that monster there...

     A  friend of mine tells me he's up to ‘here’ with his kids.      “They spent the morning filling the washing machine with bullfrogs from the pond.  Felt bad for them,  all that dirty pond water…”      We stood in his yard and looked first at the well manicured pond in the distance, and then back to the house where, from all appearances, there was peace and order and prosperity.      He chewed his bottom lip and winced. “After the first rinse…” he gurgled, looked away and managed to squeak out,  “I have ha hard time talking about it…”      “You have a washing machine?”      “I didn't know it either, until…” His eyes glazed up.      “Filled?” I made like measuring with my hands.      “Up,” he said, through fist full of knuckles.       I was going to ask another question – there were a few – but he shook his fist out of his ...

“Nardo, what am I looking at here?” “Couple, married. He's hogtied to a dining chair and dangling from the roof over here, on this side – and she, well, I don't think I have to explain it, Sir – but she's dangling from the roof off the other end of the rope on that side.” And she was. Tied and bound to a children's wooden hobbyhorse, calico, with hearts and something that looked like red bursts of flowers… she was mostly naked except for the charred remains of Bo-Peep Halloween costume. “It's her blood, sir. Oh wait, they're at it again.” “You son of a bitth!” She lisped over the second story aluminum gutter, getting her chin up over it, lifting herself, ass-skyward, with her neck and enough hatred to do such a thing. “He needed braces! You moaned about the braces – I got your God damned braces!” The second engine company arrived as the fire flared up around the tightly knit hedges surrounding most of the house. “Sir, The first engine company wa...

     Lily lay in bed and cursed herself for the habit of wearing socks to sleep. It worked in the winter, but in July the kitchen sent up hot drafts of midnight air through the floorboards.  It was a long-reach or a pretzel-twist; she went for the twist and sent the socks into the air with enough verve to never have to see them again.      “Cmon Earl!”       Not a sound.      “I can hear you down there, Earl! Hell, I can smell you down there, Earl!”      She loved the smell of him. She'd told him when they'd met, and reminded him frequently. He reminded her that she also loved the smell of buffalo manure.  And turpentine. And car exhaust..,       “Earl, your not making things better here! Your making them worse! You know what I'm like when I don't get sleep!”      Lily knew Earl. She’d seen the results of his efforts in just about every arena. It was all bleak, except...

(A story originally created as a submission to "The Big Ugly Review", for which I never received a receipt notification. It seems my little story might have simply been the last ugly straw for a seven-issue flash, but who knows - maybe they were just hiding from me. It's a Horrible Marriage story. - Here it is so I don't feel like I totally wasted a handful of small words.) “We were robbed.”  She pushed the words forward against the carpet as she crawled. “We what?” “Robbed.” Rusty wiggled around on hands and knees, nicked his chin on the edge of a side table and hissed, “This is what I’m talking about, Mare. This kind of thing, it’ll ruin us!” He pulled the black mask up to his nose, felt the damage and eyed his wife angrily.  In the unfamiliar room, soft moonlight crisscrossed with sharp shadows over her black bodysuit. Her full, pouting lips struck through the hole in her mask – those bright blue eyes - Mary filled the image of everything h...

     The plane's tight: tight seats, thin air, narrow aisle, narrow folks, pinched faces and Bud.       Bud's wedged into row 21, seat B.      It's an hour before midnight with little hope of finding Chicago through the squeeze of ice and wind without the wings flailing hard enough to make every soul on that jet pray they've done enough good to make a difference in the eyes of a wrathful God. Everyone's preparing. The silence says so. Everyone except for the woman in row 20, seat A. She's not worried. She's done with God, done with good, done with it all - she's all done.       "What!" She shrieks at her husband, "What is it! What! Tell me! What!?" Her voice is hateful. She's putting every ounce of done and nasty into each word, waiting for her husband to finally snap, spin around, break her neck. She wants him to end it, put his once loving hands around her throat - right there, near Detroit, before the plane...

      "Ralph felt it first, the pull."       "Yep, in the bathroom. I felt it in the bathroom."       "What was that like? We're you frightened?"     "Nah. I was checking to see if the hair treatment was working, you know - its been a while, nothing on top moving - and that's when It hit me!"       "Was it a voice, a picture in your mind of this mountainous area or something like that?"       "No, just a tugging feeling. At first it was awful, I thought I was going crazy. Like I needed something, I didn't know what, but whatever it was I needed it bad! Usually I'm watching the high school  varsity cheerleaders over the fence at Regional when I get that feeling!  Har-Har!! Well, The next thing I know, I'm in my car, up here on  Sunset Rock, waiting for the spaceship to arrive."     "That's how I found him! Ha! He was in his car, no pants and shaving cre...

             Roger sat silently in the dark kitchen with the shotgun resting over one knee. He was perfectly still in the hot, black air. The sweat dripped ticklish down his neck but he didn't flinch, didn't take the barrel of the gun off his mark, and kept his index finger so gently against the smooth black steel tab that he could feel the blood pulsing in his fingertip. The kitchen got hot in late June. By early July it was nearly unbearable. The air conditioners were still in the basement, where they'd been the day the signed the papers on the house. As far as he knew, they worked, but he hadn't bothered. She'd warned him. He'd ignored her. He hadn't bothered; hadn't bothered much of a job either, or kids for that matter. He hadn't bothered with a paint job for the kitchen, which needed it badly. Eight years of high-gloss banana yellow. It peeled about an inch each July, from the top down. He'd measured it once. Ben...