Fiction

I love the freedom that fiction presents, both in reading and in writing.  The opportunity to be someone else, or somewhere else, in some other time, if even for a few hours.  It’s intoxicating and just as addictive as any other intoxicating habit.  Below are a few examples of my writing in various genres.  I have works currently in progress that I hope to see published soon, but I also intend to create several stories and provide excerpts exclusively for this website as well.  I would love to know what you think of anything you read here, because that can only help me improve.

The Lake is Quiet Tonight - This short-short story never found a home in print, but I’ve always been really fond of its eerie glimpse inside a broken mind.  See what you think.

The lake is quiet tonight.  I can see the slightest ripple as the cool breeze dances with the dragonfly and he tiptoes across the glassy surface.  The sound of an owl hooting low in the pine near the edge of the rocky beach draws my attention.  His mournful cry skips across the water like a phantom.  The other voices are quiet tonight, satisfied. The owl insists on knowing the answer to his monosyllabic question, but no one’s answering.  The other voices know, but they’re keeping it to themselves. 

###

I close my eyes and lean my head back. A deep breath of fresh crisp, dusk air fills my lungs. I’ve always loved the peace of the lake: its silence, its ability to hush the voices inside, to calm my jangled nerves after only a few moments.  The first time I noted the lake’s mystical ability to heal my broken psyche was near the beginning of this summer.  Linda was in one of her typical moods, and as was her ritual, she was nearly finished with her nightly triplet of vodka martinis.  I remember turning my back on her and walking out here to the deck, overlooking the lake.  That night was so clear, but there was some unexplainable tension in the air.  I can’t really explain it but it was completely different from the tension inside the cabin.  It was electric, buzzing.  I remember wondering if a storm were brewing, or if some other atmospheric disturbance could have been responsible for such an exhilarating feeling of expectation.
Just being there, staring out on this mirror of water, of life, waiting for whatever phenomenon was expected, made my wife’s drunken ravings insignificant. She screamed at me through the glass, shattering her cocktail glass with the muffled tinkle of shards against the wall behind my head, but all of it was stuffed inside a huge invisible pillowcase, swallowed by the soothing silence of the lake. Her ranting was overshadowed by my excitement as I shivered with anticipation.
I’ve found an excuse to come out here on the deck each evening since, usually accompanied by a glass of good Bordeaux or Sauternes.  Sometimes Linda would follow me, quiet as a dormouse and just as offensive, to lean silently against the stained and mossy wood of the cabin, sipping at her infernal drink and whispering to herself about me.  These nights were always the worst, because her constant whispering and sipping would drown out the lake’s drunken silence.  I happily began to hate her on one of those nights, and closed my eyes in a heartfelt prayer of gratitude when she went back inside for a tissue.
As my nightly routine evolved into ritual I would wait for that feeling to return. That thrill in the air, the anticipation. The feeling that somehow the lake wanted to say something, to speak to me. I was intrigued, but not truly surprised when the voices of the lake finally began to coalesce into words.  I’d probably been hearing them in the white noise for months by then, but they had never become so clear until that night.  The voices were so soothing now, so relaxed and friendly, it was like no other conversation I’d ever experienced. 
Night turned into day and day into night again.  The voices returned with stalwart precision, and I was always there to soak them in.  They renewed me on a daily basis, lifting my spirits and calming my nerves.  I would sleep like a baby on the nights I came in from the deck with their sound still whispering in my ears. 
It was only when Linda interrupted my reverie that I began to hear the first hint of anger in the voices of the lake.  In the beginning it seemed more an annoyance, really.  A little louder, a little faster, then silence.  I began telling Linda to leave me alone, wanting more than anything, needing to hear the lake speak to me again, fearing each moment of silence would stretch to an eternity.  When she would finally leave the deck, within moments of her closing the back door, the voices would return, as relieved as I was to be rid of her.
This happened half a dozen times before she finally decided to heed my advice.  She was usually in bed, snoring softly, when I came in from my evening conversations.  The bedroom was getting colder night by night.

###

Thinking back, I am nervous.  This evening the air is clear and dry, with a soft breeze wafting in from the west, the slightest hint of hickory smoke bringing images of campfires and warmth to my mind.  The night isn’t cold, but it does carry the quiet chill of mid-September, reminding me that winter comes fast and furious in the Northeast.  I sit on the deck, staring out on my silent lake, wishing, hoping for some word.  There’s been nothing since this afternoon, and I’m beginning to get a cold feeling in my gut.
“Where are you?“
I feel the heat of anger flush my face. Then embarrassed, I apologize. I hope I understand. 
The owl is still inquiring.

