Short story writing and creative fiction, essays and non-fiction stories.

He takes his pencil and sketches a few rough lines on the paper. The swift motion of his hand makes black streaks across the white. He brushes the hair from his eyes and bites his lower lip. From over his shoulder, I watch this master at work. My brother is an artist. With a pencil and paper, he can portray the most beautiful of God’s creation. Sometimes I will come home from school to find him painting a landscape of beautiful mountains underneath a purple sky. On other nights, I will find a canvas with his composition of a powerful hurricane passing over the innocent mother earth.

Today, the etchings on his paper begin to come together in the shape of a face. The gentle curve of a cheek becomes obvious. He carefully draws small ears and a nose. Then the figure is given an outline of long hair that flows over thin-framed shoulders. With a meticulous hand, he creates a thin midsection that expands at the hips. Two long legs end with tiny feet. Each toe is drawn to perfection. The portrait is faultless. I watch her with steady eyes; just as the angels must have watched over God’s shoulder as he began his work on man and woman.

“Who is she?” I ask as I hold the corner of the paper between two of my fingers. My brother doesn’t answer; he simply smiles and puts his pencil against the paper once more. Her mouth is drawn closed with two petite lips. As his work continues, I feel as though I am watching her birth occur in slow motion.

Her eyes take the longest. He spends a full hour completing them. Whenever I look into them, it is as though I can see every second of her life leading up to the moment in which my brother captured her. He must have seen her somewhere, I think to myself.

His wife may have left him, but he remained the gifted artist he was before.

She doesn’t know what she gave up.

Jake Wickenhofer is a seventeen-year-old writer living in Bridgeport, West Virginia.. His work has been accepted by magazines such as The Oracular Tree, Alienskin Magazine, Static Movement, AntipodeanSF, Flash Scribe, and of course Backhand Stories. His major influences are Greg Wickenhofer, Chuck Palahniuk, and Julie Maxey.

Posted in Fiction | 8 Comments »

There’s a copper-toned Queen in New York Harbor who, until recently, happily greeted visitors to the shores of our promised land. She now sits on Ellis Island politely checking green cards and work visas, reminding the huddled masses to wipe their feet on the way in, worried they might stay too long.

One of my roommates, Eimear, arrived in America three weeks ago from Ireland. She didn’t arrive by boat and has yet to visit Lady Liberty. In fact, Eimear isn’t even planning to say long, but would like to work while she’s here.

In order to work in the United Sates, however, non-citizens need three things:

1. Valid identification
2. Work visa
3. United States social security number

Even though she has an appropriate passport and visa, Eimear is having as difficult a time being issued a social security card as many of us will have collecting social security benefits.

This is especially unfortunate because Eimear might have found a job at the Build-A-Bear Workshop, a toy store where children design and construct their own stuffed bears. Build-A-Bear is the salad bar of toy stores, and as soon as she’s issued a social security number, Eimear will begin walking children through their bear buffet in Times Square.

(Times Square is an exciting chaos of light and sound where most tourists take their first bite from the Big Apple. Like the strip in Las Vegas, the French Quarter in New Orleans, and the McDonalds in Montana, Times Square is the social center of our city. Sinatra once sang that “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere.” The same holds true for a child wanting to build a bear at the Build-A-Bear Workshop in Times Square. Can he/she make one there? Yes. With over 200 locations in malls nationwide, can he/she also make one anywhere? Same answer. Yes.)

After completing all the necessary paperwork, Eimear arrived at the Build-A-Bear Workshop at 10:45, fifteen minutes before her scheduled 11:00 interview. Eimear didn’t realize, however, that you don’t interview to work at the Build-A-Bear Workshop, you audition. This audition is held for a group of twenty candidates andincludes, but is not limited to:

• An oral recitation of the Build-A-Bear pledge, from memory.
• An improvised group presentation entitled: “Build a memory. Build a Bear.”
• A personal testimony covering “my definition of teamwork,” “a time when I touched someone’s life,” and “what makes me special.”
• A 150 question ethics exam meant to evaluate whether or not the potential bear builder might one day qualify for relocation to Santa’s Workshop.

One applicant was so overcome by her own “a time when I touched someone’s life” story that, weeping, she had to be escorted from the room. Perhaps behind closed doors the interviewer told the girl that the Build-A-Bear Workshop would probably be too emotionally demanding an environment for someone with her sensitive temperament.

Or, she might have immediately been named employee of the month.

Eimear wasn’t as fortunate. After the three hour audition / interview, Eimear arrived at our apartment emotionally exhausted.

“How did it go,” I asked.

“I didn’t offer to work for free like the crying girl did, but I think it went quite well.”

“The crying girl? What crying girl?”

“The one who told a story about how she touched someone’s life by shaving her head because her friend went bald. I don’t know. I was fighting a wicked hangover and was having quite a hard time paying attention through her blubbering.”

“You interviewed at a toy store with a hangover?!”

Despite her condition at the interview (and after two subsequent call-backs), Eimear was offered a job at the Build-A-Bear Workshop – and she should have been. Even at her worst, Eimear is magnificent.

Even Eimear, however, doesn’t deny the irony of her own story.

Arriving hung-over at a Build-A-Bear interview is like showing up pregnant for a Snow White audition. The same rules apply.

In a world where image is everything, smile. It’s what’s on the outside that counts.

You can read more of Bryan’s work on his blog, sometimesroadsdiverge.blogspot.com

Posted in Non-Fiction | 4 Comments »

The blizzard commenced in earnest sometime between the appetizer and desert. My wife and I emerged into a snow-globe world where the flakes came down in clots as large as rabbit tails. The fresh snow erased the imperfections in a still-transforming area of the south Loop, painting the cracked sidewalks and vacant lots with a coat of temporary innocence.

We leaned together in a human teepee for support, Jill because she was wearing high-heel boots and was five months pregnant and me because of the bottle of wine. Jill had wet her lips with the Zinfandel to toast our anniversary and I had felt compelled to finish the remaining four and a half glasses before the check. The result was that I was less help to her than she was to me.
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Posted in Essays | 2 Comments »

Waiting at a bus stop on a redbrick pedestrian walkway, flanked by street lamps, surrounding a bubbling fountain that a flock of geese call their playground, where early morning risers throw away their pennies in exchange for loathly dreams, where a little girl is asking her grandmother what “cobblestones” are, a group of students and businessmen are boarding the mid-day bus system that operates several routes throughout the city of Fort Collins, Colorado. Others, who search for more viable means of transportation, are riding their bikes through downtown, across the Foothills trail, by an out-door venue where a band playing Bill Evan’s Autumn Leaves is tinting everyone’s moods with the saccharine modesty of a mid-Summer’s day, beneath a 19th century archway that leads to an alleyway encroached in vines and a cool shade that blankets clothing in chalk and factory ashes, that splits hair, that has a woody, robust smell from someone smoking a cigar outside of Cozzola’s Pizza three blocks away.
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Posted in Fiction | 2 Comments »

pjmorledge.com is having a short story competition. Check it out.

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