Fiction Archives - Page 2 of 7

THE BLING TOE RING

As I waited on the judge to search this guy’s home, I came up with a solid, evidence-based plan to verify this was the guy. With the help of a high heel gladiator sandal from the evidence room and the goodwill of Officer Samantha Harris, I figured I could stand in the observation room as she walked into the interrogation room. If the first thing he clocked was her feet, it would likely be him.

Muriel Stanley Buys A Succulent

The scientific name being Echeveria elegans. It sounded like the name of a drag queen. Now coming to the stage to perform “Stand Back” by Stevie Nicks, Miss Echeveria Elegans!

Snow White and Rose Red

Once upon a time, there stood a forest where fairies nested and ghosts wandered.

Foxes at the Window

The man stepped into a crowd of flowers, shrubs, and young trees, chatting in their floral languages, eating nutrients from the soil like pastries with their roots as hands and drinking the moisture like coffee.

Crickets

One night the crickets came out to make merry by the brook. Some perched in the long grass and played their music, others danced and sang along. All the little field-creatures joined the revelry until the pre-dawn cold shooshed them home to bed.

The Endgame

About the Author Please consider “The Endgame,” a 2,436-word story about a chess game between the youth Narcissus and the Grandmaster. The story is told from six points of view: the first-person narrator, the youth Narcissus, the Grandmaster, the white chess pieces, the black chess pieces, and the audience. Peter Prizel is a social worker…

Estrangement

I met him in the way fairytales describe love. A slow, helpless falling and the consequent meeting as his arms engulf your body—a claustrophobia you’re okay with because you’re convinced it has to be safe. That he has to be safe and that true love exists as long as he is cradling you.

Fiend

The group squeaks in their chairs under the stuttering florescent lights of the church’s basement. Gritzman stares down at his black combat boots. His arms are painted with sketchy, monochromatic tattoos decided upon while he was in a delirious stupor. He’d been clean now for two weeks.

Slapstick Blues

Booker La Croix liked nothing better than to put on his best hat, hitch a ride from Huddle Creek up to Baton Rouge, and spend his day off in a dark theatre watching the moving pictures. He paid his seven cents for the ticket, went around the side entrance, and climbed the steps to the balcony. The matinee featured his favorite, Buster Keaton, in The Balloonatic and Our Hospitality, and there would be short movies in-between. It’d be a whole afternoon of laughter, except when he looked over, wishing his sister to be sitting there next to him.