###

My mind falls backward for a moment, to the point this afternoon where both our lives changed:  Linda paused while mixing tuna fish salad in a small bowl, and threw me a miserable look. I pretended not to notice.  “We need help,” she said with her usual venom.
I placed the four slices of bread I had taken from the cabinet on a plate, and, pretending she was talking about the sandwiches we were making, said,  “Haven’t you done this before, dear?”
She dropped the fork in the bowl with a clatter and raised her palms to her temples as she passed quickly from exasperation to fury.  “Damn you Phil! Why do I even bother?”  She stormed out of the kitchen before screaming from the living room foyer, “If you don’t care about our marriage, Then why the hell should I?  Don’t you see how you make me feel?  God, you make me want to scream sometimes!”  She was screaming now.
“What are you talking about?”  I followed her to the living room.
“I mean where are we heading, Phil?  Where are we going?”  I was lost.  It took a long moment for her words to strike me with the force she’d intended.
“Are you talking about a marriage counselor?”
“Unless you’d prefer to just go straight to the lawyer!  I can’t get through to you anymore, Phil, you’re not even here anymore, I feel like I hardly know you!”  She’d begun to cry, angry tears racing down her cheeks in time with her tumbling words.  I stammered something unintelligible, and then dropped my eyes to the floor, my attention now distracted.
There was another voice competing with both hers and mine, and I almost recognized it. The words were clear now and made me uncomfortable. A weakness came over me.
“Stop her.”
Linda was sobbing quietly as she pulled on her hooded sweatshirt and rooted through her purse searching for her car keys.
“Stop her, Phil.”
She pulled out the keys, and dove back in looking for a tissue.  I was frozen as I waited dumbly for the answer to my silent question.  The same as the owl’s.
“Stop her before she ruins everything, Phil.”
I stood dumbfounded, wondering what she would say now that the voices were speaking openly. Linda wiped her red-rimmed eyes and looked at me once more.  She shook her head sadly and turned toward the door.
She couldn’t hear them.
“Linda!”  The yell burst from my lips with no thought to follow.  She turned to me again, and I impulsively moved toward her.
“Please don’t leave like this, Lin,” I said, reaching my hand toward her, “I love you.”  She was speechless for a moment, then her mouth opened to say something.
“No you don’t, you fool.” It was not Linda speaking to me. “Stop this!”  Linda saw the expression on my face as clearly as I felt it.  There was no longer any reason or ability left to hide it.
“Stop what?” I screamed, my eyes searching for the source of the voices.  The cool gray expanse of the lake drew my eyes and I was riveted.  My hands began to shake.
“Phil,” Linda was scared, “are you alright?”
“Stop her.  Now!”
 My mind blurred for an instant, and I felt dizzy, as if the slate I was standing on had just dropped through the floor, me with it.  A moment later, I was rubbing my fist, and breathing hard.  I stared down in disbelief at Linda’s bruised and bloodied features from the floor where she lay.
“Good, my friend.  But not good enough.”
I let out a loud sob, then a wave of nausea took over as the world spun again.  A moment later, my eyes registered that I was walking out the back door and down the deck steps into the lawn.  It was as if I were seeing the images of myself on some muddied videotape, for no other senses were communicating.  There was only a passing sensation of weight below my field of vision, as if I were carrying something.
I began to scream inside, a nearly audible mental cry, but it was drowned by the voice again,
“Just another few steps, Phil, you’re doing fine…”
The scene I’d been watching spun and faded again until the distinct sensation of cool water lapping against my forearms and legs brought me back to myself. 
I remember shaking my head twice, and closing my eyes tightly before opening them and trying to focus again.  My hands were cramped, and my back was sore.  The chill of the lake water ate through to my bones, and I began to shiver violently.  In standing up, I realized I’d released something that I’d been grasping tightly beneath the surface of the water.  The waves continued to lap gently against my calves as I looked down through the rippled mirror once more.  I saw far more than my reflection.
Something broke inside of me as she drifted away beneath the gentle waves.  After several minutes, long after Linda disappeared, I began to realize how horribly quiet it had become.
“Well done, Phil.”

###

I’ve pulled on my frayed flannel shirt and brewed myself a pot of strong black coffee, as I have to assume tonight’s conversation will be a long one.  I’ve been out on the deck for three hours, and the night has descended slow and thick.  The moon now dances on the rippling surface of the silent lake, smiling at some cosmic joke I can’t share.  The lake is silent, and the owl has decided to stop asking his question too.  I think he finally knows the answer.

