Category Archive Browsing Category: Friday Fictioneers

“I wasn’t sure you’d come.” “You kidding? My curiosity is killing me.” “I just thought that after what he did. To you, I mean.” “And a whole lot of other women. Yeah, well. I’m over it. Getting over it, anyway. Maybe this will help.” “The detective told me that nobody’s been in here since he…

He used to come up here after school or whatever he does during the day.  Anyways, I let him feed the pigeons. He don’t say much, but I seen him smile when the blue dragoon eat out of his hand. I says to him that it’s unusual for a bird to do that with somebody…

After the emergency broadcast, he got busy, talking the whole time. “My great-grandfather was a whaler,” he said as he slid a heavy-duty cable over the bollard, cranking the capstan to draw the hull tight against the fenders. “He wrote about rounding the horn down by the roaring forties.” He tightened down the hatch battens. …

Saturday, September 26 The first of the leaves falling. It’s a month now since they took Molly to the hospital.  I often catch myself unconsciously weeping.   Wednesday, November 4 Frost came early this year. When the electricity is on I try to warm myself. There’s the gas range, but the ration box is late…

I says to him, heck Bill, why not stay right here?  I mean it ain’t like you can open regular, not with these national guards and all. And we can’t go home. He says, where do we all sleep? That ain’t a problem, I says. I got about nine thousand square feet of foam panels…

“Only a couple days, Chinhua. It’s just play-acting.” She bit her lip, sorry she’d answered the ad in the South China Morning Post. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just tell them?” He paled. “My parents are very traditional. Gay is not a thing they would ever understand.” She sighed, then took the notepad he held out. It…

Abdulla studies himself in the mirror, turns this way and that, smooths his coat. The mirror was his mother’s pride, said to come from a famous Tel Aviv department store, a seven-foot slab of silvered glass in a gilded frame. Abdulla remembers that it took four men to bring it up the stairs to her…

Fifty-seven years of stagecraft. Miller, Albee, Mamet, Moliere. And Shakespeare. Troilus, Henry IV, Oberon,  Macbeth. Stunned at his pale face hanging in the mirror as he wiped the Ben Nye from his eyes with cold cream. This he could still do without thought. Ironic, or maybe apt. He closed his eyes again, tried to summon…

Terrors shall make him afraid on every side, and shall drive him to his feet.  -Job 18:11 When it gets dark I begin to worry in earnest. A quick trip to the shopping center usually takes all of two hours, but it’s now closer to six. For the tenth time I check to see my…