New here? Start with Episode 1: Welcome Home.

Dr Kyrios holds up the empty package of candy your grandkids accidentally left behind this morning after their visit.

“Did you eat some of these?” he asks with concern. “These are psilocybin chocolates. Magic mushrooms.”

“They’re delicious; I opened the bag after they left and just couldn’t stop.”

Dr Kyrios stares aghast, alarmed, dismayed. “Are you serious?”

“What?”

“Do you realize what could’ve happened?”

“Do you realize what DID happen?”

Dr Kyrios opens his mouth to reply—but then shuts it and draws a deep slow breath through flared nostrils, and sighs heavily through his nose. You can see the little muscles flickering in his jaw.

“Did you know what they were?” he asks in a quiet low voice. “That it was drugs?”

“I thought it was just chocolate. What kind of drugs?”

Kyrios gapes again and looks down at the empty packaging still in his hand. Eyes narrowing as he doublechecks the dosage.

“A powerful psychedelic at high doses, similar in effect to LSD,” he says. “You ate all of them?”

“The hippie drug?”

“The hippie drug.”

“Well I sure wasn’t seeing rainbows or rocking my soul to kumbaya,” you chuckle. “So maybe it was a bad batch.”

“What did happen?” Kyrios leans in curious.

“I’ll take you back to the beginning,” you tell him.

Sitting in your recliner reading after breakfast, eating chocolate after chocolate…until eventually the book started breathing; words swimming around on the page like alphabet cereal in milk.

You thought you were just tired, or maybe over-stimulated from the fancy coffee your grandkids had brought; so you put the book away to rest your eyes for a while. Then sounds washed over you like slow spring rain, like your hearing aids were picking up random noises and conversations in the hall—only you weren’t even wearing them.

At that point you realized what was happening; that the hearing aids had actually always been noise-canceling headphones, fitted by the whitecoat staff upon arrival to stifle the screams and spectral student susurrations coming through the walls—not classrooms, but padded cells—part of a concerted and systematic effort to hide the truth of this place from the residents themselves. Inmates in a teachers’ asylum.

You swirled through that maelstrom of dark introspection for a good while; a cacophony of remembered voices chiming in, seeding doubt or uprooting it with songs of success…

Suddenly everything made so much sense. The staff in their scrubs, the open-door visiting hour, the plastic plates and cups. All the better to treat you with, my dear. Dissonant echoes of long-gone classrooms tuned to harmony. The cosmos aligned, pure understanding shining through.

Long hours passed, or maybe days or just minutes…reveling in that delightful trip down glory lane, enveloped in a rhapsodic peace that seemed like it would last forever…

“And that’s when you showed up for our weekly appointment.”

“You ate them what, five-six hours ago?” Dr Kyrios checks his watch. “So what’s happening now?”

Your awareness returns to your cozy independent-living apartment at Neverland Estates, the firm sofa underneath you, the slippers on your feet like fleecy little hugs.

“Everything just feels intensely at ease,” you tell him. “Serene, mellow, effusive.”

“And…the giggles?”

“At one point during that asylum nightmare,” you explain, “I had an important revelation: If the children are giggling—even giggling at you—that means they feel safe with you. Unworried, secure, comfortable. Might as well feel safe with them.”

Dr Kyrios shrugs his chin, dark bottlebrush brows knit over the open wound of his ignorance.

“What I mean is, Doc, whether frightening ghosts, new ideas, or this strange drug—once you stop fighting it and turn toward, explore what it has to offer…the fear dissolves into curiosity, and you can’t help but vibrate in tune with the incredible dynamic unity of it all, as the universe bends around you with uplifting energy.”

“Sounds like quite an experience,” Dr Kyrios mutters. “A real hero’s journey. I’m glad you’re back with us and safe.”

New here? Start with Episode 1: Welcome Home.

“As you know, the word Asylum is also considered passé. But more importantly,” Dr Kyrios says, “This is a retirement community.”

“A what?”

“You’re not in a psychiatric hospital,” Dr Kyrios explains. “You’re in an Independent Living unit in Neverland Estates. Your family just visited...”

