You Have to Leave Wanting (0)
1/22/10 •
by Annanda Lee
For Cathy
Dale first noticed the girl through the window of the store at closing time. She was staring, not at him but at something behind him, and it took him a minute or two to figure out that it was the poster of Michael Madsen as Mr Blonde in Reservoir Dogs. Bam! Dale [...]
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Meet Cute (0)
1/08/10 •
By Cody Greene
Dave needed to talk to someone so he took out his thing, always a good conversation starter.
- Grrrrnghff, hglllaaaah, he grunted from the bushes, waving his thing at the girls on their way to work, girls heading for the train or hurrying home, making plans. It was the only way to get them talking, he found. All those girls, good to have a chat. Connect on a spiritual level. He got lonely, sleeping rough, lost himself in the nameless puddles and at the bottom of bottles, which he always recycled.
The girls streaming to the station, flowing in a silent rush like a river all around him, and not every man is an island, but he was, unseen. They would not see him, or speak to him unless he showed them his thing. Good move. But this one was different. She looked right at it and never stopped, didn’t scream, but just kept on flowing, flowing, looking neither to the right or left, but kind of up, as if she was listening to something. But not him, not his pffffssssts and nnnnglannngs. She drove him crazy. He waved his thing at her like the Cat in the Hat:
Look-at-me-look-at-me-look-at-me-now!
One rainy morning with the bottle in its paper bag rolling around at his feet, he looked down at it and at his long-nailed toe poking through the hole in his sock and thought, he’d really let himself go. So with his thing in his hands he screamed at her, the one who wouldn’t stop. the cane-tapping chick with eyes that looked inward, or more properly rolled upward toward her god. Why wouldn’t she look at him, or scream perv, dickdouche, asswank, all of which were acknowledgments better than none, but she said nothing, just kept walking, tapping. And then she stopped.
Right there in front of him with his thing limply in his hand like the Subways you find sometimes in bins on a good day, and under benches if it’s not. She stopped and she cocked her head at his soggy thing and he could see that at some level, his primordial grunt had connected. But then all she said with those furious rolled back eyes staring at some joke heaven, was:
- Who’s there?
She tapped the white stick on the pavement dark with rain in front of her and nothing appeared. Nothing besides Dave. So much for magic wands, Dave thought, advancing so close he could smell the lotion she wore and still see no fear in those unseeing eyes, and in the chalky rain-spattered tilt of her face, only a simple curiosity:
- Who are you?’
To which Dave, naked and exposed then before god, finally put away his thing and said,
- I am Dave.
The World’s Shittiest Vampire (0)
12/31/09 •
By JS Breukelaar
You hate the sight of blood and always have, which makes you suck at this job, and always will; not that you don’t love everything else about it—the taste, the smell, the texture—just not the sight, the slick red senseless pooling of it, and doesn’t Brazil have a go at you the other night near the stadium, standing over a couple of well-drained hobos—Brazil getting up to punch out a sideview mirror and hold a piece of it up to your face, yelling, ‘Redbeard Redbeard, ha ha!’ and you can’t look or won’t, but instead just reach across to him and with a ragged howl, pull his heart right out of chest, like that, so there you are, both growling and hissing at each other in the weeds and cigarette butts and sad puddles with him holding out a pathetic piece of smashed mirror to your face reflecting nothing and you holding out his heart at arms length and not looking at it but breathing in the living smell of it and feeling it throb and flutter in your hand, badoom, badoom, and Brazil’s all, ‘Give it back, give it back—come on, it’s not funny— what if it stops, then what?’ and you’re like, ‘Then what?’ so then he tosses the glass away, panic jumping in his eyes and the hole in his chest closing over the empty cavity and you slip his heart back in just in time and then let it go, and then he’s grinning again and bumps his fist to his chest, and he takes out his handkerchief then and reaches across and wipes the blood off your chin, tenderly and quickly, and stuffs it back in his pocket so you won’t have to see it, the crimson flower of life, yours for the taking and never more to give.
Higher (0)
11/12/09 •
by J.S. Breukelaar
Bobby left the apartment and went to find the DJ, but the DJ had left the building. At the end of the hall, he pushed through a door and began to climb the stairs, dark drifts of dust at the edges. At the top of the stairs, he pushed hard against another door, [...]
