Stories
Siren II
Probably won't make as much sense if you don't read the first part. Thanks if you do. Part III coming soon.The bungalow was tucked into the green obscurity along the mountain road a few miles east of Larsen’s Peak. The place was well kept if not exactly tidy. Townes had moved in a year before, and spent the first few months repairing cracked walls and broken t...
Happily Ever Whatever
Another one from the vault, a little bit tweaked.I’m here, it said. Layne let out a slow breath and hit the send button on his phone, then waited while the car idled at the curb. It was a torpid night - muggy - and the city reeked of human confinement. It was the eve of some transplanted third world hol...
Burning Star 5
The final chapter.X Lyla was sitting on the piano bench, facing the keyboard. Shana was sitting close beside her, facing the opposite way. The singer was absently running through finger patterns on the keys with one hand, but the board was turned off and there was nothing...
VIII Case lay naked on the floor of the open, ground floor salon listening to Lyla play through the songs she’d been working on over the past month. It had surprised him when he first heard her sing without a full band behind her and only accompanying her...
V They were heading through the mountains with the top down on the Invicta. Lyla was wearing as small a T-shirt as he could find, and a pair of drawstring pants with the bottoms rolled up. She had her dread locks tied up the best she could manage in a pal...
III Rawlins undressed in his living room while Lyla took a shower. Despite driving another hour and a half with the heat blowing, his clothes still felt tacky. Leaving them in a heap on the terra cotta floor near the couch, he clicked on the television an...
Burning Star I
Another one from way back in the vault.Lyla Simon was breaking a sweat, skin glistening like wet obsidian while the band drove her hard through fatback anthems of desperation and betrayal. She was an avenging angel of lust in every song, full of anguish and the perfume of human strain. She mov...
He waited in the front courtyard near the car. The laundry Aria had hung earlier was gone now. He wore light, charcoal linen pants she’d washed and carefully ironed, with a loose, button down short sleeve shirt. There was a huge streak of guilt in him for...
Raw Honey I
One from the vault, somewhat tweaked. Stay tuned for Part II.Aria moved like a torch song, as if her body were all one, fluid continuum of sinew and flesh. She was hanging wet laundry on the line between the rear corner of the villa and the date palm at the edge of the cobbled driveway. She was wearing the kind of...
I have seen her move naked Through the semi-darkness Like a sphere of pale light That wandered off out of a streetlamp And got lost on the way to a dream In which we were coming home From the end of everything that wasn’t this To rest in a bent circle Mad...
There always has to be a girl at the end Even if she’s something like a broke wing bird Who lived out the best part of the story Just before the lights went down And there has to be someone Who’s going to love her forever Even if he never says it like tha...
Lately she’s been borrowing things out of his apartment. She never returns them, but he never considers them stolen. She just forgets until he needs something back and brings it up. He only has himself to blame since his door is never locked and most of t...
Mary Alice is at the sink washing cups in the double-wide that used to be the snack stand. Her dark hair is up and she’s wearing a white button-down of Gaines’. She’s surrounded by morning light but even so there’s a darkness about her he recognizes from...