A chorus of youthful laughter fills the silence—overwhelming the ducts, the buzzing fluorescents, the pounding heart in the floor underfoot. A teacher down the hall hollers for quiet.

Dr Kyrios shows his clipboard and points to the namebadge on his sweater and then to the marquee sign outside by the parkinglot driveway. All proudly announcing in stout energetic font, Neverland Estates: Retirement Community.

If this is a prank or some kind of devious psych tactic for encouraging vulnerability and deep self-searching, it’s an elaborate one.

In the hall beyond the open classroom/dorm door, a hunched octogenarian inches past pushing a walker. Various talk-shows belt out from various TVs behind various open doors, echoing over the linoleum. Not story analysis or science experiments or math problems…how did it sound like that before?

“But,” you say finally, “that can’t be, Doc—I’m not even old.”

Kyrios smiles kindly. “No one feels old inside. The soul has no age.”

“Whoa…okay, wait a minute. This is a lot to take in.”

Retirement community. Realization returning in waves. But what about…wait, so when was the asylum? No, that was just a bad dream you can’t quite shake. This is Neverland Estates. Your grandkids visited this morning, bringing breakfast burritos and iced coffee. Left that bag of chocolates behind by mistake, too delicious to stop at one…

Suddenly Dr Kyrios looms suspiciously over you, though he hasn’t actually moved—his shadow spilling across your lap, expanding and darkening with menace.

“Hey Doc—why are you here?”

Kyrios looks injured. “This is our complementary weekly counseling session. One of our most cherished services here at Neverland.”

“But I was just—I swear this was an asylum for teachers.”

“You mentioned that,” Dr Kyrios says. “I thought you were teasing.”

Giggles warble in, from the hall, from the vents, filling the room. Nameless shame and confusion. The sunk-heart feeling of a forgotten lesson plan. That undertone dread watching a student get on the bus each afternoon, heading home to a hell you can’t touch.

For a second, the pastel wall is a whiteboard again, boldly declaring WELCOME! to a room lined with empty desks ready to start the school year. Books neat on the shelves, posters tacked up with educational tidbits designed to catch the wandering eye, a table-top calendar of little tear-away student-of-the-day certificates still fat and fresh with promise.

And even when it all twists back to normal, back to the Neverland Estates retirement apartment it always was—it sure looks like if you pressed your finger into the walls, they’d give like closed-cell foam. All the better to bang your stubborn head against, my dear.

Following your darting eye, Dr Kyrios looks around the room, puzzled. Then he spots the candy package in the wastebasket nested in burrito-stained napkins, and fishes it out. He reads the label and frowns.

“Did you eat some of these?” he asks with concern. “These are psilocybin chocolates. Magic mushrooms.”

Suddenly the good doctor’s frown stretches down his chin, drooping over his chest like a disappointed basset hound, big worried eyes pooling under thick bushy brows.

“Well they’re too delicious; I ate the whole bag, after my family left.”

“The whole…” Kyrios glances down at the serving size, swiftly calculating. Shaking his head in disbelief and recalculating, same conclusion. “When, five-six hours ago?”

“How long? I couldn’t really say. Feels like a whole lifetime since then.”

Here’s Episode 1: Welcome Home if you missed it.

When Dr Kyrios comes in, you never know what to expect—after his usual standard greeting:

“How are you today?” he asks.

“Just wish these kids’d stop giggling!”

Dr Kyrios stares for a moment, blinking. Dark bushy eyebrows moving over his face like those caterpillars that presage winter. Then he says, “Tell me more about that.”

But how could he understand? He’s never been a teacher. Never stood before a classroom of children day after week after year. Never bore the weight of little voices falling through the ceiling cracks at night.

That’s the thing about a teachers’ asylum…the halls echo with a ghostly chorus of not just your own students, but also everyone else’s. Various bells ringing at odd hours, children of all ages bustling between rooms shouting things you can’t understand. Endless hushed giggles behind your back, no matter how fast you turn around, still always behind you.

The good doctor tries hard and he means well, but Kyrios’s inability to hear them at all raises serious questions about his credibility, as far as offering advice on how to deal with the noise.

“Nothing really. Nevermind. Just a weird nap dream I was having when you knocked.”

Dr Kyrios nods his salt & pepper curls like this means something, and jots down a note. “Care to say more?”

