The Height Chart: The Final Measure

Below is the epilogue to The Height Chart, a short story found in the thriller anthology The Price of Entry The world is dead: black lines brushed on a pure white canvas, shadows and shades of gray. No sound as the low-lying nimbus clouds insulate, threaten to add another inch of snow to the twelve-inch-thick... Continue Reading →

Conveyor

The earth lurches and I’m thrown off-kilter., myself bewildered. A once stationary plain — a testament to tedium and manifest boredom — presently rolls beneath my feet, carrying me to I know not where.  I care little at the time, for such is life — the sundry quakes, innocuous shakes that hardly break the status... Continue Reading →

Here to Stay

Red rock sunrise, four eyes open, blink in perfect sync, drink in the mountain view from hotel room. Five minute ride — crosstown glide —  and we’re staring, standing at the base. Was that a smile I saw on your face? I thought you just needed to get away. A mile high, few hundred feet more,... Continue Reading →

Tea for Three

Hell ain’t some supernatural fire pit, a preacher once told me, where dancing nasties with pitchfork tails and razor nails taunt drowning souls in a magma swimming hole. No, he said, hell, for the dead, is the absence of God and his love and his light. And on this Carolina highway I might well and... Continue Reading →

Pride and Fear

Splayed across the swing she lays, in a pose that supposes deep contemplation — eyes shut tight against the sun, jaw slack, serpentine back, feet dangling, right wrist angled beneath the chin — a thin nod to to Rodin.  Behind lids clenched, upon blank red canvas, (save errant phosphenes), her theater convenes. Whimsical thrills on... Continue Reading →

Big Jay

His blotchy red face shakes, jowls quake with laughter and I’m chasing after the point of the story, the source of the humor. In a half stupor I sit before empty beer glass as this pompous ass regales with dreadful tales from the day and I’m in no way in a state of mind for... Continue Reading →

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