Tag: creative fiction
the mother in me
“What time is it?” His voice makes me scratch at my skin, my filthy nails leaving trails like I’m trying to scrape him off me. I can almost feel his breath on my neck—warm, invasive—his tongue flicking in his mouth as if it’s mine, pressing against my teeth. “What difference Read more
Camille
*Opening of a short story entitled ‘Camille’ focusing on a perceived vampire of the Victorian era, Camille Monfort. Men flock to me as hungry birds, ravenous for otherness, an exotic morsel to devour. I’m a unique flower, one that grows on mountaintops, cast away from all others that pale in Read more
The Cross
The air smelled of exhaust, of snowfall, of woodfire stoves. Julie held herself stiff, breath appended in her lungs, as she raced into the swirl of snowfall, the shavings sharp and virgin as diamonds, the shavings lashing the air, as the old Ford spat and chugged, coughed and spat and Read more
Brief Encounters
She first sees him on a Tuesday night at the rooftop bar of the Ace Hotel. He’s wearing dark blue jeans, a white button-up shirt, and black boots, and he and the bartender, an attractive woman in her late thirties with a black rose tattooed on the side of her Read more
After Hours
I’d arrived in Los Angeles two years earlier, on New Year’s Eve, 1979, after completing graduate work at the University of Minnesota and deciding that I wouldn’t survive another midwestern winter. So after a three-day road trip in my ex-husband’s Chevrolet Impala that included striking a deer in South Dakota, Read more
Box-bed
Austrian winters cut deep, brandishing exposed skin with bitingly cold plumes, descending from mountain tops. The only feasible way to survive a rural Austrian winter in 1820, especially the duration of its bleakest months, December to March, is to obtain a box-bed. A simple box-bed. Raised from the floor, enclosed Read more