Book Brouhaha

The city was enormous.  Bigger than anything she had ever seen.  Her tribe lived mostly in tents made of animal skin.  In the cold season they would have makeshift mud huts. But this... This was beyond anything she could have imagined.  There were beings everywhere.   Merchants  lined the street selling goods.  Crowds flowed through the street like blood through veins. Where should she even begin?  Who should she talk to about the invaders she had found? Calen shifted her pack slightly to a more comfortable spot.  The blood had already drained from the severed heads of the Imperium  soldiers  that she had killed.  Still, they were heavy.  Taking a calming breath she decided to trust The Spirits to guide her and pushed her way forward in the crowd. She wandered for what seemed like an hour.  The streets grew more crowded.  Calen started to look around for a place where she might rest when a voice cut th...

           “In comics, the hero's story always has a happy ending,” Joe said aloud, or perhaps the words appeared over his head in a bubble. In a flash, the speed at which Joe’s life unfurled increased so much that space lost it grip on him and time stopped. But time didn't really stand still. Joe knew this because the squiggly lines all around him told him so. They emphasized his monumental descent.             Before time and space got all turned around, Joe was the good guy – a hero even. Like all heroes, he had one true love. Joe loved Kelly the moment he saw her big blue eyes at the bank. Kelly waited patiently when Joe talked. She didn’t glance sideways at her co-workers. She didn't complete his sentences when he took too long to get them out. Joe’s heart stuttered in his chest whenever he saw her.             A hero has one true love. Joe t...

Bus exhaust spews over me on this quiet Saturday, and I smile, remembering high school in Missouri.  I cross Weyburn Avenue, anticipating today’s seminar, reveling in the freedom to step into the role of avid student, leaving the blown-off teacher to the week days. I spot two Asian women, each sporting a UCLA visor, one blue, one gold, pointing towards Wilshire Boulevard, studying a map, pointing again. The blue visored woman opens her phone and taps the key board. They argue. “Tourists,” I think. “Looking for campus. Or maybe Beverly Hills.” I am good at directions. I can help them. My hearts thumps with the thrill of their gratitude for my good deed.             A homeless man who camps near the Westwood Center Building kicks out of his blanket and rises from his fortress of possession bags and newspapers.  His bulk shadows the sidewalk.  He lurches forward, grabbing the wrist of the smaller woman of the gold visor....

I will walk into a new world, and it will change me. There will be so many things to learn, glimpsed at things. I will do it. I will. Soon, I will do it soon. There it will shine, covered in a cacophony of light. My lives work, a molecularly engineered miracle of biomechanical engineering, it will be my doorway. Although very real it will only half exist in this reality. The other half of its existence will be somewhere else, over the rainbow, at the end of the yellow brick road. Any minute now I’ll step into the machine, and everything will be the same until I return. Then I will be different. Then the world, the universe will be different. We have already achieved so much over the long millennia. Our ancient ancestors learned what it is to open their minds to the past, and to the future, and look into the torrent of time. We began to glimpse the myriad of other possibilities of existence. Places that lay beyond and between our own thin realities. We will spread our reach throughou...

She looked back at the road. It had straightened since she set out walking it. All the curves had vanished, the dips and holes leveled out. The obstacles she had struggled so hard to overcome, sometimes until she reached the verge of giving up, had vanished.  Behind her lay nothing but a straight road to where she stood. The land was flat and barren, as if none of the tears and pain and moments of wanting to give up had happened. Ahead lay deep valleys and tall spires and wide and sharp curves peaking out occasionally through mounds of boulders and dense foliage. The growl of predators rose from hidden places. And yet she must go on. "You can stay here," a sweet melodious voice said. "Take it easy, never hurt again." She could indeed. It would be so much easier than all the sweat and blood and tears and the risk of failing to reach the end somewhere ahead. "Where would that get you?" a deep, rich voice countered. "You would be stuck in familiar, borin...

