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Neil Struthers DELICIOUS HOME-GROWN VEGETABLES

Okay, a couple of warnings before we proceed. 1. This is over seven thousand words long. This was not my intention. I was going for something short. 2. It's a full story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. However, the plot--especially the ending--might make sense to me and only me. It might be one of those things that works only in my head. If so, if I didn't drop clear enough hints through the story, I'm sorry. I honestly just wanted to write something and get it out there. 3. It h… Continue

Added by Neil Struthers on May 11, 2008 at 2:30am — 2 Comments

aquafortis How It All Began

It started with a fear of water. Innocent enough. Bleeker and Davey, me, four years old, a kiddie pool, and a bucket. I coughed all night, and then came down with a cold. The cold became strep throat and I was sick for a week. That's the most vivid of my early memories: lying in bed, trying not to swallow. Hydrophobia: Fear of Water. Not to be confused with rabies. Also known as Aquaphobia. To this day, I don't swim. I don't like beaches, pools, lakes, or even large puddles. Taking a shower i… Continue

Added by aquafortis on March 1, 2008 at 5:06am — 1 Comment

Elimare That Guy

The women left even before the last of the money was gone. Drugs, houses, ridiculous amounts of jewellery and expensive gadgets. All of it taken by the repo man. But the women left first - blonde and big breasted, typical Hollywood hangers on - they could smell the taint of failure from him - the washed up superstar, desperate for another chance at glory.
… Continue

Added by Elimare on December 22, 2007 at 4:14pm — 1 Comment

TadMack Fading into Black and White

Not much of a story, more a fragment...

“Percy, are you ready?”

… Continue

Added by TadMack on December 21, 2007 at 8:24pm — 1 Comment

aquafortis Pulse

For a long time after, I had the same recurring dream.

The air currents pulled me through the tube, suction funneling me down under the water and along the seafloor. Green and blue light flickering on my skin. When I inhaled, it was like trying to breathe in a gust of wind. It was like a child's worst nightmare of a waterslide; a strange endless ride down an oversized birth canal that was twisted into reverse, a reverse evolution in which I was returning to the water of mankind's proto… Continue

Added by aquafortis on October 13, 2007 at 1:30am — 1 Comment

TadMack Ficktion Friday: Experimental

(This is a companion story to Good Girl, which I wrote last April. Basically, the scariest thing about that first Stargate movie? The dog masks on the guards. Freaked me right out because they looked like the Doberman that bit me when I was a kid. Strange parallels our minds create. Anyway. Still riffing on the 'aliens are Dobermans' thing, I guess. Living in this Fine City where people t

… Continue

Added by TadMack on October 12, 2007 at 12:47pm — 2 Comments

TadMack Ficktion Friday: Three Uncles Went to Vietnam

Three uncles went to Vietnam.

Three uncles went to Vietnam, and one uncle seemed to have found “the life.”

Three uncles went to Vietnam, but only one came home with a sharkskin suit. He never said what else happened while he was over there, but he was full of the wonder of the tailors of Southeast Asia. “You can get a monogrammed shirt, tailored suit, sports coat, cheap,” he told us, checking his cuffs. He talked about silk, and the little women who stood on chairs to measure

… Continue

Added by TadMack on October 5, 2007 at 3:26pm — 1 Comment

aquafortis Nomad

My life was very different once, before I started to move.


Of course, I've been moving since I was a fertilized egg. I moved into my mother's womb, and only stayed nine months.


That was one of the longer stays I've had in my lifetime. My childhood was the longest. Ten years in one place. Then my parents divorc

… Continue

Added by aquafortis on September 29, 2007 at 12:49am — 2 Comments

TadMack (It's Not Friday) Ficktion: My Boss's Dating Life Has Hit A Dead End

If he weren't already dead, I could kill that Dewey dude, I really could. Okay, so someday it may serve me well to know that the Dewey Decimal number for the commercial processing of kidney beans is 664.805652, but it bugs me no end that Maelinda thinks I'm an idiot since I don't know these things right off. What she doesn't understand is that I didn't get a library job because I wanted to organize things. I took the job because I wanted to read. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of rea

… Continue

Added by TadMack on September 25, 2007 at 9:35pm — 6 Comments

aquafortis The Ghost in the Room

Let me tell you a secret. Come here. Quickly now. Imagine it's just the two of us alone in a darkened theater, or a Gothic church at twilight; you with your silvery shawl wrapped around your shoulders, pulled tightly, the fringe just brushing the hairs on your arms, now covered in tiny goosebumps. Your feet bare.

And me with the easel, watching you with my paintbrush, sitting in front of the rows of chairs, or pews, because I am, in fact, the one who is on display for you. You watch me… Continue

Added by aquafortis on September 21, 2007 at 7:53pm — 2 Comments

TadMack (It's not Friday, but it's) Ficktion: Should I Stay Or Should I Go On?

"I guess I'm not a sentimentalist, then," he'd laughed, tilting his head so that the light caught the almost colorless brush of lashes lowered over his green eyes. "I don't hold with calling it The Big Day. Frankly, I think the big day is the Monday after the whole shebang gets over with."

