STORIES

These four story introductions display a wide range of subjects and moods, from the eerie and tragic to the wacky.

Tiger, Tiger

An Arctic devil of a storm is whirling up ahead to the north. You watch it from your middle seat on Flight 459, leaning left ... The mammoth cloud is a muddy blue-black, shimmering in the final slice of Pacific sun sinking in the west. No lights below. Must be over the Gulf of Alaska. You drop your Guns & Ammo magazine—

The screech of grinding gears shoots up from the floor, jarring your boots, your seat.
. . .

Carla, Swept Away

September 1961

The storm is blowing in all black and swirly. I am dancing in the street, twirling, like the clouds. Carla has arrived. Her wind lashes my back, my yellow slicker flapping like a feral thing. Her skies let go. Heavy drops hammer my cheeks like marbles. The distant ditch is spilling dark water across the county road. The murky stream steals up our street and drowns our lawn.

I splash. I wade. My red rain boots flood. My toes slosh around inside, all silky. .... A gust wallops me, knocks me to my hands and knees. I stand again, drenched, ... and brace against the wind.

“Come on in!” Mama yells from the front door. “You’re fixin’ to wash away!”

“Oh, Mama, not yet,” I shout against the wind and whirl again. The street is a lake. The stream has risen to my knees. ... I will not come in. After all, I am ten now, no longer a child. And Carla has made me wild.
. . .

The Rabbit Trap

Will lay on his canvas cot, listening. Across the dark room, his older brother Tad shifted on his bed. Probably midnight already. Is Mama home? Nope. Ain’t back yet, I guess.

Will always heard her come in at two o’clock, maybe three, when her flapper friends would drop her off over yonder at the dirt drive, all laughing and talking, stone drunk from that goddamn speakeasy. She’d stagger to her room and collapse on her squeaky bed till late morning … if she made it that far.

Always the same story, ever since Dad disappeared. And good riddance, the bastard. Will forced a firm exhale. Hope he’s riding the rails in some hard, cold country, learnin’ how them Yankees’ll treat a backwoods, son-of-a-bitch, used-to-be-a-dad drifter from way down south.

Will sighed and nestled into his pillow. The room ached with silence. Another shifting sound ruffled. Tad sat up.
. . .

You Takin’ Me to Paisley,
or What?

“Lord, have mercy, it’s a hitchhiker!” Homer gasped as he gaped out the bedroom window of his brand new 1969 Fleetwood motor home nestled deep in the Oregon piney woods. “And it’s a girl.” Homer jerked upright on his satin red sheets and shook the sleep from his eyes. “A hitchhiker girl. And a big one, too. Right in this here roadside park.” He stared at the figure crouched on a duffel bag by the highway. “Why, Dorothy Elizabeth would just die.”
. . .