Stories tagged flash

Memory

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No pictures to see but those which meet you halfway.

A Vignette on Fathers

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On 3rd when you looked at your 389th happy New Year greeting, you autotyped “same to you”. No one on whatsapp knew. At week 17 of IVF therapy when you and your new bride could do no more; doctor Mehdi said neither could he. At 5 minutes left, you mi

Let Us Never Say Goodbye

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Parked on a stretch of forgotten highway, the truck idled, the cab radio jangling softly with biscuits and gravy and the deathless sweet Clementine of country music. Jake touched the volume up, took a swig of Old Crow, and recapping it, stashed the bottle under the seat. He…

Spotty Behavior

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"I knew when I married you I would have to do this one day," the man said into his cellphone. I had seen the man at the gas pumps, breathing heavily as if he was struggling with a heavy weight. He was loading three large red 5 gallon plastic contain

An Open Letter to my Fictionaut Family

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Dear Fictionaut Family,Some of you may recognize my name and remember reading my work, some of you may have joined more recently and be wondering what the hell I'm doing addressing you directly. I began writing on Fictionaut in 2010, during four years as I was fragmenting…

Before I Die

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...to know they are not alone

Angelique

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She is an old soul. We talk of Barbie dolls and school. Her hands weaving stories. Maybe a hesitant smile. Eyes soft, earth-brown pansies, sadly martyred.An old man steers his car up a hill. Passes through hoops of sky before powerlessly plunging. On the news I hear…

Ambassador of Nowhere

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Before you tripped on the third rail, you were like any other: coat a shard of midnight-blue, eyes filled with gratitude but for nothing. You were a lost coyote on a snowy hill. With sad magnificence you wandered, terrorizing passengers who secretly wished to pat your…

From This Distance

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Can you remember now? How we could each disappear completely, connected despite fault lines. . . .

More Of My Dark Job History

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In my 14 to 15 year old life in the late 50s I worked as a clean-up boy in the neighborhood butcher shop up on 5th. Ave.,

The Black Madonna

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They say I am filthy. On this high pillar I perch like a stuffed avian relic, flightless, no prey. The horizon before me is broken by scuff and foreign tongue, by atomized evil. Pleas, and there are many, are answered by the only prayer I know, the one prayer, which…

Wash That Man

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The washing machine at home was broken. It was an old leaky Maytag. A discouraging mess—twisted panties, sky-blue jeans, and an old lover or two or three floating downstream (the reverse of spawning salmon). Each man was slightly drowned,…

A crow, deceased.

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Feathers littered the ground beneath the sycamore, glossy black ones, short one and long.

On Tuesday

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When they talk, they put their hands like a cup around their mouth

A Coin, Two Coins

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It hangs unspoken in the sadness he pushes through his harmonica, while his hands work the old, beat-up guitar that tries to be a Gibson for his fingertips.