The Stories
The Taste of Pennies
Maria padded downstairs. She was finally old enough to get her own cups of water in the middle of the night. The freedom invigorated her, and she often found herself awake at two in the morning, very thirsty.
The house was dark, but she wasn’t afraid. She’d beaten up Tommy the Bully on the playground last week and left his nose bloody and crooked. Nothing was scarier than Tommy the Bully. Maria could conquer the world. She didn’t even blink when she saw the strange man in the mask haunting the kitchen. “Who are you?”
Just Friends
Detective Offner had deep lines across his brow and around his mouth. They drew his face into a grimace that Chandra suspected he wore all the time. Despite the surliness, she imagined how the creases must brighten his face like a stroke of lightning when he smiled. Chandra looked away to study her own dark features reflected in the surface of the coffee. It was mostly dregs from the urn beside the water cooler.
On the other side of the desk, Offner leaned back in the squeaky swivel chair, settling the bright yellow legal pad on his crossed thigh. Clicking his pen open and closed a few times, he studied her with gallows’ silence. “Dr. Dey,” he said at last, “could you tell me how you knew Mr. Koch?”
Antlers
It wasn’t until breakfast on the third day that Gerald gazed into the knotted black eyes of a birch tree and thought that he might have gotten in over his head. Snow fell in dense clusters, making a tiny racket: tap-tap-t-ta-tap. Hands wrapped around the red tin mug, he stewed over his hot instant coffee. The coffee was awful—notably because it was black—but they hadn’t brought creamer, and he didn’t want to complain. Gerald loved Eric and Kate and he knew that they loved him, but he couldn’t be the boy they remembered from high school. He’d insisted on navigating to prove that he had changed.
Cold
It was Tuesday that he had decided to do it after the homecoming dance. He would go to the party at the Sweet twins’ house and collect the others, then leave quietly. Either no one would notice or they would assume he had taken some pretty young thing, drunk, to the empty master bedroom belonging to the now out-of-town Mr. and Mrs. Sweet. He hoped it was the former; there would be fewer problems with Tasha that way. He wouldn’t have to lie to the stupid cow about how she was the only girl for him and that they would be together forever. The lies got tiresome to tell. He wanted to enjoy this.
Tenebrae
The church was beautiful. It was small and ordinary and undramatic, but Sam still thought it was beautiful. The sturdy, narrow pews were populated by a smattering of people, all of whom were old. They spoke with one another quietly and amicably, some standing in the aisle, leaning in, while others turned, resting their arms across the back of the pew. Their words were inaudible but hung in the air like a thin fog. Sam had never been here before, and while he wasn’t ignored, he also wasn’t acknowledged.
Late-Night Reruns
Violent knocking jerked Tim out of his thick, liquor-induced sleep. After a moment, he realized the sound was not part of his pounding headache and actually came from the door. Half a bottle of vodka—cheap, awful—saturated his tongue, and the dark living room glittered with the silver aluminum of PBR empties. Unable to remember anything from the night, he massaged his forehead and groaned. Until the television previewed the morning news, Tim couldn’t even guess at the time.
“Do Twizzlers cause brain tumors?” asked the anchor. “We bring you an exclusive report this morning.” With her red lips pressed into a hard line and her dark hair cut into a professional bob, she looked very grave.
A Bay of Pigs
When Matt got to the powder blue Nissan Stanza, it was raining again. He knocked on the foggy window, then pulled his hoodie over his head and shoved his hands into his pockets. The window rolled down and a putrid cloud of thick cigar smoke poured out. When it cleared, the man that Matt called Mr. Castro had his fingers laced through the hair of a blond young man, guiding the head up and down over his crotch. Between joyless groans, Mr. Castro asked, “What flies, socio?”
The Books
A Bay of Pigs and Other Tales
A bitter Cuban expatriate fallen from grace, a young couple doomed from the start, a confused introvert with a dangerous imaginary friend—contained within this collection are scattered pieces from all of us. This grizzly debut anthology investigates the power of everyday cruelty with unflinching rawness. Vividly written, these unique stories explore insecurity, resentment, and loss through the experiences of human monsters. Sometimes blunt and at other times cryptic, these eight bold tales demonstrate that failure and success can be one and the same, and that shadows can be beautiful, too.
Contains seven short stories and the novella Venus in Running Shorts.
Venus in Running Shorts
A bizarre story of love and depravity, Venus in Running Shorts follows the story of Gavin, an introverted people-watcher, and his vice-fueled imaginary friend Melvin. Gavin's obsession grows into something darker when he is confronted by a young woman at the gym, and Melvin's greed pushes his friend to the edge. A battle rages inside Gavin. Will he be able to make the right choice?
Coming soon
