Inipi
“The sweat lodge is a ritual of purification. It’s like being reborn.”
Category Archive Browsing Category: Friday Fictioneers
Probable Cause
Darius squinted against the glare of headlights bouncing off the rear-view. The man tapped a heavy flashlight against the driver-side window. Darius rolled it down. “Officer?” he said, trying to keep the fear from his voice. “Hell boy,” said the man behind the flashlight. “I’m the sheriff. You blind?” “My apologies, Sheriff.” “This sure is…
Immediate and Long-Term Effects
Disbelief at first. Then anger, outrage. How could somebody do this? What kind of person? Then fear. What if I’d been home? What if they come back? A sense of violation. I didn’t know this person. They left traces, like an opened can of Coke that I didn’t know I had. Maybe it was from…
Pictures
When her children were young she had taken scores Instamatic snapshots. In these photographs, they seemed to have been frozen by the flesh-bleaching flashbulb, stunned faces and red glowing eyes making them look like newly spawned demons. She’d kept these photos in a box in her closet. One day she carried the box to the…
The End Of Something
He stood in the sun listening to the train as it pulled away, its busy huffing inconsequential and even ludicrous when considered against all this landscape. It stretched for miles, dusty under an immense sky, the wrinkled hills seeming to waver in the hot air. He stared at the platform, where, moments before, her suitcases…
Gris-Gris
Mama Cole tell me that to shake the old man’s curse I need some bleeding done, and not no chicken neither. Mama Cole say a living breather, with skin and a face. I know she mean two-foot, but four will have to do. I am no murderer, me. Just a man who want to shake…
Lifted
“You take cream, right?” “Good memory,” said the agent. He accepted the coffee, then took his notebook from his pocket. “So, we’ve monitored his bank accounts and credit cards. No activity at all since the disappearance. There were no unusual withdrawals during the previous year. We’ve circulated his photo but nobody has come forward. Hospitals.…
FreedomFighterUSA_48@Home
The back door banged. He came in grinning all over his face. He poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot I’d made this morning. This was the first I’d seen him since he’d gone out to his workshop before dawn. “You look pleased with yourself,” I said. “My best blog post yet. Really let…
The Angel of the Lord
He could be a right bastard if you stood in his way. Taller than most, but it wasn’t his height, nor his gray beard, nor even his stiff and lordly manner. No, it was them eyes. Never was there eyes like that in a mortal man. What color, you ask? Why, perhaps gray or blue.…
Fireman on the Ninety-Three
First thing the engineer did was grab my arm with his gloved hand, give it a good squeeze. “You sure you up for this, son? That stretch into Shakopee Lakes has a 13% grade, and likely to be drifted up.” “Don’t you worry.” “Just remember, I see that gauge drop I won’t be so nice.”…