Tag: short-story

The Circle

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excerpt

“Iraq is very hot place, Jennifer, but it is a beautiful. So far, everything looks
good, although one can see all the destruction still in a lot of places. It’s so sad to see
how some people live, so sad.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Are you having a good time, though?”
“Well, yes, I suppose. We’ll be going scuba diving in the gulf in the next couple of
days. I will not be able to talk to you from there, I suppose; however, I’ll talk to you
when I get back, okay?”
“Yes, Mom. Take a lot of pictures, remember?”
“Yes, Jennifer. Bye for now; I love you.”
“I love you, too, Mom.”
Hakim hugs her and says, “There you are. They’re doing fine; my uncle also
sounded good, and Talal sounds good, too.”
“Why do you wonder how Talal is doing?”
“I have always worried how he would feel returning to his home and how he
would find it after all this time.His house has been uninhabited for a long time, the
same as mine.However, Talal hasn’t gone to the old house yet; he saw his sister and
young brother, though. His sister will be getting married next summer.”
“Oh, that’s nice. What are the weddings like there, honey?”
“It all depends, sweetie.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, for the people who follow religion, it’s different from the ones who do
not follow it as much like us; my uncle and Mara have been quite liberal when it
comes to religion and we just don’t follow strict church rules of any kind.”
Jennifer looks him in the eyes and asks, “Have you ever thought of getting
married, honey?”
He’s silent for a while. This is a question he hasn’t thought about before, and
now he must answer her.
“No, I haven’t thought of it, sweetie. Have you?”
“No, I haven’t. But now that the subject of marriage has been brought up, it
made me think of it.”
“Maybe one day, sweetheart. Maybe one day, I’ll think about it.”
Jennifer gets up and makes their breakfast; they sit quietly and eat their toast
with marmalade. She thinks Hakim probably has too much on his mind right
now to think of marriage; he’s worried about his uncle and he has to get together
with Peter before their important meeting.

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https://www.amazon.com/dp/0978186524

In Turbulent Times

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excerpt

Those who went to the house swore it had never been cleaned since Maggie’s mother was alive. It seemed that Maggie lived, ate, slept and washed in only one room. All the other rooms were packed to overflowing with the accumulated belongings and unsorted junk of at least two generations of Potters. In several corners in the house stood unemptied buckets of Maggie’s excrement and urine which neighbours said she used as fertiliser in her garden. Even more remarkable were the envelopes and canisters and small cardboard boxes filled with money—more than four thousand pounds in all—that passed to a man in the city, a nephew, it was said, who had never ever been to see his aunt in all the years that anyone in the village could remember. Old Rachel Dunn, Willy’s arthritic mother, was still alive in a nursing home in Ardross, a helpless cripple, clinging tenaciously to life at the age of eighty-seven.
Into Maggie Potter’s ill-starred house Liam and Nora moved in the first week of January 1943 when all the country could talk about was the rout of the German forces at Stalingrad. But Nora’s mind dwelled not on the frozen snows of Russia nor on the hot desert sands, where Tom Carney was fighting, but on the treacherous waters of the North Atlantic where the German submarine wolf-packs prowled: grim, determined, unseen predators of the convoys from America. Joe Carney was among the prey, and Nora feared for his life. She wrote to him almost every week, giving him all the gossip from the village and keeping to herself her misery and her cherished memories.
They’ve actually made a good job of fixing up the house and painting and decorating it. I never thought that Maggie Potter’s place could look so clean and trim. Even the outside walls have been whitewashed and the doors and window frames painted the usual dark green. As in the old schoolhouse, we have a kitchen and a scullery and a sitting room downstairs, two bedrooms and a box room upstairs, and a view of the sea from the back. The sea is pale blue and grey today and sparkling where the sun is shining on it. I used to love the sea but now I hate it for separating us and threatening you with so much danger. And yet I still love to walk along the shore and watch the endless convoy of waves reach the rocks and shingle and break there and whisper to me with their parting breath that they have seen your ship on their way across the ocean and that you are well and send your love.
Later that day, for the first time since she had written to Joe to tell him of her pending marriage to Liam Dooley, Nora mentioned in her letter that she was unhappy.