Geraldine Hinkle would be meeting her maker any day.  The doctor said it could be weeks, but Geraldine knew better. Leaning one frail hip against the wooden counter of Watson’s Western Wear, and rubbing a hand over her bald head, Geraldine didn’t think about dying. “Can I hold one?” Her coarse voice was weak. The lanky man behind the counter waited a few beats before responding.  “Beauties, ain’t they?  Hand crafted, ever inch.  Three thousand dollar pair a boots right there.”  He scratched his crotch. “Are ya gonna let me hold one or are ya gonna just stand there all day playin’ with yer balls?” The lanky man frowned.  His long arm extended toward the shelf as he issued a warning.  “Don’t think about runnin’ off with this.  I got a gun.” Geraldine’s spontaneous laugh quickly turned into a wet, spittle cough.  That was the funniest thing she’d heard all week.  Damn funny, this bony man. By the time her coughing fit had subsided, the boot...

The cat won’t stop peeing everywhere. We have two litterboxes, but the cat just uses the damn floor. And all my husband can do is tell me it will be alright. That’s what he always says when I’m crying. How does he know everything will be alright? The damn smell. I’m two rooms away from the litterbox and I can smell cat urine. It’s a strong smell, bitter and distinct, that doesn’t go away. We tore up carpet and put down hardwood. We’ve replaced this sofa I’m sitting on twice because of cat pee. It’s costing us a fortune. “It’ll be okay,” he says. The damn smell. His arm is around me now. Of course I push him away. I can’t stand when he gets like this. He thinks he can fix everything by giving me a hug and telling me things will be better. When will things be better? We’re nearly 30 and we still live paycheck to paycheck. He doesn’t know what he wants to do. He’s a writer, but he doesn’t know what he wants to do for money. I hardly ever see him write anymore. I’ve been working steady for...

 Her name was Aidia and she never slept. The grey mists seeped down from the hills and covered her in a damp shroud as she walked. Her grey hair was pulled back and her steel eyes stared straight ahead. She stepped out onto the lake, the water clinging to the soles of her boots. Ice crystals formed and slivered outward from beneath her feet. As cold as midwinter she moved toward the island. Aidia looked up at the ruby walls of the keep and for a moment trembled. She gripped the icicle hanging from its silk cord around her neck and felt cold determination replace her fears. She set foot onto the island and walked through the open gate. It struck her how much easier it was to enter this time than before, but this time she had no intention of stealing anything away and she guessed that she was expected. The carved double doors of the hall swung open and a wave of heat rushed out to bid her welcome. Arhidfel did not. He stood at the end of the hall near the great hearth in robes the sh...

Spring: There were tears, and a tearing of flowers that blossomed in the rain. We thought the risk it took to bloom, would be more painful than remaining tight inside the bud. We exulted at having been proven wrong. We both believed what we shared would last a millennium. I would lie on the field watching you dance, paint, sing, before finding ourselves in a chaotic frenzy, that fed and sustained us. You made the cold nights shorter; I thought my home would have no need for a fireplace, ever again. As I watched you go, I thought of the first sweet night we became lovers. "I’ll soon be back," you promised. Summer: You said you had found a special place where no one would see us. By the passages of dreams, I visited you in secret, as you slept. Even the shadows could not betray us there. I spent night after night with you, dreading the final hour before daybreak, wishing the sun would forget to rise. Once, all we did was lie side by side for hours on end, listenin...

Some people swore that the house was haunted, but I knew better, I had lived there most of my life, and I knew better.  It was me who had pried the nails from the floor boards so the floors would squeak. It was me who had rigged the wires so the lights would blink. I was me who put things in the attic where the winds would move them and they would thump in the night. It was me too, who changed the shape of some of the sheet metal in the heating ducts. When the wind was just right, a low moan would echo through the building. And it was me who changed the piping so it would thump and bang every time the toilet flushed. Sometimes they would thump for no reason at all. I hated that house from the day we moved in. I was twelve and my room was at the end of the hallway, the little one  with only one window. It looked out onto the brick wall of the house next to us. All the other rooms opened onto the hallway and everybody used the same bat...

