ARCHIVE
FICTION
Sarande
Sarande - 1. Vitok
Some things every man knows. Like if she has highlights, she will be high-maintenance. Some things not every man knows. Like how Miss high-maintenance will rock your world.
Sarande - 2. Tacos
“Everyone goes.” She found the wine opener before I knew she was looking for it. “Athens, London, Milan. They all go. This is Albania’s tragedy and also its secret.” She pulled the cork. “The ones who stay are the interesting ones.” I found two glasses.
Sarande - 3. Given. Worn Carelessly.
Being chosen without choosing back with the same quality of attention — that was its own kind of damage. Less cruelty or indifference than the carelessness of a man who received what was given and kept looking for the next thing. Who wore the crown without knowing it was a crown.
Sarande - 4. Blossom
Things arrive before they’re understood. This is the grammar of it — the result before the cause, the knowledge before the event. I know my mother chose me before I see the moment of choosing. The seeing is confirmation.
Justice Comes on Wednesday
Justice Comes on Wednesday: Don
Follow the bend by the river and there's the old train station, the one folks would rather forget about.
Justice Comes on Wednesday: Edna
Edna Rollins Kite never did remarry. Some women wear widowhood like a Sunday hat. Edna wore hers like a locked door. She kept the house on Sycamore Hollow Road exactly as it had been the day they carried Tom home in a box
Drama
Absolution
When he considered all of his paths to absolution, he took the long odds on the pretty one in the sky blue sundress.
The Fig Tree
He poured a glass of water. If you ain't driving, bed's made in the back. Might be spiders. You always did know how to charm.
Nectarine Apartheid in the Cubicle of Doubt
She used to write poems in the margins of receipts. Kiss strangers to feel something answer back. Now she has a drawer full of unopened serums and a man who knows how to load the dishwasher, mostly.
Buffalo Jump
"I accept your terms," New Needle said. "I do not accept your hand." This story was originally published on the Southern Writers Guild substack and website - https://www.southernwritersguild.com/
No Mercy
The ferry from Karaköy to Üsküdar still costs next to nothing, still smells faintly of diesel and someone’s forgotten simit, still slices the Bosphorus like a dull knife through silk.
The Key of E
“Play it again, Sam,” she said, sliding onto the bench beside him, hip checking him half an inch left. “But skip the missing note. We’ll call it avant-garde.”
Promenade
Cindy Lou woke with a flicker of premonition nipping at her chest. Something unusual might happen today, she felt it. She shook it off with a stretch, dressed for the wind and sun, and headed to the m
Oliver
Oliver walked the familiar path, one foot after the other, his pace slow and measured. It wasn’t the park that drew him out every afternoon, not the trees or the air or even the routine. It was her. S
Absurdist
Nietzsche's Itch and the Diva's Fever
Modern hygiene doesn’t stand a chance in a place like this. I mean, that monkey up in the tree is literally scratching its ass right now. The other day, I saw one that had arranged a pile of grass and
KFC Mashed Potatoes
I finish my drumstick. It’s good. Real good. Then I stand up, brush crumbs off my shirt, walk outside.
Too Much Cheese
The bar in Papeete was the kind that time forgot. Dim amber light leaking from fixtures shaped like hibiscus blossoms, ceiling fans churning the same warm, boozy air since the nuclear atolls moment. Then Burt arrived.
Potato Bisque
So that is Victoria’s secret. She’s starving.
Legend
Lane Connor stares at the screen, an immaculate reflection of his own glory staring back at him, neatly packaged in HD for millions to see. He’s fifty-one, though the chiseled features of his youth re
Five Cards Down
Not 24 hours after swearing I wouldn't do it, out pops a horror story. WTF is wrong with me?
Southern Gothic
The Rooster
I wasn't there the night Grant killed the rooster, nor the morning after when Connor carried the body to the big house like a preacher carrying a dead child to the altar.
George's Diner
It made her feel watched in the best way. Not judged. Seen. Like someone had waited a very long time just to notice she was tired.
The Bridge
You find yourself in a different timeline. One where you have died, and the world has moved on without you.
Venison
The fog in Hollywood Cemetery that February evening in 2017 draped itself over the James River like a gambler’s last bluff, as if the dead were exhaling into the Richmond night.
Sci-fi
Anastasia
I don't need to say a thing to dear Ms Counselor. You know what you did, you slutty little bad bad girl.
Unresolved Variable
Unresolved Variable
Vast
I’ve been measuring time by rot.
Model 7-B
All very tasteful, very avant-garde, very much against at least seventeen subsections of the Appearance of Natural Order Act.
The Veil
“Later, Dad,” he waved to the still figure in the otherwise empty room. “Thanks for the origin story. Kinda heavy, but... far out.”
Quantum Regret
the next gate, the next stamp, the vertigo of waking up in a city that doesn’t know my name.
