How To Get Rich Using Possession
I’m laying there, terrified, paralyzed, praying, shaking, listening to my ragged breathing and pounding heart. But nothing happens. Is this some kind of nightmare? Am I having… what do they call it, sleep paralysis?
Noble X - Episode 11: Internet Famous
Conversations with Stephen King and Kurt Vonnegut, two of his favorite writers, at the same time! John feels very fortunate to be able to communicate so openly and honestly with so many of his heroes, alive and dead.
Love Curse
Fast & Short is a flash fiction collaboration between eight Literate Ape writers. Each was tasked with authoring one piece of flash fiction that would be combined to create a single short story. The writers’ flash fiction needed to serve two purposes: 1. Stand alone as a unique piece of flash fiction and 2. Serve as a vehicle for building a larger story and driving that story forward. Over the next two weeks, Literate Ape will publish all eight flash fiction stories individually with a link to the growing compilation.
Free the Prisoner: Book Excerpt from "Fallout Princess"
Her freedom hard-won, her love finally secure, Gaia must sacrifice it all to rescue a friend falsely accused of kidnapping her. But to do that, she will have to face the warlord and his army of soldiers. Can she rescue him and still retain her new life?
Identifying the Corpse on the Blue Line’s Third Rail
I turned around. There were wakes of glistening human coolant running down this woman’s forehead. They were almost as long as her airbrushed and bedazzled fingernails. It was too hot for a weave that thick. She kept tapping at it, itchy from all that sweat spewing out from the top of her head. The nails, the hair — how does she function in this kind of heat? There’s no way she worked a desk job, or any job that requires her to type on a keyboard of any kind.
You do?
“I see this shit all the time working for the CTA,” the sweaty woman said. “He’s just some gutter punk.”
Rib Of Twilight
He wanted to know if I had anything that belonged to her, or what kind of things did she leave behind? And that gave me pause, because I’d never thought of her, or her case, that way before.
Then the question for me got caught between that place where you consider what you might leave behind and what is left to you, which is kind of all the same thing. Like a big merry-go-round of belongings all changing hands from life to life.
The Victory of Medusa: Correcting the Record
Legend carries falsehoods of my death. Lore was written by the gods, and therefore was written by alcohol-soaked ink and sex-crazed confusion.
Gary Thompson, The Great American Drifter
I felt a kinship to this guy. I, too, had always felt that without the trappings of relationships — the weight of accountability to someone else — I could do much more. Yet, there I was, afraid to be by myself for two weeks on a chicken run to the fray of a new life unknown. Riding shotgun was a guy who also preferred solitude but would still be stuck on a Great Falls road if it weren’t for other people offering up a little bit of their company.
First Season At The Unicorn Ranch
The pails of lemongrass milk we yoke out to slake them will be the same to pick up their poo: pink for girls, blue for boys. Noisome as a teenage pageant winner’s bedroom, it reeks of very horny flowers with a pollen fetish. If left uncollected the deep pheromones attract an unsavory population... I'm not talking about the diamond lice that we inspected their horns for each day...
Conversations with Whores
Old men with cheap cigars talking to half naked women, who can’t waste too much time with one guy because it’s all about turnover. Beyoncé was playing on the jukebox and it sounded out of place. Hip-Hop didn’t belong there. It was too cool for what was really going on.
Only Lydia Knows
Why? I’ll tell you. Because my wife ain’t a wife anymore, my fiancé dumped me, and my kids have their own lives.
Noble X — Episode 3: Racing
Trent had once dated his younger cousin but that had ended in a somewhat unpleasant manner as relationships often do. John figures if he stays busy and continues to have things to distract him from his pain that maybe he can run from it indefinitely.
PETER AND I — Or How Recovery Met Transformation
Steamy mid-afternoon arrived. Soaked in sweat, we took a smoke break on the roof and observed our handiwork. That's when Pete decided the house needed skylights and we took part of the roof off and threw it too into the pit.
I Wouldn't Give a Shit if Mark Died
Hi. I’m Bob. Mark was my big brother, and I distinctly remember realizing one day that I wouldn’t give a shit if Mark died.
Fat Louie the Butcher
Fat Louie the butcher had thick arms. Short and covered with hair. A bloody apron draped over his barrel chest.
I Dated a Woman for Her Legs and Stayed with Her for Her Cat
Mogley was just like his mother, the moment I stopped trying to get the cat to love me, he began to love me.
Our Heroes are Socialists
“In this nation, athletes are heroes. In bedrooms all across America, boys and girls have posters on their walls of Tom Brady, Lebron James and Tina Charles. All of them card-carrying socialist union members. Imagine that, Americans of every stripe cheering on socialists in bars across the country. If they only knew...
Tuesday
Trash day. Last night's rain warped everything. Grass. Lawn chairs. I never know how it does.
Little pieces of tree and leaves are coming down out of the tops and spreading everywhere. Tiny dried up late-springtime bits covering the ground. Clods of them tearing by on this windy mid-morning when all else is quiet.
My sister saw the house with the eviction notice as we went through the old neighborhood. I remembered two kids, a dog, a trampoline, while we looked toward the empty open mailbox. Rain soaked tongue of its door lolling like an unwanted dog. If a house could be a loveless dog preparing to die.
Everything is wet.
Natural Causes — Part III
The visitor’s eyebrows arched at the sound of his name and he entered the room. He took Mary’s hand from C, then turned his head upwards exhaling blue smoke to the ceiling. And with great fanfare Massimo kissed her hand, precisely on the wedding ring she still wore.
Natural Causes — Part II
On the ninth month after Joe had died of natural causes, Mary was in St. Francis reciting her novena for the dead, quiet like, lips moving, nothing coming out, holding her rosary. A shadow crossed her sightline to Jesus. She looked up, lips still moving, thumbing the beads.
"God bless you."
Life comes clearer on a hot, hazy summer day.
Sunburnt shoulders hunched from carrying the weight of the world
And the weight of your child and his laughter.