The Fiction
This Is What They Made It Out Of
tales from the end of the world
NOW AVAILABLE FOR KINDLE DOWNLOAD!
In scribbled notes, in lists – scraps of paper tell a life. So begins this collection of short pieces and poetry – some funny, some tragic, and some just small moments in time. With each stolen glimpse into the lives of this diverse cast of characters, the reader cannot help but wonder how much is fiction and how much is heartbreakingly not. A stolen scarf, a stolen moment, a flower, a legend or two, and the ability of silence to communicate more than language – a melancholy air threads through this patchwork of characters on the edge of discovery.
"Jack’s room doesn’t have a window – an oddity in the city, but there it is – so Jack has drawn, in oil crayons, a large window on the wall above his bed. Half of the view through this window is sunny and clear; the other half is rainy twilight. Jack has a half curtain rigged over the window, so he can choose which outside he is inside of.
One day Jack will decide to build a raft. He will take his table-door, make a sail from the curtain in his doorway, roll up his bed, and float away down the river. Jack will take his room with him but he will leave his window behind. And when the girl that Jack lives with but never sees shows the room to a potential tenant, she will say, 'This is Jack’s window. This is the window that Jack made.'"
"Jack’s room doesn’t have a window – an oddity in the city, but there it is – so Jack has drawn, in oil crayons, a large window on the wall above his bed. Half of the view through this window is sunny and clear; the other half is rainy twilight. Jack has a half curtain rigged over the window, so he can choose which outside he is inside of.
One day Jack will decide to build a raft. He will take his table-door, make a sail from the curtain in his doorway, roll up his bed, and float away down the river. Jack will take his room with him but he will leave his window behind. And when the girl that Jack lives with but never sees shows the room to a potential tenant, she will say, 'This is Jack’s window. This is the window that Jack made.'"
Mortar
published online and in print by The Standard Culture
After too long a time and too far a distance, Leslie returns home to help look after her ailing mother - and finds herself overcome by the suffocating heat and memories.
"Summer had always been her favorite season – it was the season for recklessness, for liberty, for an entire afternoon lost in the brambles around the park, for popsicles, for sunburns and bug bites. Summer was the season for stupidity and fireflies. Summer was her season the same as winter had always been Mom’s season, the season when she could warm mugs of cocoa, air out the quilts her grandmother had sewn, hang lights and bang out songs on the piano. But for Leslie, summer was the time to do the things that really mattered, to play hard and build forts and card houses, mud pies.
Now summer was this airless stale thing. A plywood box with nothing inside. A mosquito whining in her ear but not actually biting. Maybe there was no blood left to drink."
"Summer had always been her favorite season – it was the season for recklessness, for liberty, for an entire afternoon lost in the brambles around the park, for popsicles, for sunburns and bug bites. Summer was the season for stupidity and fireflies. Summer was her season the same as winter had always been Mom’s season, the season when she could warm mugs of cocoa, air out the quilts her grandmother had sewn, hang lights and bang out songs on the piano. But for Leslie, summer was the time to do the things that really mattered, to play hard and build forts and card houses, mud pies.
Now summer was this airless stale thing. A plywood box with nothing inside. A mosquito whining in her ear but not actually biting. Maybe there was no blood left to drink."
Episodes: a love story
published online by The Biscuit. Part two here.
A boy met a girl. A girl met a boy. A boy loved a girl, and the girl didn't notice for a very long time. Through twenty years and seven different narrative styles, Robert and Clara dance a careful waltz.
"Robert wouldn’t look at her. 'Today you are a man, indeed.' Robert clenched his hands on the tabletop, two fists framing the unhappy boy. Clara watched him, curious and sad. Why did he suddenly seem so young to her? So young and so … so much like the little kid afraid to tell his mother he’d broken her vase. He’d filled out, of course, gotten taller, but he had the same messy almost-black hair, the same thick eyebrows that always gave his face a kind of bemused expression. 'Oh Bobbo,' she whispered, 'how young we’ve gotten.'"
"Robert wouldn’t look at her. 'Today you are a man, indeed.' Robert clenched his hands on the tabletop, two fists framing the unhappy boy. Clara watched him, curious and sad. Why did he suddenly seem so young to her? So young and so … so much like the little kid afraid to tell his mother he’d broken her vase. He’d filled out, of course, gotten taller, but he had the same messy almost-black hair, the same thick eyebrows that always gave his face a kind of bemused expression. 'Oh Bobbo,' she whispered, 'how young we’ve gotten.'"
Timecheck
Yulie drives the graveyard shift on the local bus line, which gives him his desired insulation from interaction and time to stew in his own thoughts - until Eddie, the local oddity and regular rider, takes notice of him.
"At this hour, I don’t care how often I do it or how used to it I’m supposed to be, I’m the walking dead. No one should really be out and moving. All that’s out are the real night owls, whom I have nothing to say to, and the crazies. The ones who have nowhere else to be, who can’t go home yet. I try not to think about which category I’m throwing myself into there. I duck into the Y, where Marx (combination crazy and night-owl, which works out to an alarming level of sanity at eleven-thirty on a Sunday night) always lets me use the facilities and, bless his heart, keeps a cup of hot almost-drinkable coffee for me. The walking dead run on the blood of the innocent, or in a pinch, crude oil and coffee beans."
"At this hour, I don’t care how often I do it or how used to it I’m supposed to be, I’m the walking dead. No one should really be out and moving. All that’s out are the real night owls, whom I have nothing to say to, and the crazies. The ones who have nowhere else to be, who can’t go home yet. I try not to think about which category I’m throwing myself into there. I duck into the Y, where Marx (combination crazy and night-owl, which works out to an alarming level of sanity at eleven-thirty on a Sunday night) always lets me use the facilities and, bless his heart, keeps a cup of hot almost-drinkable coffee for me. The walking dead run on the blood of the innocent, or in a pinch, crude oil and coffee beans."