Sure, I take more crap here — it’s the nature of the place. The men are a little grabbier, the women a little more demanding. On the other hand, everybody tips a little better. They all want to show me they’re the mistake, the one who doesn’t really belong here. Some people try to be […]
I will be out of town this week, so my daily story will be taking place in my brain rather than on the internet. To keep you occupied, here is a riddle:
What word is both a fish and a verb?
He lies around till noon in his royal pajamas. He starts drinking at one and never stops. He has me, his old advisor, procuring girls for him — he likes farmer’s daughters from the provinces, the fewer teeth the better.
Meanwhile the people starve as the greedy lords rule unchecked. The aqueduct turns to rubble. The […]
This appeared in my spam comments this morning, and almost made me cry. What could a spam that refers to “Skunk Hour” possibly be selling? Zoloft? Quietus?
At first we didn’t understand what Gran was saying. We looked down at Emily, her belly pink as bacon.
“Rap rash?” we asked.
Gran shook her head. “You’ve got vermin in your house.”
Barry and I put traps in the pantry and poison in the garage. We searched the floors for droppings. At night we lay awake, listening […]
Bits of blue fuzz in the laundry. Spices missing — cumin, cardamom, sage. Mail arrives, addressed to unfamiliar people. Shower head gives hot water right away.
Cat found purring in empty house. Burned-out lightbulbs work again. Sometime after midnight, a feeling like love.
My mother’s first husband was a weasel, plain and simple. They got married in Kentucky; it was legal there at the time. But no priest would marry them, no photographer would take their picture. No hotel in town would rent them a room. They spent their wedding night in a tent on the riverbank, eating […]
Of course, we had trouble at first. The atmosphere was thinner than we’d predicted; for weeks we gasped and fainted in our suits. Our cultivation projects didn’t take — the tomatoes died, then the bell peppers, then the hogs. We found ourselves living on orange algae and CO2 inside of a month.
But what really surprised […]
I met my brother in a barfight in White Pine, Wyoming. I was just sixteen years old, but I’d beaten all the regulars in bareknuckle boxing. The bartender figured if I could fight like a man I might as well drink like one. Everybody in town knew not to cross me, but the stranger tapped […]
Train A is traveling south at 55 miles an hour. Train B is going north at 68. The trains pass each other just once each day, at 5:16 PM. Their sides do not touch, but they can smell each other as they go steaming by. Train A loves train B with all its heart. Train […]