Archive for the ‘Short fiction’ Category

You have a boyfriend, my old boss. I have a fiancé. But here we are, in the old park by the woods, first time in years. We used to park your father’s station wagon by the jungle gym at dusk and lie on the lumber stacked in back, warming each other’s hands while snowfall built […]


Here’s my entry for the New York Time’s 150-word pulp fiction intro contest: She prowled Atlantic Avenue, that desperate artery: booze gobblers, jerks, sex junkies. They deserved of nothing, absolutely nothing. And that’s exactly what she gave them. It began with the pout. Head forward, eyes down. Her uniform: ochre dress, cut and coordinated in […]


Unstuck

26Feb12

Last year, between two novel projects and an extended short story (huh?), I wrote about 35,000 words of unmitigated garbage. During that time, I gave up writing short stories, which had been my focus since 2006. I finished ‘An Officer and Some Gentleman,’ my last finished short piece, in November 2010. Tonight, under the influence […]


Truthpicker

12Jan12

Be not devastated, for brutal truths are not the heart’s sullen funerals, but the truthpicker’s only ticket. pick pick pick, my friends, pick pick


There’s a toast coming up and she knows it’s coming but like bad elevator conversation she’s trapped and can’t escape it. There’s her boss, a stuffed pig preening before the affection of his employees. There’s her cube mate, who must have her hand on the pig’s crotch under the table, the way he spasms in […]


What is this?

Duh. It’s my jiggle.

Get it off me.

But I’m practicing.

I don’t care, get it off me. Why would anyone practice that?


In this world there are three kinds of people: those you trust, those you don’t trust, and those you must trust even though you know you don’t. I never understood Nadine’s value to the organization, though I’m not sure most people understood mine. But few choices nowadays are our own, and I have no choice […]


So where are we?
“We’re at Tranquil.”
Wasn’t that a moon landing base?
“That was tranquility base. Keep up, brochaho.”
Seriously, why are you talking to me?
“I’m starting to wonder that myself.”


By J.A. O’Sullivan The lights go out just as I’ve pulled my free LED keychain light from a package of beef jerky. Serendipity, must be, until I discover the light is a lemon. Its only redeeming value now is to scent my keys like peppered meat. The lights are out. I can’t see. It’s noon: […]


After the daily grind, I turn on the boob tube 2.0 [that's the internet, for all ya'll know-nothings] for inspiration. Click. Sports: another ball player flush with ‘roid rage. Click. News: another plane crashes into another mountain [do rocks feel pain?], another bad day on Wall Street [how bad could it be, really?], another non-sex […]



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