This little watering hole a few miles outside of town wasn’t much of anything, but Roy liked that it looked just sinister enough to discourage anybody besides the locals from pulling off the highway: it was their own version of a gentleman’s club. For Roy, it was also his winding down place, where he routinely … Continue reading Morning Miniature 3.26.19
Fiction
Morning Miniature 3.23.19
Hank hesitated a moment to wait for the automatic doors to slide open, and then stepped into the little reception area; the woman behind the desk smiled and nodded hello. The air in this place was always a tad too warm and carried the disagreeable tang of fatty cafeteria fare with unmistakable overtones of urine. … Continue reading Morning Miniature 3.23.19
Morning Miniature 3.21.19
She relished the moments when the two of them laughed so hard they couldn’t speak, nay, couldn’t breathe. (This could go on for what seemed an eternity.) So deep a bond existed between them, that a mere wisp of a notion scarcely articulated got them going. Call it a tacit understanding of an idea’s hilarity—for … Continue reading Morning Miniature 3.21.19
Morning Miniature 3.19.19
Those erect ears were the thing, well, maybe it was the quizzical tilt of that massive head attached to them, but no, they were inseparable: the ears that were now taking in and calculating this sensorial ambush, together with the eyes and the nose—that long, long nose which, just before its terminus, sloped downward ever … Continue reading Morning Miniature 3.19.19
Morning Miniature 3.16.19
When you return to the city after some time away from it, you notice its clamor, the noise that is part and parcel of urban life, that people immersed in it no longer hear. Sirens, heavy trucks, trains rumbling under open grates in the sidewalk—and throngs of cabbies slapping their wheels impatiently, unrelentingly, in anger … Continue reading Morning Miniature 3.16.19
Morning Miniature 3.14.19
Lucy had kept a close watch on the gas gauge and promised herself she’d pull off the highway at an eighth tank, which was just about where the needle was now, maybe a skosh over. She was not far from the next town, only a couple of miles, where there’d be a gas station and … Continue reading Morning Miniature 3.14.19
Morning Miniature 3.12.19
She squished together the crusts of her toasted sandwich in such a way as to make its peanut butter innards spill out of two sides, and when they did, followed it with her tongue, down one long edge of the bread, around the corner, and up another, transforming it from a gooey bead into a … Continue reading Morning Miniature 3.12.19
Morning Miniature 3.9.19
If ever there were a picture of walking death, it was Celeste: at a hair’s breadth under five feet, her frame was so emaciated you could just make out the shape of the long bones beneath her baggy denims. The rest of her was hidden under a hooded sweatshirt many times too big, precisely how … Continue reading Morning Miniature 3.9.19
Morning Miniature 3.5.19
She plunked the scrub brush back into the filthy bucket of water that still reeked of bleach with undercurrents of, what was it? Mouse? Mouse poop? Something vile and disgusting. She’d swept her hair back into a tight ponytail, but a wisp had escaped and now fell over her brow, just a solitary ebony strand … Continue reading Morning Miniature 3.5.19
Morning Miniature 3.2.19
Most mornings Mme Saukhalova threw open the front door of her tiny pied-à-terre and took a single step backward, her head recoiling dramatically as if by whiplash, and then alluringly crossed its threshold onto the landing, glancing furtively left and right to see who might have noticed. Down, down, down each step she gingerly reached … Continue reading Morning Miniature 3.2.19
Sycamore Stories 