“About my dream? Classroom full of kids being silly and I was frozen in place. You know dreams...”

“Do you have this dream often?” asks Dr Kyrios.

“Only when my spidey sense knows that you’re about to walk in and ask questions.”

“Say more about that,” Kyrios answers unfazed.

“I’m just kidding. It was only a dream.”

“These giggles,” asks Dr Kyrios. “Do you hear them outside of your dreams? In waking life?”

The ventilation murmurs. The radiator whispers. Somewhere in the building deeps, a huge boiler growls…whether caretaker concern or countdown to catastrophe, it’s hard to say.

“Are you hearing them now?” Kyrios prods. “The giggles?”

Oak leaves chuckle in the breeze, unfelt and unheard outside the sealed window. Squirrels titter in the branches. Geese honk somewhere unseen.

“If I say yes, will you let me go free?”

“You’re saying like, end our session and I leave you alone?”

“I mean like, let me leave the asylum. The giggles are here, Doc. How can I explain?”

Dr Kyrios smiles patiently. “Why do you choose that word?”

“What word, Here? Because I never heard so many echoes until—”

“Asylum. Why that word?”

“Well Doc, I guess because I understand that Nuthouse is considered derogatory these days.”

“As you know, the word Asylum is also considered passé. But more importantly,”

We all chose to be here. That is to say, we all chose the paths that would inevitably, inexorably, indelibly lead us here.

The American Teacher is a special creature. Part caretaker, part masochist, part desperate & valiant hope-torch bearer. Dedicated and self-sacrificing; unburdened by riches to enjoy, or respect to bask in. Exerting unusual strength per size, like worker-ants inexhaustibly tending & expanding the complex twisting tunneled depths of the Youthful Mind.

But what happens when that hopeful torch burns out or gets dropped?

Ever seen an ant in the throes of cordyceps seizure?

Think about your old teachers. Do you ever see them around? Do you know what they’re up to these days, where they are now? If you haven’t seen them (but it seems like you should’ve)—chances are they’re in a place like this, tucked away in some nondescript neighborhood or countryside or cityblock you might pass every day without noticing.

We all wind up here eventually.

The walls are graywashed cinderblock. The floors antimicrobial linoleum. The doors unlock via magnetic fob. Appropriate, given where we spent our worklives. Only here, we’re not the fob holders.

Instead of classrooms, it’s just halls filled with cells. Dorms, they call them, like it’s some fun trip back through college. But instead of bunks, we each have a single shelf built into the wall; covered by something you might could call a mattress—if you squint hard enough to make stars dance in your vision, and don’t actually touch the threadbare thing.

Where once we had whiteboards and educational posters, our walls are now fabric-sheathed memory-foam decorated with nameless oblong stains. The windows don’t open—that’s one thing similar.

We work now with thin felt-tip markers in floppy notebooks…instead of on registered laptops at organized desks. Our chairs are beanbags. It’s for our own safety. Anything hard or sharp around here has a way of finding itself inflicting harm, whether it meant to or not.

Finally after lunch comes planning period—or rather Reflection Hour. Where we sit in our rooms with the door open for a while. The purpose of this enforced vulnerability is unclear…but they say it’s important, and the quiet time is nice. We can read, draw, nap, or just stare at some surface, communing with molecules.

Sometimes one of the office staff will knock gently on an open door and step inside, where the resident within will perk up ready to receive some message from a student’s parent, or important documents to look over—or usually just some pills in a paper cup, for later.

Occasionally even Dr Kyrios makes an appearance, who runs this place; landing somewhere on the Myers-Briggs between principal, warden, and kindly but stern old uncle. He wears a sweater and sensible slacks, but it’s obvious he’d be more comfortable in a labcoat.

When Dr Kyrios comes in, you never know what to expect—after his usual standard greeting:

“How are you today?” he asks.

Start with Part 1 here.

Cate dug, fast but steady…not stopping to acknowledge what she was doing, until her whole garden was inverted; a crater ringed with high dirt piles. Like a paleontology dig—revealing five tangled skeletons, three small and two fullgrown. Human. Mostly decomposed.

