Originally published in Wayfinder #15
Once the pyres start burning, it’s hard to tell the dead from the undead. It doesn’t help that one becomes another so easily.
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Category: Fiction
Fiction: High Society
Orignally published in Garbled Transmissions.
We laid naked together in her parents’ barn, watching the skies through the holes in the roof.
“Tell me about it again,” said Tracy. Brown hair fell over the olive skin of her face as she sat up. Her eyes glittered like a pair of emeralds in the evening light.
I didn’t move. My body was young, but she still had a way of wearing me out. I looked at her sleepily and smiled. “It’s all just memories from childhood. I don’t even know if they’re real.”
“Come on, Dakota.” Her voice took a pleading tone, knowingly baiting me. “Just tell me a little.”
With a resigned sigh, I gave a nod. “I only remember bits and pieces of my real home—the home I had before the white man put my people on the move. But the land was open there, and the air was crisp. Just breathing gave you energy to run, swim, and hunt. It was a land of freedom, a land of possibilities, where you could do anything. Nature walked right next to you, so close that you could touch it. But we never took from it, besides what we needed for food and clothing. We were too thankful to hurt the earth that had given us so much.”
She smiled a reckless smile that did remind me a little bit of my old home back east. “And was it green?”
I breathed in and brushed her hair out of her face. “During the spring, it was even greener than your eyes.”
Tracy rolled her eyes at my stale cliché, but kept her smile. She dropped, getting a grunt of surprise as she landed heavily on top of me. Then she rolled onto her back and curled up, pulling my arms over her body and turning me into a red-skinned coat. Her eyes watched what little we could see of the stars, and her breath came out as a deep purr.
“It won’t be long until I’m out from under my daddy’s thumb. Then I’m gonna go east and see the green for myself. You’ll join me, won’t you Dakota?”
Since she couldn’t see me, I didn’t try to smile. I swallowed and gave a small shudder as I thought of going back there, a stranger again in a new land. “We’ll see,” I said.
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Fiction: Foundling
Originally published in Aoife’s Kiss.
The faeries couldn’t agree on how to eat the child, and that became their downfall.
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Fiction: First Base
Published in The Avalon Literary Review and The Binnacle.
“You never slide into first base,” said Jim. My boss had been kind enough to drive me to the emergency room, missing the rest of our game so I could get my stitches.
“Isaac’s a big guy,” I muttered, staring at my mummified hand. The nurse had done a solid job wrapping the bandages, but I could still see the dark red of my blood slowly seeping through the gauze. I figured at the time that Isaac had me beat in the weight department by at least 100 pounds. Looking back now, it was probably more like ten or fifteen.
“That doesn’t matter,” reiterated Jim as he looked up from the three-month old Sports Illustrated that had been left in the waiting room. “You still never slide into first base.”
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Fiction: Family Reunion
Originally published in Suspense Magazine.
He walked into the prison wearing someone else’s face. The person people thought they saw actually lay bound and unconscious on his living room floor, unaware of what the impostor had planned.
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Fiction: Fallen Hero
Originally published in The Lyndon Review.
He walks across the baseball field where we like to hang out. His left hand swings casually at his side, but his right fist lies hidden in the deep pockets of his navy blue corduroys. The crisp autumn air has left the field abandoned for weeks now, and the pitcher’s mound lies covered in the dead Technicolor of Vermont leaves. He brushes the old foliage away with his foot, never removing the secret from his pocket. Climbing onto the mound, he stands as close to heaven as either of us will ever get. He points his head toward the setting sun. His hand shoots out to follow his line of vision, finally revealing the secret on his right index finger. The small plastic band still glows green from its hiding place in darkness. He smiles as I let out a gasp of awe.
It’s his power ring. It cost him two proofs of purchases and half of his allowance for shipping and handling, but it has finally arrived.
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Fiction: But a Dream
Originally published in Garbled Transmissions.
I woke up screaming in the middle of the night. My mother rushed to my side to see what was wrong, but the dream had always faded away by then. Whatever monster had chased me through my sleeping mind had disappeared, becoming formless black shadow once again.
“Odakota, you don’t have to have these dreams,” she told me once. “You might be asleep, but you’re still in control. Just tell yourself you’re dreaming, and you’ll be able to decide what comes next.”
I nodded and lay back down, but I didn’t go back to sleep. I squeezed my eyes shut and held my breath until my mother’s soft snores floated across our small home. Then I stood up and tiptoed outside, wondering where I could hide from the monsters in my head.
We had been moving farther west each year as the white men continued to take the land for their own. Our tribe had started in the grasslands to the east. Now the prairies of our new home had grown dry. Looking out to the mountains further west, it seemed that we were pushing closer and closer to a wall.
I can’t remember how long I stood outside. When I finally turned to go back to bed, I found my father standing behind me. He stood tall, with well-carved muscles and hardened dark skin that seemed like leather. I craned my neck upwards and looked into his face. His dark eyes seemed like the deep black pools of my dreams.
“We’re a proud tribe,” he said, his deep voice scaring away the rushing wind. “Hiding from nightmares doesn’t become us.”
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Fiction: A Slice of Death
Originally published in Garbled Transmissions.
Sleep, those little slices of death. How I loathe them.” -Edgar Allen Poe
The world: all shadows and smoke. A body lies nearby, oozing life in all directions. Concentric circles of blood and color mix with the blackness of the surrounding world. He squints without eyes, trying to make out details. The corpse is far away and getting farther, a view from another existence. He does not see the vehicle responsible for the scene, nor does he notice the EMT trying to resuscitate the dead man. The body is the focus of his world, a lone piece of debris in a world painted black. He thinks that maybe the body used to be him. Or maybe it used to be a complete stranger. He imagines himself as a spectral rubbernecker.
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Fiction: An Hour Off
Originally published in The Lyndon Review.
I woke up in bed next to a naked woman. Not a Hollywood-style naked woman with skin smelling like fresh soap and the blanket conveniently covering her nipples to keep a PG-13 rating. Instead it was a northern Vermont-style naked woman, with breasts like old yogurt and a small puddle of drool soaking into her pillow. She tightened her grip on the blanket as I eased myself to the waking world. When I saw her reddened knuckles, I began wondering where I was.
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Fiction: Fantasy As You Like It
Originally published in the Chaffin Journal (as Charlie Martin)
Winner of the 2006 Chaffin Award for Fiction
A man in a lab coat stands in the middle of the desert. His mouth hangs open in an extended scream as his body twists and grows. His glasses fall off and his clothes tear at the seams. American soldiers surround him on all sides, their jaws slack in shock as they watch an ordinary man become a seven foot tall gray-skinned behemoth. A giant question mark hangs in the air behind the scene, invisible to all but the reader and posing one apparently all-important question.
IS HE MAN OR MONSTER OR…IS HE BOTH?
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Babbling Brooks 