My Grandpa was a rancher, and a hunter. Mom, Eloise, always had access to fresh beef, from her sisters, and she went hunting for elk and moose every year. Our freezer brimmed with white packages that were labeled with things like “CHUCK,” “T” and “SIRLOIN...
A businessman married a stripper, and they had two kids. The kids were in school, and she got tired of sitting around the house while her husband was at work. It made her feel restless, and useless. Boredom settled on her mind, as a dark cloud of angry de...
Professor Bachusrand wrote, “=42” on the wall. He stopped and looked at what he had written. Then he rappelled down the inside wall of the tall tower, where he had been working on his equation. When he reached the bottom, the old lizard celebrated by runn...
Mr. Aghorian, a draconian teacher, tapped his claws on the desk impatiently as he watched the kids taking their seats. The claws left deep dents in the oak. He took a moment to straighten his tie, and brush his vest free of wrinkles. “Hurry up, sit,” he s...
Whose woods are these? I guess, I’ll never know. His house might be in Portland . . . or Seattle. He wouldn’t care to know That I pedal past his trees And marvel at the way they grow Line after golden line of leaves March toward the paper-mill Over the hi...
Chatting with Sarah, before work, was a nice way to start the day. She was short, from Louisiana, had horses, and sometimes drove her husband’s rumbly truck to work. The other supply clerks started heckling her about her “girlfriend,” me. She gave one of...
The brown eyes steadily watched Eloise from under a plain wooden chair. There was a silent growl filling the border patrol office. Eloise stood at the counter and filled out paperwork. Several uniformed men talked about the Cathoulian in Spanglish. With a...
A lil' ol' man and a lil' ol' woman in a lil' ol' house with a lil' ol' yard with flowers in the back and a lil' ol' cat and a lil' ol dog and a rooster who crowed Cock-a-doodle-doo and the lil' ol woman screeched to the lil' ol man "Are you hungry yet?"...
A red carpet, a stained ceiling, a gallon of white paint, and a sleeping baby were the factors that converged to cause Eloise to lose her colorful vocabulary. With the baby sleeping, she took the opportunity to do some quick painting in the next room. It'...
This morning I saw those black ducks, the ones that eat fish, through my bedroom window. We seem to have lots of them, but a few years ago I never saw them. Pointy beaked things? Yea.That's a fish-duck, or a cormorant, the kind of bird the Japanese used t...
After a lifetime of mining gold and silicon from asteroids, the cube is ready. John Sanders, from Intel, flipped the switch. The super-cooled cube hanging in the vacuum of space hummed when the solar generated current pulsed through its paths of gold. The...
The first time I saw April, we were going door to door in a shabby Hispanic neighborhood, telling people to “repent or burn,” “Jesus saves,” “get saved” and “come to church.” April made me nervous because her eyes had a crazy, buggy glaze. It didn’t help...
Maybe, he's gay. Or a hermit in a hovel in India. Maybe, he went out for cigarettes, and was hit by a bus.Was he ever born? My church friend told me - God has someone for me. My pastor said - There's no such thing as a soul mate. My bar friend said - It's...
My mom left me at my cousin’s house and went hunting with her sister and brother-in-law, Kathy and Don. My mom and my aunt are tribal members, so hunting is loosely regulated, but Don isn't a member, and shouldn't have gone with them. It was very late bef...
If I were China …and I had power …I think about this thought a lot. If I were China and I conquered the world …and things went the way I planned …nevermind, I sound like a comic book villain now. …but if I had my way All the factories that put cows in box...
