Foreword These stories are based in Australia and deliberately written in the idiom the characters would use. I know from previous comments many readers have enjoyed that very aspect of it. Some issues in language variations I anticipated and built translations into my narrative, others - especially on this site - have caught me by surprise especially in...
A Note From the Author: I lived in Armenia for two years (between 1995-97) as a Peace Corps volunteer. While I never visited NAGORNO-KARABAKH itself, I do recall being able to see the comet HALE-BOPP, which was visible to the naked eye for a record 18 months as it passed by our planet. In ancient times comets were always seen as harbingers of evil, and sinc...
Mark was down in the dumps. Sitting at the bar he was moaning to Stan about his boring marriage. “I sit on my own in my den whilst my wife sits upstairs watching cable.” “I don’t know what’s gone wrong. Tammy’s beautiful, but there’s no spark, she spends more time looking at herself in the mirror than she does speaking to me.” “We’ve been married twenty y...
New York is a wonderful place, but in Early Spring it can sometimes be miserable. Especially for a Cab driver. Tuesday night is usually a good night for a Hack. But this night my fare box wasn't even half full. A bone chilling rain fell all day, chasing most of the business off the streets. The gratuities were plentiful, so the night wasn't a complete wa...
The funny thing about time is the way it affects the memory, distorts it. I have memories that are only vague recollections. I see them in my mind's eye only in black and white, like a Saturday afternoon matinee on BBC2. Yet all this is fresh in my mind, burned on my soul forever. Ask my peers, and they might give you a different version. Do I care that my m...
© Copyright 2007 Chapter 9: Tourniquet Brenda arrived at Gloria's house just in time for lunch. Ashley and Darlene weren't due for at least an hour. She found Juana humming a song to herself. She gulped down some of her iced tea. Without the vodka, the taste of the mint and fresh lemon were somehow stronger. "I saw Raul walking away looking kind of glum,"...
PART 1: THE MALL "Dude, look at that!" said Austin to his high school buddies Josh and Zach. They looked at where Austin was pointing, toward a woman bending over to get something out of the trunk of her car, which was parked at the mall parking lot. She was bent over at the waist and her tiny pink skirt made no effort to cover her ass, which was tight, rou...
As he was led eagerly away by the young maid, he looked back with some disappointment as he was taken from the woman he most desired; she smiled and blew a kiss at him as though he had just attended an appointment about a decorating job with her, he smiled unsurely back – she seemed so nonchalant about what had just occurred -he watched her beautiful bottom...
I first met Ivan the second semester of my junior year while studying art in Florence. He was a friend, or I should say, a business associate of my father's and he called me up in late April to invite me to dinner. I had never met Ivan, but I remember my father telling me stories about him. He was rich, rather eccentric, and a serious collector of sculpture....
As I looked down at the frosted mug of beer in front of me I shook my head slowly. It has been six months since this all started and I just needed to have some time to reflect on all that has happened. It all started on a Tuesday last April when John Meyer came into my office and asked me if I wanted to stop and have a beer with him after work. I said that...