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These are some of my rejected entrants in the NYC Midnight micro-fiction contest (hope you enjoy the losers):


An old story: boy meets girl, boy sleeps with girl, boy never calls. Worlds divided by empty words.

The words were dark, making his heart wrench. He drove his fist into the other man, driven by rage.

As they they lay there, he said many things. But in the end, his words were as empty as his heart.

Words, ties which bind us to forever. Clouds floating in Machiavellian glee. New concepts absorbed.

Born of sentences. Stung by words. Eviscerated by paragraphs. Reformed by phrases. Vaguely dubious.

As she walked home, the stars exploded with words. She couldn't believe she'd met a pleasant person.

Birthday (Fiction in 55)

The sun beat down as I marched up the hill. It was my girlfriend's birthday and I'd just been in a car accident. Her flowers were wilting, her card was smudged, but at least the bottle of wine wasn't broken, much like my spirit. I've never wanted to be home so much in my life.

First Impression (Fiction in 55 or less)

I saw him coming out of a barber shop, walking down 15^th Street. He stared at me an unhealthy length of time, his gaze leering and inappropriate. I readied my "see anything you like," comment as he gawked interminably at me. As he got closer, I realized he was blind. I felt like an utter fool.

Hemorrhage

I awoke after the flurries had ended, and glanced out the window. Her footprints left a slushy trail from my apartment. She'd left that morning, after a night that proved more arctic inside than out. Her absence yanked more stitches from the sutured wound of my life. If I didn't hear from her soon, I'd probably hemorrhage completely by tomorrow.

Urban Spelunking.

As I pushed it onto the street, the sewer grate felt like hoisting a locomotive. It was right then and there I decided never to go urban spelunking again. At least it didn't rain and flash-flood all over us, I thought.

Why I thought crawling around in a sewer would be fun is beyond me.

Recycling Jobs

Beep, beep, beep that incessantly chipper robot sound reminds me I'm still here. “Hello, how are you doing today, sir?” As though anyone gives two shits about anyone else these days. That reminds me: “Would you like paper or plastic?” I mean, I once had a goal or a dream or some reasonable facsimile thereof. I once had credibility in the career world and now look at me. I'm starting from the bottom again. It's not that I'm better than anyone else, but for fuck's sake, I've done this before – a very long time ago. Back when I was a shy teenager, a mild twenty year old. But now I'm salty; salty and comparatively wizened as well. I've done things – seen things – that some of these people can't possibly even conceive of, but I'm the one who's stuck here, wrapping up their meat; placing it far away from their potatoes. Perhaps some of these people, this constant line of people, have accomplished things I can't fathom. Its possible I'm bagging a Vice Lord's chicken pot pie or placing a container of Juicy Juice into the bag of a Tech CEO whose code powers my cell phone. But that's not the point.

What is it that makes this American dream tick? Were some in righter places than others at the appropriate time? Did they have the requisite degree program or drive or ambition that I supposedly don't? Did they have better opportunities than I do? Because here I am, doing things I long ago thought I'd never have to do again. It has to be the economic downturn, right? It must be my lack of skilled labor. I mean I'm not alone here: Pete over there is pushing fifty, still popping buttons on a keypad, shoving produce past an infrared scanner. Carmella has to have a stranglehold on her mid-forties, yet she's running around the store like a speed-freak chinchilla, gathering discarded items and voiding purchases. How could this “land of opportunity” go so far south?

Did we fly to close to the sun on those fabled wings of wax – our egos spoon-fed by chain restaurants and the rusted laurels beneath our own asses? Empires always seem to falter when they find themselves too stuffed on their own entrails to watch the chair sliding out from under them – a sort of colossi sight-gag. It's no different with our own flaccid dynasty than it was with the Greeks cum Romans, or the Mongols cum China, or the Zulus cum the English cum themselves. The serpent eats its own tail, a fact littered like confetti throughout history, yet ignored to this day by those who write history in their own gilded images. A fact perhaps ignored by myself amongst others who thought that their might and understanding and abilities would preclude them from the same fate befallen those who came before them; those who dared think such ideas themselves.

And here I stand, “Thank you for shopping with us, sir,” among those who chewed the fat until fat became bone and the marrow was all but sipped away. Its far from the end of the world, but with continual ignorance it easily could be the end of our shallow dominion. “Have a great evening.” Am I thankful to be working? Yes. Am I pleased to be on a recidivist career path? Hell no. But until I have nothing more than the shirt on my back and the empty shell of a house for shelter, it still keeps food in my refrigerator and the lights on. “Hi there. Did you find everything alright today, ma'am?”

Beep. Beep. Beep...

Lovely California Home (fiction in 55 or less)

She hired the hitman, paying him ten thousand dollars. The hitman splattered her lover’s wife across the wall of their lovely southern Californian home. Now their love could flourish. On his way home from his “business trip” he collapsed. The cancer was stage four – he had a week to live. No happy ending for them.

Happy Hour's Over

Our calm was washed out to sea by the anger surging across her face. His eyes reflected a tired shadow cast from broken windows; jagged remnants of demon teeth in his brain. I'd been drunk since clocks forgot how to tick and was itching severely from Sebhoritic Dermatitis. She clicked her heels three times, mentally, trying to rid herself of the fantasy world we all seemed to dwell in. His rectum clenched, preparing for the inevitable harbingers of metaphorical stormy seas; doomsday-tsunami tombs. I loosed a river of vodka down my throat, burning, yearning for something insufferable and insoluble (perhaps ineffable as well). Her machete gaze readied on the back-swing, poised to unleash heads - spurts of emotive arterial spray. His watch hadn't worked in months, but he glanced at it anyway. I leaned my head into my hands, a ruse to dispel any notions that my ears were, at that moment, stretching ever closer to their auditory inferno. That I was, in effect, pulling up an eavesdropping stool. Her teeth grimaced almost individually as her jaw ground back and forth. Her eyes quivered sullenly, pretending to forget everything they'd been privy to. He slid his self-deprecating shield into place and readied his facetious foil, yet remained there, poised above his defeatist dagger. I sucked fire through paper-rolled tobacco, abetting the smoggy ambiance while fluffing at my short-long (now far less business in the front than party in the rear). I motioned surreptitiously to the embroiled, bartender. He slid anxiously down the bar, as though I had asked him a huge favor. She wavered above that razor's edge of the moment, hovering like a swaying cobra's hood, as he recoiled in de facto horror. And I sat there, erect, at new-Army-recruit attention (a feat mimicked by other bystanders). Her imminent strike held us white-knuckled, clutching our respective pints, shots or carafes for dear life. Then, in an appropriate anti-climax, she sighed - a sound far bleaker than an sub-arctic winter morning, plodding out the door with a squeaky clank.

I dare say we all felt deflated as we returned to our drinks; the remote twang of honky-tonk on the jukebox trickling across the suddenly lunar landscape.