudly with a neighborhood boy on the leaf-covered front […]
(Fiction) Scratch ‘n Sniff
The neighborhood dated from the previous century. There was hardly a curb. Deep green lawns sat nearly level with the street. There were no fences. Each yard blended into the next. The Arneson house was […]
(Fiction) Cleaning Agent Blues
Nio adjusted the heavy bag on her shoulder as she paced around the bus stop, stepping carefully over an icy sidewalk pockmarked in frozen footprints, like the fossil of a prehistoric riverbed. It was […]
(Fiction) On Every Planet I Have Lived
On every planet I have lived, and in every time, there have always been women chasing the broken wastrel. They make no secret of it. In fact, the more a man sings of his pain, […]
