Prose

A Walk in the Park

A Fairy Tale

“Oh, dammit all to …” Adriana Mercer wished she had a typewriter instead of a laptop. Deleting wasn’t nearly good enough for the romantic tripe she had just spent a tortuous hour composing. She wanted to rip it out of the machine, crush it into a spiky ball, and toss it on top of the heap in the circular file, just as she had imagined countless other authors doing with countless other first drafts of their work.

Adriana Mercer wanted to be a writer. Read more about A Walk in the Park

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Saturday Night in the Big City


A Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, a wicked crack dealer lived in a dingy motel room on a bad stretch of road in the lower part of town. His name was Raymond, but everyone who knew him, or knew of him, called him Rayban. His was a dark soul.

Every night he sat at his window looking down on the street below keeping a close eye on his boys. Young and hungry, they lounged in the driveways of no-tell motels or hung out at the Jack-in-the-Box waiting for customers, glancing up now and then seeking the approval of the dark face in the window. Read more about Saturday Night in the Big City

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The Corn

A Fairy Tale

It had been as hot and humid as only Iowa could be on that awful July day. Tom and Dick had taken the twins, Harry and Lucy, to the pond where the older boys had rigged a tire swing from an old cottonwood tree and took turns swinging out over the pond, dropping in, and swimming back while the younger ones played in the muddy shallows.

Tom had just started swimming back when he heard his brother, Dick, holler, “No, no! Harry! Turn around. It’s too deep there.” Read more about The Corn

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