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Post #4: The Last Haunted Pub Crawl Tour in the Quarter
It’s morning, two weeks into the madness, and I’ve been lying in bed for the last hour and a half terror-reading the news on my laptop. Currently, I’m “enjoying” an article that imagines the scenario that we seem to be rapidly heading for, where all the hospitals in every major U.S. city reach over-capacity. If I’m being honest, none of it sounds good. At all. Fortunately, I’m granted a brief reprieve from my terror, as I get an email notification from work. I quickly open my email, praying for a hilarious distraction, only to find my prayers answered. ATTENTION ALL TOUR GUIDES, Do not click on that link that I…
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Post #3: The Weirdness Starts at Night: plotting my escape
You know, it’s come to my attention that some of you seem to believe that my quarantine experience isn’t all that rock bottom, that it sounds more like a dream than a nightmare. Oh you poor baby, I hear you saying, stuck in a house by yourself to do whatever you like… instead of being trapped in only a handful of rooms with three children and a spouse, all of whom are either crying or screaming at all hours of the day. (Note, nobody has actually said this to me, but believe me, it’s implied in the tone, and you know who you are…) And to that I say… fair…
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Post #2: Confronting a Landlady, and Making a New Friend
It’s day six into the madness, and I’m standing at the edge of my driveway with a hose in one hand, and a bucket of soapy water- with a never-used-before kitchen sponge floating on top- in the other. Standing next to me is my new friend Clever, who wears baggy pants, a backwards hat and a great deal of gold chains that dangle from his neck. To put it frankly, he looks, and acts, like a caricature of a 90’s rap star, but I suppose that’s my fault, really (trust me, you’ll know what that means soon enough). So it’s the two of us standing there, me with my hands…
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FICTION: Finding Success with a ‘63 Thunderbird
I guess the first thing you should know about me is that I didn’t find the clitoris until I was well into my thirties. In my defense though, before then I had been granted precious few opportunities to search for the darn thing. I guess I’m what you would call a late bloomer. In all things, really. Not just the sex stuff. But that’s okay; I’m fine with that. And that’s beside the point, anyway. The point is, as a man in his thirties, it was rather shocking to me when I found it. Throughout my rather solitary twenties I overheard endless conversations from women complaining about men not being…
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TAKEOFF
It was at the security checkpoint that Charlie felt that funny feeling in his stomach. It happened just before he removed his shoes and just after he took out all the items in his pockets and placed them in one of those grey plastic bins on the black conveyor belt that fed the x-ray machine. He saw his cracked phone lying next to his worn leather wallet and his cheap blue headphones in the bin and remembered he hadn’t heard from Jessica in two days. By the time both of his socked feet were making friends with the rough airport carpet below, he knew he might be in trouble, and…
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The Rock Bottom Quarantine Blog: The Beginning
Before all this craziness started, I had a rather unique job. I was a ghost tour guide in the French Quarter of New Orleans, which meant I got paid to talk to groups of strangers about ghosts (duh). That’s gone now. Which is sad. It was actually a pretty great job, better than I even knew at the time, in fact. I’ve always had love for my job but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that there would be many times over the years where I found myself wondering, “OK, when will my writing start selling so I can begin my real life?” Now that it’s gone, I miss…
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What Happened on the Field
This short story was publish in Scarlet Leaf Review.
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THE TUNNEL PERVERT
Davis Tillman was not surprised when he awoke to the sound of furious car horns coming from outside his bedroom window. Nor was he surprised when he heard threats of violence also coming from outside his bedroom window. For Davis Tilman lived in a cheap duplex at the corner of Virgil and Conti, widely known as the worst intersection in the entire city, especially in the morning. It didn’t used to be like this. It used to be a fine intersection, if a bit narrow and pothole-riddled, situated at the border of Lakeview and Mid-City, two large, respectable, neighborhoods in the city. But then the city decided to shut down…
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Cemetery Crawl
Kevin rested his back against the wrought iron fence and stared up at theorange and red swirls in the sky. He frowned. Next to his feet on the crackedsidewalk lay his backpack. He had grown tired of carrying it when the waitexceeded 30 minutes. Hands in his pockets, the right desperately clutching his phone. Vibrate, he pleaded. Vibrate, you stupid bitch phone. But the phone remained lifeless in his pocket. Kevin continued to stare up at the fading sky and weighed his options. He could call someone in the group. Jacqueline, maybe? He had always gotten along best with her. Well, besides Josh. No, he decided after a moment. They…
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The Six Rules of Business
The claws of the overgrown hill tore at Nathan Stern as he made his way up its rather steep slope. They tore at his exposed legs, his uncovered arms, and at his dwindling sanity. Like the good little soldiers they were, his feet continued to climb, ignoring the pain that came in hot and disappeared in a flash. In the moonlight, the treacherous hill glistened like a silver nightmare. Which is exactly what this is, Nathan thought. A nightmare. A very real, yet impossible, nightmare. One that started less than an hour ago, when he woke up in bed and found he was unable to move. As he climbed, he…
