It wasn’t when I got the hang of cursing, exquisitely and generously, tutored by the bigger kids at the back of the school bus. It wasn’t when I puffed on my buddy’s mom’s unfiltered Kools in the woods – throat raw, lungs afire, coughing triumphantly. It wasn’t when I thumbed through Dad’s Playboy magazines and […]
The room seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief as the brute stormed away, each glancing furtively from face to face. “The boy called you dad?” Stanley finally asked with unapologetic calm, as though he wasn’t sharing the living room with the disemboweled carcass of his wife’s closest friend. The leader gave a disapproving […]
“Mind if I smoke?” Mike asked, drawing a smashed pack of Reds from his front shirt pocket. Noticing a row of pipes on the end table beside what appeared to be Stanley’s evening recliner, he added, “Actually, why don’t you have a smoke with me?” “Why not,” Stanley said, reaching for his pipe and a […]
The sky is a deep, brooding red, as if the heavens themselves had been scorched by the flames that raged below. Smoke billows in thick, acrid plumes, curling around the remains of once-proud buildings reduced to skeletal shells by the relentless bombardment. The air is thick with the scent of burning fuel, melting metal, and […]