And Cate suddenly realized why her garden never needed new nutrients…

She knew what she should do. What Michael and any lawyer would urge her to do. But the thought of her garden swathed in yellow police tape…all those jackboots and fabric-footie bio-suits trampling everything, spilling cigarette ash and powdered-creamer coffee into her beautiful fertile soil…blue-gloved hands excavating the musty (and nutrient-rich) remains into stiff plastic bags bound for some cold sterile forensic lab table…

Cate closed her eyes and murmured some words of gratitude and apology; plus solemn assurances that it’s much more soul-healthy to spend eternity as a mystery pushing up luscious vegetables for a loving community…rather than a ghoulish discovery splashed across newspaper pages and grim headlines, a foul inkblot forever spilled over the final passage of their legacy.

Then Cate sank her shovel into the mound she’d just dug out…and tipped the dirt back into its place in the garden. Thump by crumbling thump she filled in the gruesome archaeological discovery…and then raked the broken soil into furrows to sleep through the winter under its own corduroy comforter. Over top she sprinkled a variety bag of winter wildflower seeds; which if nothing else, would add some color through the gray, and compost come spring planting.

Let us rise, give us light, set us free!

When Michael came home from work, he found Cate outside in the yard sprawled on a chaise longe, facing the freshly harrowed dirt of her garden patch.

“Cate?”

No response. Though her back was to him, in a thick sweater and beanie, Michael could see she had no earbuds in—and his heart started pounding. He trotted down the deck steps and strode toward her across the grass.

“Cate, you okay?”

Michael hurried to round the chase longe, where he could see her face—could see Cate lying there with a mug of cooled tea cradled in freshly painted fingertips, gazing deep into the fallow earth in front of her. Attuned to a chorus only she could hear.

“Mm?” she said looking up at him finally. “Sorry what’d you say, hon?”

Michael sighed. “Nothing, nevermind…I like what you’ve done with the place.”

Cate sat up and surveyed her winterized garden bed. “Can’t believe the season’s over, how fast it went by.”

“Didn’t seem so fast when we were in it,” Michael shrugged.

“True,” nodded Cate. “Time did slow down and stretch out, in there among the plants and produce.”

“Thanks to your green-thumb magic.”

Cate said nothing. Let us rise, give us light, set us free!

“What’s the biggest thing you learned,” Michael asked, “gardening this year?”

Cate pondered that for a while. Thinking of all the knowledge gained and experiments run, the successes and failures. Then of course, what she’d just found underneath…

Start with Part 1 here.

Part 3:

“That huckster realtor tell you what happened to the previous owners?” their new neighbor asked. “Why it went to county auction?”

The Clarences shook their heads.

“No one knows…just up and vanished,” the neighbor said. “Two summers ago I went over there one day, some mail hit my box by mistake. Found the front door ajar, back door wide open. Everything covered with dust and musty…like no one had lived there for years, insteada the couple months since I saw them, before my big RV trip that spring.”

Cate and Michael’s eyes widened.

Their neighbor nodded. “Yard all gone to weeds, big ol’ overgrown brush pile where your pretty little garden is now, crawling with chipmunks."

“What’d you do?”

“Called the city,” the neighbor snorted. “Those little bastards were eating my flowers—county finally let me clean it up and mow the weeds for them.”

“And the owners?”

The neighbor shrugged. “Guy and his wife and three kids, just gone without a trace. Cops searched the house, saw no evidence of foul play; suitcases all there, dressers and closets all full. County eventually filed a Missing Persons and sent it to auction.”

Summer deepened toward autumn, and the garden produced astonishing abundance; peas, beans, corn, squash…plus unending salad greens, tomatoes, and whatever else Cate could fit in the small plot she’d turned. Far more than they could eat, no matter how fast Michael cooked…even more than they could give away to friends bit by bit.

The Clarences filled baskets and boxes and paper bags with produce, and left them down the driveway. Cate posted pictures on the neighborhood page, offering First Come, First Served—just leave an empty container in exchange.

But the more they gave away, the more vegetables seemed to grow. Let us rise, give us light, set us free!

Cate had to scale back her hours at work, for more time harvesting and tending the lush unruly garden—and they started collecting donations via Venmo QR.