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Tasos Livaditis – Poems, Volume II

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Long-listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards

2023 Longlist Announcement

DEVIL WITH THE CANDLE STICK

“One day you will remember of me”, he said “but you won’t
be able to cry;”
what did he mean and what was the meaning of words?
Women stood at the crossroad, dark faced, holding the
half open pomegranate
like thousand faces of nothing. The prostitute, returning
home, went to the kitchen and warmed the food and I,
hell, failed between two evening songs.
When Rosa had a john she used to place a carton on
the corner so the memory of her father wouldn’t see her;
someone, with an axe, came out in the night and started
striking blindly.
The whole city was panicking, searches, interrogations,
occasionally someone would come, kneel before the icons
and confess to everything
since the beginning of the world — thus perhaps seeking
a purpose or two lines in the newspaper and a small
rose at the edge of the road;
the stupid child would go by and pick the rose, he’d look
at it and then as if
he understood something he’d leave it in its place and only
the gambler could guess that movement such as those that
save you.
Thus one by one they all got lost and I was the only survivor
playing, at the critical moment, with the fringes
of the tablecloth.
I truly wonder why all these since one can be lost with
a lot less things.
I remember one who’s hunger pushed him to desire a street
organ, which he sat down and ate, there, at the corner
only spitting out the crutch of the soldier, and the fat ugly
woman had revealed her big breasts over the balcony
“don’t feel sorry for me” she said “I’m very clever” and
she was staring at the end of the road;
then we sat on the grass of the dark cemetery and helped
the dead child.

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Savages and Beasts

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excerpt

his wife of eighteen years got pissed right off and left him; she
filed for a divorce which was issued with no contention at further
financial loss for Mr. Wilson, who moved to a shabby apartment
and he even had to sell his truck to pay off some of his debt.
These days Mr. Wilson finds enough satisfaction in his
present work since it pays him some money, which along with
the government assistance on which he also relies gives him just
enough to support himself. Today though his mind ran to his
ex-wife, who he found out was cheating on him long before the
downturn of the real estate market and that recollection truly
pissed him off to the point that he saw women as nothing but gold
diggers. His mind bothered him a lot lately, when he recalled the
last years with Ariel, his ex-wife who he could simply kill if he
would get the chance.
His angry eyes fell on a young man who responded to the
name Lucas, an Indian youth, who by handling his handsaw the
wrong way he misplaced a cut on the piece of wood he was working
and this was something Mr. Wilson couldn’t tolerate. He
clenched his teeth, grabbed the ruined piece of the plank from
Lucas’ hands and struck the back of the unfortunate young man
with such force that made the boy scream in pain and run away
from his teacher who was still holding the instrument of pain
ready to reapply it on the back of the youth.
“You stupid dog, you ruined your wood,” the teacher
yelled on the top of his lungs while Lucas, being in extreme pain,
kept on yelling and cursing in his language something his teacher
couldn’t understand and which made him angrier. The boy’s fists
tightened and he ran against his teacher when Marcus, who had
witnessed everything as all other boys had, stood in the middle
between the angry student and the scared teacher and upon hugging
Lucas, he whispered to him,