The Return – This is a one-scene excerpt of a novel my co-author, David Dean, and I completed a few years ago.  I have recently begun re-editing the manuscript because it has yet to generate the interest it deserves.  This scene may not survive in its current form, but at the very least, I think this scene has a strong “what happens next?!?!?!” thing going.  It’s a pretty good representation of the tone we tried to carry through the whole novel, so I’d be interested to know if it grabs you at all.

CHAPTER TWO

 Brad Giles yawned as he waved his hand over the black sensor plate outside the computer lab’s sliding door.  The mechanism automatically scanned his hand print, registered his identity and security level, and unlocked the door with a hiss.  The door slid open, then hesitated with a slight grinding sound and stopped with eight inches of its width still showing.  Giles turned his body to slide into the computer lab, used to the door’s malfunction.  It slid shut behind him.
 Naturally an early riser, Brad was always the first to arrive for work at the lab.  He took advantage of the time he had to himself, looking forward to it each morning.  He swung himself into his chair and waved his hand beneath the tabletop where another sensor registered and logged him in.  As the computer terminal sprang to life, he leaned back and stretched, his chair creaking with age and misuse, and held the stretch for a moment.  The sudden silence revealed sounds that had been masked by the shuffle of his entry.
 Someone was typing at a terminal across the room.
 Brad stood up and looked toward the sound of clicking keys.  He saw the unkempt sandy blond hair standing above the upper edge of a monitor two bays away and immediately recognized his friend Jerry Thompson.
 ”Jerry!” he called with a laugh, “You scared me, man!  What’re you doing up so early?” 
 Jerry’s milky, bloodshot eyes shot over the monitor’s edge with a sharp glance that hit Brad like an arrow.  He could not see the rest of his face, but those eyes told him something was wrong.
 Jerry cleared his throat, but said nothing.  Giles pushed back his wheeled chair and started walking toward his friend.  Three steps brought him to the end of his bay, and he turned to his left, but immediately stopped short as his eyes locked on a crimson smear on the scuffed white floor of the lab.  It looked like a fragment of a shoe print that had slid through what could only be a drop of blood.
 He fought a ridiculous urge to bend down and put his finger in the stain as he saw so many actors in the video library do under the circumstances.  He wondered for a fleeting moment if any of them had ever felt the gorge rising in their throats like he did.  He was suddenly aware of a faint odor that the faltering air conditioning units had not filtered out yet.  A sweet metallic smell that mixed well with the smear on the floor and brought disturbing images to his mind.
 ”Jerry?” he began moving again, “You okay, man?”
 The keys kept tapping relentlessly as he moved around the second bay.  Thompson was ten seats down on his left, with his seat turned to accommodate the angled design of the terminal stations.  His back was still to Brad, but he could see part of the left side of his face.  It was deathly pale.
 ”Jerry?” he tried again as he drew nearer, “What’s wrong?  Are you sick?”
 Jerry suddenly turned to him, and Giles stopped dead.  Jerry’s face was smeared with darkening maroon droplets that had been hastily wiped with grimy hands.  He regarded Giles with the fierce intensity of a caged animal for what seemed to Brad to be a suffocating eternity, then smiled.  The combination of his pale sickly skin, the smears of blood and that flash of tooth and gum made him look grotesque, and Brad was speechless.
 ”Hello, Brad.”  Jerry swung his chair around to face his friend and Brad saw the front of his jumpsuit was coated with gore.  His hands, too, were stained red, the fingernails gathering a black ribbon of dried blood and dirt.  The tips of his fingers were nearly white in contrast, and Brad involuntarily glanced at the keyboard where he found dark blotches on most of the keys where the tips had been worn clean.  He swallowed.
 ”Brad, I know what you’re thinking.”
 ”What’s that, Jerry?”  It was a choked whisper.
 ”You’re thinking I did something crazy.”  He stood looking at Giles with a silly grin.  It took Brad several seconds to answer.
 ”What did you do, Jerry?”
 ”What I should’ve done a long time ago, bro.  A long time ago.”  He swung his chair back around slowly, but kept his eyes on Brad.
 ”What are you talking about, Jer?”
 ”Come on, Brad.  We’ve talked about this before, haven’t we?  About how much better it would be for everyone if we’d been down there thirty years ago instead of here?  How much easier it would have been?”
 Giles was slowly putting pieces together, but he hated the picture it was forming.
 ”Jerry, is that blood on you?”
 Thompson stopped typing for a moment and turned back to face him again, this time with a tired look on his face.
 ”No, it’s nail polish, Einstein,” he held up his filthy hands, “do you like the color?”  He snickered and pushed with his red-stained shoe so that his chair began spinning in a lazy circle.  As his face passed Brad for the second time, he began laughing harder.  Two fat tears spilled on to his cheek and began running the dried blood caked there.  He continued to laugh.