“Pay what makes you feel good,” she told people, indicating the laminate card.

At the height of the season she was bringing in more cash than she would’ve made at work. Running her own little CSA farm, from a patch of garden that could hide under a flatbed truck.

The days shortened and the breeze brought tidings of cold winds ahead. Eventually the garden produced only tough bitter remnants…and Cate decided it was time to mulch everything down for the season.

She was digging up a last forgotten carrot, grown huge and round that Michael would gleefully run through his new mandoline—when her trowel struck something hard underneath.

Treasure! whispered her inner child. Let us rise…

But at the base of the carrot’s hole, she uncovered just a pale tree root. Cate looked up and around. Unsure which of the not-very-close trees might send such a root this far. So she troweled the hole wider, seeking the root’s track—and gasped.

No way…

She fetched her shovel and kept digging…fast but steady—not stopping to acknowledge what she was doing, until her whole garden was inverted; a crater ringed with high dirt piles. Like a paleontology dig—revealing five tangled skeletons, three small and two fullgrown. Human. Mostly decomposed.

And Cate suddenly realized why her garden never needed new nutrients…

What follows is Part 2 of a short series of Choose Your Own Adventure fiction—where each chapter ends with a Reader Poll (open for 3 days after sending) to determine what happens next. Play along! None of this is planned out…I’ll discover along with you.

Part 2:

“So what are you planting?” Michael asked.

“Shh—!” Cate raised a finger. “Did you just hear something?”

Forks poised, they both paused and listened for a while. Ears tuning past the humming fridge, the laundry rolling in the other room; straining through the screen window framing the kitchen table, the slight breeze stirring the windchimes…

“What’d you hear?”

“I could swear I heard people talking outside.”

“Neighbors?”

Cate shook her head. “Kids.”

Box by box and drawer by drawer, Cate and Michael unpacked and spread out in their new place, as the calendar flitted past. Extending tendrils of themselves into every nook and corner, filling the space with warm living touches that gradually transformed it from house to home.

Like Michael’s cabinet-mounted spice rack, which opened and unfolded like something from the Millennium Falcon’s galley. His gleaming walnut knife block bristling with a college-semester’s worth of fine steel, representing forge masters from half the continents. He hung a sturdy live-edge bracket shelf for his stack of cookbooks…then he fired up the stove and breathed sizzling life into the reassembled pieces.

Cate put up new splendid curtains and found perfect spots for her myriad planters. Painted the cabinets and two of the rooms upstairs, sourced furniture and matching bathroom fixtures and other functional details. She hung their framed paintings and photos; many by her, but most picked up from various art-fair pros through the years .

And so the Clarences settled in, finally home.

Out in the yard, Cate’s garden flourished like nothing she’d ever seen. Like two plants growing from every start and seedling. Like thick healthy shoots and leaves everywhere, laden with buds swelling and bursting into bloom…busy with fat bumblebees and other pollinators sowing the ripeness that would become corn, beans, squash, and other fresh delectables.

“Unbelievable,” she showed Michael one afternoon. “We’re gonna get so much produce, we’ll have to give most of it away.”

“Can’t wait,” he said snapping off an early pea and munching it thoughtfully.

After work Cate would stay out late in the garden until the sun splashed down beyond the trees, refracting into fireflies and stars all around. Which conspired with the mosquitoes to drive her indoors at last.

Where she’d wolf down the incredible meals Michael put before her, and make the appropriate noises of praise & gratitude. Carrying on perfectly reasonable conversations and sometimes even more, at night in their bed—while the young plants in her garden cried out like a chorus running through her thoughts:

Let us rise, give us light, set us free!

But along with the fertile delight came a constant battle against new weeds—which Cate swore she watched sprout and grow one afternoon. If she skipped a day of weeding, she’d face hell the next afternoon. Two days left a tangle that might make her miss work. Three wasn’t something she was willing to risk.

“Still no fertilizer,” she told Michael over fresh-squeezed lemonade. “Someone must’ve had a really good garden there before.”

Next door the lawnmower switched off, bathing the scene in sudden silence.

Then the neighbor’s head appeared over the wooden fenceline. “You kids just bought this place,” he said by way of greeting. It wasn’t a question.