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Small Change

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Excerpt

“It’s kinda like football. All you gotta do is get through dat gimlet.”
I thought, it’s gauntlet, you ignorant shit. Then I started running.
They tried to stop me, with their arms, their legs, with kicks and punches,
but they didn’t tackle me or stand in my way. When I broke through and
stood panting on the grass, I had a fat lip and I could feel some blood trickle
down from my eyebrow.
Buster nodded. “Okay. Now you gotta have a name.”
“I already have a name.”
“A gang name, pal. A gang name.”
Buster thought about this for a minute, biting his lips like a
schoolgirl, then he laughed.
“I got it! Yer name is lucky cauze, like I said, dis is yer lucky day.
You gotta knife?”
“No.”
“Dat’s all right, yuh kin use mine. Yuh hafta cut yer gang name in
yer arm like dis,” he said, holding up his freckled forearm. Thin, crooked
letters scarred the sunburned skin with what looked like BUSTER. I
couldn’t believe how stupid it looked.
“But first yuh gotta do one thing.”
The gang spread out and formed a large circle with Buster and I at
its centre.
“Yuh gotta fight,” he said. “Yuh gotta fight ME.”
He went into a crouch and poked a fist in my direction. I thought, if
I had a gun, I’d shoot him. Suddenly the whole morning struck me as a badly
drawn episode in a comic book. I shook my head, “No way.”
Buster came out of his boxing stance. He looked puzzled. He
came up and patted me on the cheek. Then he drove a sharp left into my
stomach. There was barely time to tense my abs and the shock of it drove
me back a step. I crossed my arms over the pain and took a deep breath.
“Come on dere, Lucky, you gotta. It’s the ‘nitiation.” He sounded
sweetly reasonable, as if all the world agreed, this is the way things are
done. “An hey, if ya win, you kin be leader.”
“I don’t want to be leader, Buster. I don’t even want to join your
gang.”
“Too late, pal. An I’m gonna keep hittin ya till ya tryan hit me
back.” He laughed a mean little laugh and backed down into a crouch. The
ring of gang members moved in a little closer, their bodies tense,

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763157

Fury of the Wind

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excerpt

“Quite right, my dear, and if you don’t mind me saying so, I wish
you would take that responsibility a little more seriously and keep
the things we hear in confidence to yourself.” Robert Carson folded
his hands, placed them on the desk in front of him, and smiled at
Emily as if to atone for the harshness of his words. “Having said
that,” he continued in a gentler tone, “I will tell you what Ben wanted.
You would have to know in a day or so, anyway. Ben’s getting
married on Friday.”
Emily’s mouth dropped open. She had been about to take offence
at his inference that she was a gossip, but his last words erased every
other thought from her mind. And she certainly paid no heed to his
advice because, within five minutes, she was on the phone to Molly
Andrews, her best friend in Nimkus.
As in most small communities, a class system existed amongst
the residents of Nimkus. The town matrons would have denied it
but the divisions, although very subtle, did exist. There was no doctor
in town, no dentist and no lawyer. For services supplied by these
professionals one had to travel to the neighbouring larger town of
Bradshaw. With the absence of such elite families as these, the responsibility
of maintaining the position of upper crust fell to the
wives of the banker, the minister, the station agent, the town clerk,
the druggist … and on it went.
Had the principal of the three room school on the outskirts of
town been a man, his wife would certainly have been included in
this group. But the principal of Nimkus School happened to be,
and had been for some time, a single woman. Although well regarded
by the parents of the children she taught, Miss Donna Carrington
had no status in town because she had no husband. And a
single woman, no matter how brilliant and ambitious, was secretly
regarded as a nonentity by the town matrons.
Immediately following Ben Fielding’s visit to the vicar, Mrs. Carson
telephoned Mrs. Andrews. The station agent’s wife then called
Jean McKinnon, the banker’s wife. Mrs. McKinnon just happened
to be on her way to do her grocery shopping. And, of course, she let
slip the astounding news she had just heard as soon as she began
to give her grocery order to Mr. Stratton, the owner of Stratton’s…

