OnDusk

Something about Christmas reminds Dad that it’s been a year since he last asked where my book is. He has somewhat revised his approach: less interrogation, more befuddled amusement. Thanks Dad. I told him I had completed some work. Commissions, short stories and the like. He has no interest in the commissions I take up from time to time.   I think he thinks it’s a distraction from the real work. It’s all real work Dad. Every single piece of writing is as good as I can make it. That's how it works. For a while now, I’ve been invited to write a piece of micro fiction from time to time. How to describe micro fiction?   Writer’s pain wise, it’s about a 7.   When an editor says, 750 words, or 500 words, or 36 tweets, that’s what I deliver.   Or used to. It’s not worth the pain anymore, and I will tell you why. I would get the final work in, then months later check the publication to discover every time that every other bastard had run over the word limit. ...

A short story of 657 words She held them with two fingers, rabbiting her way through the green beans.  He didn't eat at all.   She'd read a theory, that if two strangers, two humans stare into each other eyes for at least four minutes they can not help but love each other.  The first time they spoke, a rushed exchange in a corridor when he held her up with a hand, a quick word. ‘You wont like me when you hear about me’.   He was right.  She would love him untill the day he died.  Hotel rooms, airports, cars, meeting halls, movement, lights, distances halved and encounters timed to start and end precisely.  They kept it up for four years and then he walked in off the street to where she worked and found her and told her what she already knew – he wasn’t just tired, he wasn’t just fading a little.  He was seriously sick.   She had never thought about what he did before or away from her.   But of course he was married and he had c...