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Confessions of a Liturgical Voyeur

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...when she spoke, her voice still seemed to spill bourbon from a heavy crystal tumbler, and drift cigarette smoke in a dark paneled room.

Badface Investigates – Scarification: (draft)

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I can barely feel the blade as it first goes in. I'm pleasantly surprised. But as she drags the knife across my skin the pain increases becoming more and more painful rising to a point of unbearable agony the further she cuts.

Here Comes the Sun

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I watch my brother carry her into the hospital, and I love him with parts of myself I didn’t know were capable of love. I love my brother with the space behind my eyes, the skin between my fingers, the ends of my hair, the crease in my neck. I love him wi

Wedding Bells & Space Junk [July challenge]

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Right away, like toadstools, there were crackpot theories. The first: that kids out on the lake dock, against fire department warnings...

Conversation between Young Men

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It was stubborn early winter, when everyone was cold but went outside anyways, rubbing red fingers and shuffling feet.

Hobos: Paris vs. San Francisco

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French pee runs stronger, less minty. In France the world' a pissoir.

laundry

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She’d once read the Time-Life Encyclopedia on The Universe and became obsessed with the woman from Alabama who was singled out, by a rock from a far place, in her sleep.

Curb Appeal

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He kept the lawn mowed at the perfect height. He mowed it twice a week to one inch. Some weeks he mowed it a third time for good measure.

What Gorillas 'Talk' About When Gorillas 'Talk' About Love

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Eons later, Bobo evolves into Shakespeare. Bonus feature: wings.

The Law of Natural Selection

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Once a student brought him a jar of black widow spiders. Tony put it on his desk. Somehow the jar got tipped over, and the spiders got out.

The Sky-What Limit?

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Lighter-than-air flight was back. The skies of the coast were alight with colorful balloons, dirigibles, and zeppelins tethered to their docking towers along the beach, the huge aircraft bobbing in the breeze up and down the coast for miles,…

Commute

19381938 views88 comments44 favs

Fred's ruined face stared back at him from a fractured, mold-spotted mirror. The remains of breakfast pooled around his feet and a pair of lace panties clung to his shoe, glued there by God knew what. Bits of flesh were stuck between his yellow teeth, alo

Borden, Dream on Lord of the Pies.

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A plague of dykes mattered not. This spider-girl had driven the world of thought from Borden’s mind.

Dos Equis

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dos equis ambar sits cool and dark by my side

Stumptown Mary

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so one time the Holy Ghost come down to Stumptown

Novel excerpt: "Home Cure"

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He picked up the bottle of gin, looked at it. "Not a lot left," he said. "There's enough," she replied. She took the bottle and lifted it to her lips. "Are you ready?" she asked. "For what?" "You'll see."

The Last Bailout

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In desperation, the city council imported a shaman to exorcise whatever demons had possessed the house.

Monster Truck

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In another lifetime the loft had been a shoe factory and I joked how in the dark of night I could hear the ghosts of lost soles speaking in tongues. There was the rolling of eyes, and when I repeated the joke to my therapist, who was actually sitting acr

Thursday

19381938 views1717 comments1010 favs

Every Thursday, around 11 am, right after the cemetery where I work receives the daily shipment of cremated remains to be interred, a frail nonagenarian steps out of the driver's seat of his Lincoln Continental and walks, unassisted, up a flight of twenty granite steps,…

Suspended

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In the beginning the revolution was all motion and energy. When the President for Life resigned motion and energy disappeared with the sounds of clapping hands.

Cut

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Effluvium is such a lovely word, so hey surprise it covers rancid butter, vomit, fertile gingko fruit trekked in from the pavement.

The Unpublished Writer and His Love Interest (The Painter)

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When the writer expressed with subtle alacrity that he adored the painter, she was flattered and didn't raise objection. The writer-in his aloof manner, with experienced caution-pointedly wrote a poem directly for his muse. She never spoke of it, and hi

Magnum Opus

19371937 views44 comments33 favs

The scaffolding had been difficult to construct. The rock floor of the bluff offered no purchase, so he'd been forced to anchor braces to the trees behind, then span some thirty feet. A cantilevered gallows reached another fifteen feet past the stage...

As Pleat

19371937 views1010 comments66 favs

I turn up the music and slip into drone, rock it like a tunnel in canary. When that does not erase his face, I cup my breast with one hand and let my hair fall.

Unveiling Kirkiss Automated Amazon Reviews!!!

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No! No! Nonononono!

The Measure Of A Man

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Cos I play hard that’s why. Everyday hard. You want someone who ain’t an everyday player ? Try our Closer. But ain’t his fault he’s always sat there in the pen, like he’s taken root. His number lines rely on the rest of the team. So he’s flatl

Weary

19371937 views11 comment00 favs

At this time of night, the fluorescence makes his eyes bleed. The muscles in his legs are tight; walking's more of a necessity than anything else. Alexander pushes the shopping cart down the endless gray tile floors of the Grand Union on 35.

The Little Dog from Outer Space

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I looked at her, shook my head and tried to smile. She smiled back, beaming a radiance that pushed away the chill.

If I Was A Bum

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If I was a bum I’d risk everything for a drink or a smoke I would beg and curse and steal if I was a bum If I was a bum I would cuss out the Pope I would not vote for anyone because I would know truly they’d be telling gross lies

Twister

19371937 views1515 comments1414 favs

The rain pelted down, it got dark, and they couldn't see a thing. The wind roared like a thousand locomotives.