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0981073530

The Qliphoth

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excerpt

Lucas:
Grand Junction
The light filters through a drifting barrage of cloud, early evening mist blurs a
green froth of trees and Lucas doesn’t know anything any more. Now that he’s
walked out he feels uneasy about his paternal rescue mission. No one stops for
the lone hitcher. The B-road wanders everywhere and nowhere. All the signs
are overgrown.
He staggers into Abbotsburton railway station. At least he can dry out and
ponder. From the doorway of the deserted waiting-room, he studies the slant
of the rain. No way back to the motherland now. He gazes along a curve of single
track. Squat oaks crowd the edge of the trackbed. They bulge with
growths, puffs of whiteness.. The dankness of this landscape might dissolve
the sticky molecules of his identity.
The waiting room window is pointed, forming pseudo-gothic lancets with
small leaded panes. There’s a peculiar stained-glass armorial motif at the apex,
a stylised flash of green lightning bursting from blue-tinted clouds, with initials:
WGJR.
This must be the privately-owned ‘restored’ line, probably run by enthusiasts
in woolly hats and anoraks. Perhaps they’re hoping to reconnect
Abbotsburton with the local coastal resorts, miles away across the moorlands.
Yet their steam-age revival has apparently failed already. The cracked canopy
leaks, and this room is a sparsely furnished shed, offering a slatted wooden
bench, scarred with ancient rune-like graffiti. The faded adverts for
Brylcreem, Park Drive cigarettes and Philco Radio-Grams are the kind of
time-capsule memorabilia his father used to sell.
He is atomised, all his bits and pieces are in free fall. Best not to think too
hard about past, future, any time at all. Of course, he has left his bleeding
watch behind.
Lucas turns up the collar of his black bomber jacket and walks out to the far
end of the platform, where nettles split the asphalt. There’s no sign of a timetable
or platform staff. He scans the rusty rails. They curve in from the woods
and continue out into a steep cutting, between slopes of thick wet bushes.
On the far side of the track he can see a low windowless red-brick building,
overgrown with creepers. A derelict sub-station; or a wrecked trackside
memorial to some defunct moorland industry?

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https://www.amazon.com/dp/0978186508

Swamped

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excerpt

…awkwardly. “It’s about Frances.”
“What about her?” Eteo replied, smiling.
“She’s crazy about you, Dad,” Logan finally said. “She has asked
me twice now about what she can do to get you to go out with her.”
Eteo laughed. “I’m aware of Frances, son. I’ll approach her when
the time comes, don’t worry about her.”
“Be careful though, Dad. She sleeps around, you know.”
“I’ll be careful. No worries, son.”
When Logan went back to his desk, Eteo sighed and began to
make some calls. Yanni. Spiro. Angelo. Tom. Nick. It was time to update
them on their accounts and let them know what he had in mind
to do for them. As usual, they all said it was up to him to choose what
to get into and when to sell their accounts. Eteo felt his chest expanding.
He knew he would make some good money with these clients.
He always made the most with the ones who just said, “Do what you
think is best.” Clients like Ariana who had said exactly that when she
opened her account and deposited a hundred thousand dollars in it.
He dialed her number.
“Hello, sweet baby” he said when she answered.
“Hello, my love,” she replied. “How is your working day?”
“Pretty good, sweet Ariana. How’s your mother?”
“She’s fine, though she’s in her own world these days, I’m afraid.”
“Want to meet for lunch? When I’m done here, I mean. We could
go to the White Spot on Lonsdale or the one at the Royal Park mall.”
“I’d love to, my love. Either place. Just come and get me when
you can.”
“Soon as I’m done, then. I’ll be at your place no later than 1:45.”
“I’ll be ready, baby.”
At exactly 1:40, Eteo pressed Ariana’s buzzer. She came down at
once, and his day turned more pleasant just as quickly. He kissed her,
led her to his car, opened the door for her, and drove to the White
Spot at Lonsdale and 23rd. Ariana ordered their legendary hamburger
with fries and Eteo the equally famous Mediterranean chicken
salad. They shared a half liter of red wine, the house Shiraz, a respectable
Okanagan product, and laughed as they clinked their
glasses, enjoyed their unassuming meals, and talked of simple things…

