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

Watching you grow, and going through the changes in your life.
That’s how I know; I always wanna be there.
Whenever you feel you need a friend to lean on, here I am
Whenever you call, you know I’ll be there

Olivia Newton John ‘Let Me Be There’

I was in a deep comfortable sleep when I woke up to loud pounding coming from upstairs. My heart pounded in perfect symmetry with each step coming closer and closer to my room. The last few steps stomping down the stairs where like an eternity, time became still, my thoughts became numb, and everything was in slow motion. As my mother turned the door knob to my room, I slowly glanced at the clock in a dreamy like state. It was 3:34a.m., which could only mean one thing; the day had come that my father lost his 9 month battle with cancer. Although this was the last and worst memory of him, it is definitely not the only one.

The song above is one that my father and I used to sing together. We would go to my aunt’s house once a week. In her basement was a karaoke machine equipped with thousands of songs to sing to our hearts content. However, I always chose the same one. I would grab two microphones, which prompted my father to get up and get ready to sing with his little girl. I handed him his microphone and he picked me up and sat me on the folding table so we could be eye to eye. I did the melody; he did the harmony. We would stay there, in that cold empty basement for hours, just taking turns singing song after song, but no song held a candle to the one that my daddy and me sang together.
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Posted in Essays | 2 Comments »

What I always forget about long naps is that when I wake up, I feel disoriented, heavy, impatient, groggy, mean, and sick. I yawn, stretch my arms into a Village People “Y,” and I feel tired, except I just slept three hours. When I’m like that, the photo of me on the T.V. stand, the one where I’m wearing the oversized Florida sweatshirt, makes me look like an elephant. Or I hang up the phone on Jay because he’s singing into the receiver. I am impatient and heavy and groggy, mean, sick.

Today, I hate that I napped at all like I hate having taken that photograph of me swallowed up in faded blue and orange cotton. I should have been wide awake and energized because then I could have more quickly reached for the injured arm my next-door neighbor thrust forward when I answered the door. I could have been more gracious when he asked for peroxide and a band-aid. Instead, I cut my eyes, glaring at him before going into the bathroom to get the supplies.

“Can you do it for me?” he asks, and steps forward, holds the door open with his good arm. “I’m not crazy or nothing. I swear it.”

“Come on,” I sigh, wave him through the front door and to the bathroom, to the sink. “Put it here.”
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Posted in Fiction | 1 Comment »

I’ve had the pleasure of publishing a few pieces from members of Write Words, a great writing community based in the UK.

They asked me to tell them a little more about Backhand Stories, so they’ve published a short interview with me about the site. You can read it here.

Martin

Posted in Writer's Resources | No Comments »

The retreat was high in the hills and hundreds of years away. Here they rose with the Sun and slept with its setting, under low eaves, on rows of futons head to toe, occasionally visited by field mice. They took tea, chanted mantras, shared the daily tasks with few words and drank from cold springs of water and wisdom. Clarity filled the air. Bai thought that if any place could do her good, this would. But after many days her heart was still heavy and her belly light.

The elderly priest, Hui noticed her absence from the morning meditation and crept from the hall silently to seek her. His deep saffron robes caught the rising Sun and turned his skin to alabaster white. Bai was sitting by the old well in the new courtyard. The young woman looked at him upward through down-cast eyes, pearled with tears. Ancient he seemed to her. What did he know of modern life? Hui read the thought in her face.
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Posted in Fiction | 4 Comments »

“I walked her down the aisle today – happiest day of my life so far. It doesn’t seem so long ago that she was climbing up onto my knee to make a nest with her special blanket, ready for a bedtime story.

“Time flies – doesn’t it? You blink and twenty years have passed, like that. Just look at her now; she’s a beautiful young woman.

“Always was the apple of her Daddy’s eye.

“I said to my wife when we found out the news – I’ll do anything to be able to see her married. Well, you do - don’t you?

“And it’s been worth it. Oh yes! All the operations, and the tugging around; the waiting to hear if it was my turn. When I was on my last legs, and no sight of a donor, they put the idea of this new experimental op to me; it wasn’t what I wanted – far from it. Well you don’t want intimate contact with a pig – they’re unclean animals. Dirty. And there are all sorts of religious red lights. But these specially modified ones they grow nowadays are the best match for human tissue, they said. My best chance.

“So I signed the forms and went in for the op; 18 hours on the table, I was. Groundbreaking work I was told – made medical headlines around the world. But that’s not why I let them do it; I don’t care about being a footnote in history.

“I just wanted to see my girl on her big day.

“And it was worth it. I’ll sort out what’s what with the Almighty - later.”
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Posted in Fiction | 3 Comments »