It’s been three days running in the hot sun. My supplies were set for a five-day journey, but I passed the fifth day a fortnight ago . . . I can’t fail my people. The beast is quick— bounding and arching from left to right like my son’s plastic ball on cobbled roads. To be quick, isn’t it conventional to be slight? lightly built; to give the laws of physics some credit? Even the first people...
The horizon slowly dips; spilling the sun’s rich purples and orangish-reds over the turbulent waves; warming the morning sea. The girl stands on the edge of a cliff from which a low-hanging bridge spans eighty feet of open water to a small island of jagged rocks. A brown tendril of hair flaps against her cheeks. Her taut skin peels and shines in the mist. She bends with spread legs under the...
The gray stone steps jutted in odd angles, irregularly shaped and sized, and without clear separation from the mountain’s natural features. Were they built in, or carved out? thought Ulrik. It’s just the same to my legs, he supposed. The smell of rotting wood and sod-berries in the humid forest air made his lungs feel heavy and he thought he might rest and share water with his small companion: a...
Prompt: Write a scene in which a boy asks for new shoes. His mother’s home was always kept clean and warm and bright; but those days were many months gone. . . Tonight, the house was all shadows and sawdust and the sugary stink of moonshine. The boy peeked out from behind the molded door jamb and eyed his father wearily before entering the kitchen; he held a pair of red shoes with canvas tops...
In a land long from here at a time far before, lived Sally O’hare who thought life was a bore. Her only interest? a device in the palm of her hand. It glimmered like ice and it spoke on demand. Each night when she arrived home from her day, before she would sleep and before she would pray, she’d consult the device in the tenderest way. It told her all that one needed, she thought...
Somewhere on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, six-thousand feet above sea level, on a hill shaded by giants, my father waits for death. Job tosses my mom’s suitcase onto a deeply polished countertop alongside a chrome microwave, sleek single-serve coffee brewer, and several other shining kitchen appliances; some with tags still attached. “Beautiful isn’t it?” He...
For those of you who enjoyed my last sketch, ‘Is there any work for a young not-a-witch?‘, here is a new segment I wrote for it this morning. Enjoy! Are my eyes open? Yes—yes, they must be… I can’t see a thing. Why is the floor moving? How did I… The dip and yaw of the ship’s cellar make Issau suddenly feel sick. She takes a deep breath through the nose, but chokes on the...
Please enjoy this sketch I wrote this morning. And for those who celebrate it: Have an observant Memorial Day. EDIT: You can read the next segment of this story here: The Wich of Ramí “I’m sorry dear, no work here.” “Move ’em on! Move ’em on!” “Get quick, or get the stick you little gypsy!” “…Not a gypsy.” The child says...
Hard soles clop along the sidewalk stirring up gasoline vapor and sweet oak. A pair of once-black leather bootees with no laces, their vamps deeply worn, shuffle along the cement. A pewter mug, tied through its handle by silk thread, rolls and flops against the holed sides of a gray wool coat with each sway of the hips; its contents shake like a lazy maraca. Six steps up from the sidewalk, a...
All the roads run parallel in the Berzin Straight and are fastened from the slick-black pebbles that bed the Salted Sea. Their dark surface vacillates under the heated nausea of a summer’s day, so from the apartments above you can imagine yourself drifting down Black’s River. Each road is separated from its neighbor’s by towering beige apartment buildings, which themselves are...