 After several seconds, an intense loathing coursing through him like electricity, Brad lunged at the spinning chair and grabbed the chest of Jerry’s jumpsuit.  He yanked him out of the chair, which shot out from beneath him and spun crashing into the chairs at Bay 3. 
 Brad was six inches taller than Jerry, and outweighed him by a large margin.  Jerry’s feet dangled off the ground as Giles brought him within inches of his face.  The smell was horrible, but he hardly gave it a thought.
 ”What the hell did you do, Jerry!” he screamed into Thompson’s face, “What did you do?”
 Jerry’s head started rocking from side to side, seeming to answer the question with a “no”, while his eyes rolled on their own.  Giles shook him again, this time nearly touching his face, he screamed again, tiny flecks of spit landing on the red smears of Jerry’s face,
 ”Tell me!  What the hell did you do?  Who’s blood is that, Jerry?”
 Finally, a gate that had been shut and sealed broke open inside Jerry Thompson, and he slumped down into his jumpsuit.  Giles was holding dead weight. 
 ”Mom-” he blurted, then sobbed, “Mom and Dad-”  He began to spasm with the power of his sobs, his chest hitching.  Brad lowered him to his feet, but there was no strength in his legs and Brad had to control his collapse to the floor.  Jerry crumpled into a fetal position, his blood-crusted clothes making irregular zipping sounds as he writhed on the hard floor. 
 Giles was stunned into paralysis for more than a minute as his friend cried beneath him.  Finally, he sagged, then fell heavily to his knees.  He put one hand on Jerry’s back, and used the other to smooth Jerry’s sweaty hair from his forehead.  He could not speak yet, but he could feel a hint of control coming back into him and he was willing to give it time.
 Five minutes later, Jerry’s sobs had faded to sniffles.  Brad kneeled beside him, and found his voice.
 ”Jerry, we can fix this.”
 Thompson looked up into Giles’ green eyes and waited.
 ”They’ll understand, Jerry.  You were just doing what you had to do.  You couldn’t control that.  Your parents understood that.”
 Jerry still stared, his glistening eyes pleading with Brad’s, desperately trying to agree.
 ”This place could make anyone crazy, Jerry.  They know that.  They know things like this are bound to happen.  We’ll just tell them it was-”  Jerry’s caged-animal look returned immediately and he started to sit up.
 ”I can’t tell them anything.  I need to end it-”  His eyes shot to the computer terminal where he had been working and he reached for it, straining against Brad’s superior strength.
 ”No, Jerry, don’t make this worse than it already is.”  Brad held him down easily, speaking softly.  “We can fix this.”
 Jerry whimpered again, “Let me end it, Brad.  Mom and Dad are happier, I know it… you and me, man, we can do it together… let me do it, man.  Please.”  He faded again into tears, quieter this time, and Brad brought him closer.  He held him to his body and felt Jerry’s shuddering breaths as he slipped his PalmPad out of his belt.  A few silent taps with his left thumb activated the Pad’s digital video camera, and a few more broadcast the scene on the emergency messaging service.  He slipped the PalmPad back in its holster silently.
 Jerry continued to weep and Brad spoke quietly to him, explaining how easily this entire situation could be fixed, and how everyone would understand.  He heard the hiss and grind of the lab’s door opening, and the sound of several rushing footsteps.  Jerry heard them too, and turned slowly to watch four large men with the shabby makeshift uniforms of Biodome Security come toward him.
 Brad smiled uncomfortably at the men as they approached.  “Everything’s alright, Jerry.  Let’s just go with these guys, and we’ll-”
 He stopped short as the first man reached them and immediately bent down and yanked Jerry to his feet.  The second man came up behind the first and circled around him to land a crushing kidney punch into Jerry’s back.  Thompson let out a strangled scream and fell forward into the first man’s arms.  Brad yelled unintelligibly and scrambled to his feet.
 The first security officer was holding Jerry in an awkward bear hug.  He stepped back from Giles, watching him warily, then threw Jerry to the side, sending him face-first into a computer terminal.  Jerry’s own blood mingled with his parents as it oozed from his nose and lip.  Brad lunged after his friend, but was immediately caught in a vice-like grip as the second officer grabbed him by the throat and pushed him backwards.  He landed hard on his tail bone and turned over, coughing. 
 He looked up again to see the third and fourth officers taking turns punching and kicking Jerry until he slumped to the floor again, this time pulling his head and legs in, trying to shield himself from the blows raining down from above. 
 Brad made one final move to protect his friend, and stumbled into a powerful left hook from security officer number two.  There was a bright white flash of pain, a feeling of weightlessness, and then black.

More to come!  Thanks so much for your interest!