Fiction Posts

• 03.02.08 Systems (Fiction)

  The last paragraph of the poem “Systems” by Kristy Bowen:

  “… I try to write a poem I wouldn’t want to sleep with. Would kick to the curb, wrap my thumbs around her slender neck and snap. This one’s still babied, blinking, wondering if it wants to be a skirt or a tire iron. Licking the perimeter of opened envelopes for a tiny bit of sweet. My nouns go awry every time I stop paying … MORE

• 02.06.08 Black Button, Black Box (Fiction)

  I just ran across Invisible Games, a website of short and enigmatic fictions. One of them, The Loneliness Engine, reminds me of my own short-n-enigmatic We [Had Black Boxes]. No spooky synchronicity or anything, but they seem to belong together somehow … which itself fits in with the themes of both stories. Neat.

• 08.06.07 The Hero Passes (Fiction, Games)

  We love to play the Hero — exploring dungeons, grabbing treasure, saving the world from evil. But I started wondering about the reasons behind some of the actions in such games, and especially about what my Heroic deeds looked like to the ordinary people of the lands I passed through. (As my wife once put it: “Why isn’t there a Hug button?”) The result is this story.… MORE

• 03.04.07 Haiku Archives (Fiction)

  Figs cover the ground
  The children step over them
  Or sometimes they don’t

  …and many more haiku, written from 1998—2003… MORE

• 10.09.06 Ozone (Fiction)

  “Someone had been banging on the door for some time now. I had yellow paint crud all under my fingernails. Two of them were bleeding. Several square feet of the wall were revealed by my efforts….”… MORE

• 05.05.06 Only Known Instance Of Zork Slash (Fiction, Games, Humor)

  My friend Tanya asked her friends to write her a short bit of Slash fiction as a birthday present. Which is not something I’m accustomed to, but here goes…… MORE

• 02.13.05 For Alba (Fiction)

  Not pink yet, she: bloody red.
  Not one to be held back, she, even by the host’s noose,
  even by constraints of brute geometry.
  Her universe distended, tore and bled for her.… MORE

• 05.13.04 “Whose round soft dog fidgeting.” (Fiction, Humor, Computers)

  This was appended to one of the rare spams to make it through Mail’s filter. Perhaps the filter knew I would enjoy some strange mechanical poetry?… MORE

• 12.08.03 Super Leaf Blower 64™ Official Players’ Guide (Fiction, Games, Humor)

  Yesterday I got acquainted with our leaf-blower. It’s electric, thank Cthulhu, but not what you’d call “whisper quiet”. We got it as a gift several years ago, and I tried it once back then and it just blew the leaves into a huge swirling cloud that settled down exactly where it began. So I disappointedly put it in the shed and forgot about it.

  This time, though, I treated it as if it were some new … MORE

• 10.11.03 We (had black boxes) (Fiction)

  …each of us had a little box. We didn’t know each other, not at first; we weren’t even aware of each other. “We” was a grouping defined solely by the fact of our having these little boxes. Each box was black lacquer and about two inches on a side. A network of fine black raised lines covered it. The lid could be opened, revealing nothing much inside.

  To be honest, it was hard to remember … MORE