Cate and Michael nodded.

“That huckster realtor tell you what happened to the previous owners, why it went to county auction?”

The Clarences shook their heads.

What follows is Part 1 of a short series of Choose Your Own Adventure fiction—where each chapter ends with a Reader Poll (open for 3 days after sending) to determine what the character does next. Play along! None of this is planned out…I’ll discover along with you.

They moved into the house one unseasonably sweaty Saturday in March. After weeks of searching and openhousing and prequalifying…getting their hopes up and dashed a few memorable times…Cate and Michael Clarence finally unlocked the front door of their fresh new life and stepped inside.

Their dreamhouse was a developer’s flip; picked up at county auction, modernized and spruced up handsomely, and listed priced to move. A miracle deal, even with their escalation clause kicking in…

From their first openhouse tour, Cate already knew where she wanted her garden. Right in the back fence corner, where the sun arc would be perfect. Where the neglected thatch of weeds grew heaviest—part of the allure for her. Taming the urban wilds. Returning the feral to the bountiful fold.

For Michael it was all about the kitchen. The stout six-burner and the powerful hood-vent above. Soft-close drawers and cabinet doors, sleek quartzite countertops and the deep farmhouse sink with disposal and gooseneck faucet…and a span of butcherblock that got his knife knuckles twitching.

Cate unpacked her gardening tools first, after all the indoor bare essentials—and went to work with claw-tiller and hoe as soon as she had time…freeing her corner of earth from years of hardpack bondage and neglect. Powered by her devoted frown of joyful destruction, and armored under a frayed straw hat & moviestar shades that kept slipping down the sunscreened slope of her nose.

For their first several days in their new house, Cate spent every rare spare moment alternately watering and chopping and shaping the ground into a fluffy dark patch of corduroy furrows, roughly double the dimensions of their california king mattress.

“Looks like that Oreo pudding dessert my mom used to make,” Michael observed. “With the gummyworms.”

“You mean…Dirt Cake?” Cate eyed him skeptically.

“No, that doesn’t sound right…”

That long weekend, they went back to their old place to tie up some loose ends…and when they returned Tuesday morning, Cate’s garden was overgrowing already with new weeds, dropped by wayward winds and passing birds. Unfazed, she reached for hoe and gloves, and strode outside with purpose flashing in her chestnut eyes.

“This is great,” she called back over her sun-sheened shoulder. “Seeds sprouting so fast means the soil is super fertile and nutrient rich.”

Then she systematically hacked all the hopeful weedlings into the moist dark dirt, reshaped her furrows, and spent the rest of the afternoon transplanting sprouts from her egg-carton starters a few days early; sowing her intended produce in neat rows, hopeful claims staked with bamboo & sharpie labels.

“I didn’t even bother adding bonemeal or worms,” Cate marveled over dinner. “Never seen raw backyard soil so rich before. This is delicious by the way…”

“Mmm thanks,” Michael nodded through his own mouthful of sautéed hen-of-the-woods. He sipped it down with pinot. “So what are you planting?”

Why? Because my most loyal readers deserve the first look…

This is a short story about a father processing (or not) something that happened to his young daughter. I think you’ll find it sweet and devastating, charming and dark—but tell me how it hits you!

To protect this story from prying eyes (and websearches) free subscribers will only see a brief excerpt…

Breadcrumbs for the Lost

West Orenia near the intersection of Market and 18th…the alley with the boxtree on the corner is where she dropped the doll.

Read more

Smoky scotch singing gruff carols of contentment in the neighborhood between my mouth and stomach. Feet up on the coffeetable absorbing the hearth’s heat. The coziest sweater in my drawer (pronounced “draww” in these nor’easterly parts) wrapping me in a warm and weightless merino hug.

And then for some reason I felt compelled to check my email—nothing surprising about that; such is the nature of digital addiction—but instead of the usual wastescape of dreck and drivel, something there jolted me to the very core.

It was a note from the editor of Flash Fiction Magazine, regarding my submission from months before. Probably a boilerplate rejection, but I opened it to make sure.