“I’m afraid I’ll die before you kiss me.”             “That should be the opening of your new novel,” Sam says to me. “Antonio, six-foot-six and every inch a man, peered down at her four-foot-two frame, and said, ‘From up here I can barely see you.’”             “You’re cruel!” I say, slumping lower in my chair. “‘Antonio, you brute,’ she said. ‘I love you madly.’ Standing on her tippy-toes, stretching up her arms, straining through her fingertips, she reached for his nipples. They seemed as big as frying pans.”             “Frying pans?” Sam looks at me askance.             “Okay, pancakes.” I giggle. “With butter and maple syrup,” Sam says, and I nod. He continues, “Slowly, one millimeter at a time, she dragged herself along the ripples of his stomach, pulling herself ...

He had never seen such a huge pile of gold before, and in a cave of all places.  He tugged at one of the coins.  It was oblong, dull, and most of all stuck, as if some catastrophe had melted all the coins, deforming and fusing them together into a solid heap.             He set down the lamp and pulled a pry bar from his pack.  He jabbed at the mound, searching for a loose coin.  Once he found one, he slowly and carefully coaxed it free.  The ground shook a bit, but tremors were common at this depth.  That was probably how the gold came to be abandoned down here in the first place.  He would be more careful than the previous owner.             With the first coin removed, the second pulled out more easily.  Then a third, and a fourth.  He noticed that the rock underneath was a smooth, spongy material, but he didn’t give it...

Bernice sprang the clips on the communications cupboard. Another routine job. She got these every time: ‘the dog’s chewed the wires’, ‘kids have stuck something in the card slot’, ‘someone spilt drink in it...’ ‘Smoke? Yeah, a bit of smoke, then it just stopped.’ Always some ‘mystery’ fault. The white plastic case had a row of tiny winking lights and a hinged lid. It was mounted at eye level behind the door to the hall, next to the thermostat. Lucky this one has been fixed the right way up , Bernice observed. As if trying to be helpful, the little lid hung down out of her way, to reveal a selection of components. First she pressed the reset button to generate a test signal, then she pulled out the input loop. The fibre optic bundle bobbed as it found its natural curve, shooting glowing shapes onto the flush, cream wall. Incoming data, blasting down a beam of light from who knows where. Technology! Where was it taking us? After a hundred years of chips this, lasers that, people had no...

        SHE REACHED OUT  and took the cup, her eyes closing, shutting the world out. She would not see the edge as it touched her lips and made bitter the sweetened rice brew that sealed this pact. Her red veil was raised, but her heart was far from the moment. As the acrid cooling brew washed bitter over her tongue, she recalled her childhood—a recollection that had ended with that brutal cup and this heartless pact.      “Ch’i-lin,” came the voice. “Are you here Ch’i-lin?”       She was here. She felt the gentle breeze of the kitchen on her cheek, although she stood in the parlor surrounded by guests. She had left her father at the door with the many gifts for Master K’ung—gifts that matched the family’s expectations. She had left her mother down the road, peering over the wall, tears of mixed-joy standing in eyes like water bags on a mule’s back, stubborn to flood her arroyo cheeks. Ch’i-lin was content behind her ...

She opened the door wearing only a coy look and a towel, her hair still dripping wet. He smiled and pulled her close to kiss her. She returned the kiss and put her arms around his neck, then squealed and pulled away from him as her towel started to fall off. "The neighbors will see," she said. She retreated back into her apartment, holding the towel across her chest with one hand, holding it together in the back with the other. "You're early.” She went into the bathroom, leaving the door ajar. He followed her to the bathroom and leaned against the doorframe. She still held the towel to her chest, but the other hand was now pulling her wet hair back from her face, leaving her round bottom bare. "Not early enough," he said. She was laughing and sexy and scandalized all at once as she turned to face him, and to put the towel between them. She shooed him away the door. "You can wait in there," she said. "I'll be ready in a few minutes....