And everyone had laughed, and given Miercolette the kinds of smiles that indicated that they were sure they knew she and Alfred were a done deal, only the i's needing dotting, and the wax to cool on

… Continue

Added by TadMack on September 17, 2007 at 2:05pm — 3 Comments

TadMack Chains of Love

(a companion story of sorts to Mind the Gap)

Of course I shouldn’t have left her.

I shouldn’t have left her, but she was at school.

I shouldn’t have left her, but she wasn’t home, wasn’t there when I dropped by.

I shouldn’t have left her, but -- she was gone, and I had my hands full with the four suitcases I took.

I couldn’t take on anything else.

I couldn’t take the time to look for my phone, a notepad...

Okay, you go on accusing

… Continue

Added by TadMack on September 14, 2007 at 3:42pm — 3 Comments

Elimare Animus

Still and silent they lie there. Eyes open, unfocused. Bound to the earth, sinews stretched and torn. The teeth of their shackles bites into soft flesh. Copper tang of blood, salt of sweat. Overwhelming.

These great beasts, entangled in chains. Struck down millenia ago and left to rot and die.

The earth blankets them in their unsleep, light covering of moss and sand layers year after year.

… Continue

Added by Elimare on September 14, 2007 at 11:29am — 5 Comments

aquafortis The Chained Seven

They were called the Chained Seven. It was a story told to frighten little children, to keep them out of the forest and away from Donoby's Swamp. Behave, parents would say, or we'll leave you in the swamp for the Chained Seven. Don't stray too far from town; don't get lost in the woods, or the trapped ones might snare you and you'll join them in their watery tomb under the bog.

There was a real story behind the Chai

… Continue

Added by aquafortis on September 8, 2007 at 5:12am — 3 Comments

TadMack Mind the Gap

“This is a security announcement,” a metallic voice said confidentially over the loudspeaker. “Please do not leave baggage unattended. Unattended baggage will be collected, and may be destroyed.”

Heard that so many times it is blurring in my brain.

Unattended baggage may be destroyed.

Well, I am an unattended baggage, at least my mother always called me a snooty baggage, and now that she’s not here to say so anymore, I am unattended, adrift, abandoned, left behind.

… Continue

Added by TadMack on September 7, 2007 at 10:41pm — 1 Comment

Donal Murphy Sugar Crush

Her name was Candy, of course it was Candy, what else could it be?

I met her early one grey London morning, the drizzle blanketing the morning commuters as we headed for the warm, underground warren of the Tube.

I was late, threading my way through the throng of umbrellas and latte wielding office types, two months in and still unsure of myself. Dublin just a memory now, a collection of places strung together by long associations. London Irish, that's what I am now, here to bu… Continue

Added by Donal Murphy on September 7, 2007 at 1:10am — 2 Comments

Elimare The Angel of St Clair

Some days he didn't see her at all.

Those were the days when he spilled his coffee on his new shirt, or the subway doors closed just as he reached the platform. Sometimes he caught glimpses of her through the closing doors. A flash of hair, the curve of her neck. Not much, but enough to brighten his day, quicken his step.

One particularly good day he managed to stand beside her in the morning crush. He closed his eyes an

… Continue

Added by Elimare on September 3, 2007 at 12:13pm — 3 Comments

Donal Murphy The Good Neighbour

The doorbell rang at nine, pulling me out of a dream about her. The dream was familiar. I knew how it ended, badly, like all my dreams. As sleep faded, anger rose incoherently in me, anger at being drawn away from her, even the imperfect memory of her.

The caller leaned on the doorbell again, playing a staccato pattern with the single drilling bell. Cursing them I pulled on my discarded clothes, the least repugnant I could lay hand to and stalked downstairs. The old house was cold and d… Continue

Added by Donal Murphy on August 31, 2007 at 12:00pm — 2 Comments

Elimare Upstairs

He lived in a four story walk-up. Quiet man, never annoyed the neighbours. Occasionally they'd meet him on the way up the stairs, huffing and puffing his way up to the small attic flat. Muttered hello's between each - the type you exchange with people in enclosed areas - elevators, corridors and narrow stairwells.

Later, the neighbours wouldn't be able to give a proper account of him.

Generic comments printed in the pape

… Continue

Added by Elimare on August 27, 2007 at 1:32pm — 2 Comments

aquafortis Gone but Not Forgotten

It started with H. Campbell. Social-climbing, thinking-he-was-better-than-everybody-else H. Campbell. Good old H. Campbell decided to upgrade and renovate every single aspect of his life, throwing away everything from 1970s velour chairs and Patrick Nagel posters to lava lamps and inflatable couches, putting it all in a pile next to the curb for the garbage pickup or the free-furniture scavengers, whoever got to it first. Not even the pretense of a yard sale for H. Campbell, no sir. And nothing… Continue

Added by aquafortis on August 25, 2007 at 7:33am — 4 Comments

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