short story

Glitter

Poison The last vestiges of summer, Storm and I met for brunch and then proceeded to amble about the East Village rather aimlessly. It was pleasant and rainy. Light grey, light rain. We came across a Church on 1st Avenue. “Look!” said Storm “It’s Datura,” “It’s what?” He was pointing at a cluster of white bell-shaped flowers in the Church yard “Datura. It’s a hallucinogen. Shamanic” “Really?” ...

ISHTAROTH

A friend was having his birthday dinner at a tapas bar in Soho. I arrived horrifically late— they were at the coffee and dessert stage when I came in. It was my misfortune to be seated directly opposite Paul and Natasha. I had just passed a whole row of posters of Natasha on the street. Physically, her presence was even more disturbing. Thankfully Rob and Brit came round, I hadn’t seen either ...

The NightWatch’s Plight

The Ogboni Society was formed centuries before the European explorers came in contact with Diamankor. Speculatively the institution was established in the mid 9th century. This was the era of the Aiwughobasinins, the Mountain Lords who ruled the island at the time. The Ogboni Society emerged from a system of checks and balances to safeguard against any one ruler gaining too much power. In ...

THE MEMOREXE

“The world as we see it is passing…” Ines 12:45 p.m., Tuesday Ines sits on her desk, lavishly sexy, trying to seduce me into writing this article. There is really no point to this— I’m grateful enough to have made it past the reception at Quasar, I need the work badly. Ines and I had been classmates through college, when the real world happened, she catapulted into magazine ...

Company Girl

“It’s funny, you get to some floors and its just women—” “Only women?” “You know the kind leftover from the Eighties—” “I used to wonder what happened to all those coke-head powerbabes. Do they still wear shoulder pads?” “They wear all kinds of weird shit. The kinder gentler power suits y’know? Then on some floors, it’s all white male executives with Black female associates— they’re not ...

The Witchfield

Diary entry: June 23. We arrived in Ekuete Djeri today. I rode alone with my mom’s driver, Rafir. Just as well, I was feeling kind of irritable. I don’t enjoy being forced to come here like this. It was an extremely exhausting three-hour ride into the hinterland. It makes you wonder how the British explorers worked up the moral audacity to travel so deep into these parts… ...

Millennia

“Sometimes the soul takes the shape of a separate entity; you recognize yourself as a reflection and thus become enlightened—” I told him I would stick to espresso.

FLIGHT

In the street I feel very unsafe, frightened. Killer Angels roam the streets. With me is a small boy, I am here to protect him. He says nothing, he too is scared, and huddles against me. I mean to comfort him, but I tremble. The streets are so unsafe. I press hard at the doorbell. My keys do not seem to fit into the lock, I do not know if this is because I am nervous or because the locks have ...

Flash Flood Warning

...the taste of insecurity; metallic trace of anger forming in my blood; jealousy in mineral compounds, the acrid by-products of lust. Your exasperation.

BELLEPHERON DRACO

In the midst of our Thanksgiving Dinner the bell rang. We froze. My younger brother got up. He had become the elected “welcome” official in these times, as he was a newly ordained Jesuit priest. No one would dare lay a finger on him. He came back to the dining room, “It’s for you, a friend of yours from New York,” I went to the living room and there was Petard. I hadn’t seen him in a ...

THIS AMERICAN DREAMTIME IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY FLKR(TM)

Originally published in TRUCE issue V (download PDF) I. —Have you done this before? —You keep asking. What’s it to you? —Just doing my job. —Whatever. —So you know this can last up to 16 hours. And it can go horribly, painfully wrong… —Will you stop! What do we have here? He spreads out an array of small neat translucent envelopes with miniature labels—illustrated to advertise their ...

Be Yourself Tonight

Mocha Bar: a sea of ghetto fab and in the midst of all that, an anomaly— a red headed Viking stares at me—or should I say we exchange covert glances while I attempt to focus on a martini, or an old friend; a new acquaintance; clocking the Viking’s movements from my locus of interaction. Glimpsed on the landing, dancing with some gyrating unknown; lost for a second, but I look up from my ...