To say my heart started pounding would be a narrative cliché—but of course every cliché is rooted in deep truth. So there it was. My heart was pounding. Adrenaline blurred my eyes as I read past the first line, still unsure what the note was about. I shook my head to clear it and took a deep breath before reading on:

-

Dear Paul,

Thank you for submitting "At The Crossroads." I enjoyed the opportunity to read this piece and would like to consider it for publication with some edits. Below you will find a link to your story with proposed edits.

-

I read it again and savored the thrill that ran the length of my vagus nerve. Read it again to make sure. Felt a grin spread across my face—soured a little by that ever-present ancestral voice screeching its warning about anything that seems good before it’s sure.

Then I stared at the long blue URL of the googledoc for a stretched surreal moment, teetering at the edge of shrödinger’s unclicked link…

Why this ancient memory?

Well I’m in the process of submitting some new work, which also means finally creating my new author website—which houses some of my short fiction.

When I scrounged up this sub-1000 word piece published by Flash Fiction Magazine to embed on my site, I was treated to a flashback of opening up that acceptance note many years ago. So I thought I’d share it with you.

Oh yeah, here’s the actual story:

At The Crossroads – Flash Fiction Magazine, 2019

There’s an old legend about ghosts—it says if you want to keep restless spirits from haunting the living, you bury the body at a crossroads, face down. Whether this confuses the ghosts, leaving them wondering which way to go for eternity, or whether the constant traffic is meant to keep them from crawling out of the ground, is anybody’s guess—but one thing’s for damn sure: I need all the help I can get, and if superstition saves the day…hell with it.

I don’t know who this dead man was—that is to say, I know his name from the ID in his wallet, crammed in among the cash—but beyond that, no clue. All I know is he’s in the back of my truck, and he’s starting to stink. And here’s a crossroads good as any other, I guess. The legend

Read the rest here, on my new website!

"Welcome to Tia Rita's," the bartender says with his customary smile. "Know what you're having?"

Take your time of course…but the laminated cantina menu holds no surprises. Food and drink, it's all the usual renditions of traditional texmex dive fare.

Everything here is exactly what you'd expect. From the dark lacquered pine bar, to the long brass rung for your feet. The cactus mural and the straw sombreros, kaleidoscopic skulls and the neon signs buzzing about tequila and cerveza. Everything from the patched pleather booths, to the paper-lined baskets of chips and salsa making the rounds.

If you squint just right, Tia Rita's Cantina could be anywhere, in any American city.

The din of conversation and scraping plates…the door chime again, and the clink and clatter of ice in glassware and steel shakers. Breathe it in, the familiar tang of domestic draft beer and sodagun margaritas. The heady fug of sizzling cheese and steaming rice and beans.

Rise of the evening rush. You've been here before, or somewhere very much like it. Find comfort in the certainty of these immutable and predictable offerings. Choices you don't have to make because you've made them before. At Tia Rita's, you know what you're having—shades of happiness you already had.

While the bartenders stand ready, solving typical problems related to elemental hunger and spiritual thirst.

It's only the faces that change here, a constant turnstile tallied by the door chime. Each new body bringing their own potencies and mixtures of sweet and bitter, weird, bubbly, and spicy.

Like this new customer approaching the busy bar, elbowing her way in between occupied stools like someone used to living among heedless giants. Slapping a menu down on the wood with a small pink-manicured hand—pointing out various items and periodically glancing back at her companions behind her as she speaks.

The bartender has to lean in and cup a hand behind his ear—the better to hear you with, my dear. Keeping a smile on his face and nodding patiently as he takes her meandering order.

"You got all that?" the customer asks politely incredulous, her dusky voice straining over the digital jukebox. "Without writing it down?"

"Yes ma'am," the bartender assures her. "Three margaritas, two of em strawberry; one bourbon ginger, one dirty martini. Anything else?"

"That's it for now."

“Coming right up," he says punching in the drinks. "Close out or keep it open?”

The ticket cranks out from the printer—followed on its paper heels by another drink order ratcheting up, from the server at the hightops.

“Keep it open please," the customer replies. "Preciate you!”

She watches the bartender as he snatches both new drink tickets from the printer and transplants them into the aluminum bracket over his station and then starts reaching for bottles. 

“Hey," she asks, "what’s your name?”

Read more