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562976

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08WP3LMPX

Poodie James

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excerpt

“What’ll it be?” he said.
“Can of Prince Albert, please.”
Gritzinger walked to the shelves. Sam looked over at the big
man. Something about that voice.
The man glanced at him.
“Pardon me, sir,” Sam said, “is your name Clarkson?”
The stranger turned and looked steadily at him from behind
rimless glasses that imparted an air of orderliness to a man otherwise
in dishevelment.
“Why do you ask?”
“Years ago, I spent time in a courtroom with a lawyer by that
name, one of the best I was ever up against. He whipped me. That
rarely happened. I didn’t forget it.”
The man’s gaze softened a little as he continued to study Sam’s
face.
“Condolences on your loss,” the big man said at last. He handed
Gritizinger a few coins, slipped the can of tobacco into his jacket
pocket, dipped his head and said, “Good evening to you both.”
“Glad to see you after all these years,” Gritzinger said.
“And I you, sir. Good evening.”
Sam watched the man’s back as he walked out of the market and
headed north. He turned to Gritzinger only after the door closed
and the sound of the bell interrupted his musing.
“You know him,” he said.
“Used to”, Gritzinger said. “Haven’t seen him since before the
war. He’d come through here on freight trains and stay in that
hobo camp down by the old Thorp place. Poodie James brought
him around. Did a few odd jobs for me. Spent a day once stacking
two cords of cedar in the woodshed out back. Called himself Fred.”
Fred, Sam thought. Fred Clarkson?
When Darwin Spanger walked into the showroom of Torgerson
Packard, the proprietor was conducting a couple on a tour around a
black sedan. With a nod of his head, Torgerson directed Spanger…

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562868

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08W7SHCMV

Jazz with Ella

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excerpt

off a stool lightly for one of her advanced years, and beckoned them. She opened the cage door, then the elevator door, and ushered them in. She waited patiently while Jen, Lona and Maria assembled their baggage. Three persons plus operator appeared to be the elevator’s capacity. Then she closed the doors carefully and pulled a brass lever. Grunting with effort, the box lifted. “Three into seventeen,” Maria calculated as the box jerked upward. “How many trips will this thing make, do you suppose, before we’re all upstairs?”
Ordinarily, I would find this hotel an intriguing anecdote, thought Jennifer, something to tell the folks back home. Right now, I just find it all an intolerable delay. She was becoming quite adept at all the procedures. As she exited at the fifth floor, she went immediately to the dezhurnaya’s desk and rapped smartly on the table. The clerk, another septagenarian, was nodding off in an easy chair. “Key to room 503,” she said briskly in Russian, and proffered her card. This woman could be someone’s grandmother, she thought, and though it’s difficult to view her as the enemy, a nosy floor clerk who noticed that Volodya was Soviet, not Canadian, would be a nuisance or even fatal.
Jennifer opened the door to her room. It was dark and close but not what she would have picked for a briefing session. There was a private bathroom, she discovered with relief, and opened the door thankfully. It held a square, chipped, pedestal basin, a small bath, and gigantic toilet that sat lordly on a dais. Its tank was secured onto the wall above the bowl and there was a chain to pull that worked the flush. Either the last guest had pulled too enthusiastically or the fixture’s age had rendered it incontinent. It had overflowed onto the floor.
“I’d better start working on getting this cleaned up right away,” she muttered. “I don’t want staff in the room while Volodya’s here—that is, if I could even get staff to clean it up.” Once again she was talking to herself—problems, delays. And underneath it all—fear.
Consequently, it was nearly six o’clock by the time Jennifer finally left the hotel, walked briskly along the riverbank, and turned onto the same bridge they had driven across on her way to Red Square. Possibly there was another telegraph office than the one she had already discovered near the east wing of the Hotel Rossiya, but it would save time to head directly toward the familiar one. As she walked, she thought how to word the telegram: “Returned to Moscow. Hotel Bucharest.” That part was easy. Then what? “Jazz with Ella” and maybe she’d better add…

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https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763246