I had never been to a Mardi Gras before, but it sounded like it could be fun. In fact, I was quite excited about it. I hadn’t long been out of the army, so could do with a change of scene. It wasn’t at all like I expected. At first, I was a little hesitant about going on my own, but everyone was so friendly. If fact, most people were very friendly. Friends did warn me that going alone may be a problem as I could fall vict...

“Look, I know you’re all hot-to-trot on this crazy idea of yours, but just put a lid on it, okay? We’ve got real work to do without chasing ghosts.” “But Sarge, people have been disappearing every year! And they’re always…” He turned on me. “Listen, Minneapolis-fancy-pants POHL-leece man! This is N’Oleans,” he said, deliberately emphasizing his Louisiana accent, “and people disappear here all the fucking time! Especially...

Flowers of smoke choking the timbers curling around my forfeiture from chimney's sweep dark torches of roses now turn to ashes from the winter shed then turn to dead with eyes in the embers

Riding in on a charley horse with a crow rocking your nightmares away dressed in a blue suede suit God Bless, you buried gentlemen of roadkill and bones at times a tooth fairy when you sleep not as macabre as it sounds the crow doesn't kill it just eats

Who knows bellows better than the wind hung from a tree from where the roots run of which no one knows from what seed it comes like a gallows with long neck boughs hanging life in effigy suffering not smiles crying for the willows alone in the shadows kissed by the macabre of a clandestine moon longing to share whispers... "Rock-a-bye baby, in the treetop"

He noticed it as soon as he walked through the door, and was about to mention it, but then thought better of it as the youth settled behind his desk and set about turning on his computer. His black eye looked angry and painful, spread across the cheekbone and blending away on his right temple, as though prior to coming into work he had gotten himself into a nasty fight, him on the losing side. He seemed to get on with his...

As the night begins to swarm using nitrous oxide with a beer chaser teetering on the brink of insanity in the charms of the body farm beneath the dirt's jaw candy of lessons learned from the past with a cricket's toothache using death's pickaxe and dental floss for green gums teetering on the brink of insanity using nitrous oxide with a beer chaser

The air was sweet, heavy with the scent of ripe, cloying fruit. The sound of buzzing near the pomegranates that swayed and hung low in the heat was distracting me enough that the woman’s pulse thudded against mine, the salt of her blood splashed its way down my throat like stolen refugees running for asylum in the new land of a foreigners body, was background noise to the glare of the sun. It felt like my pores were squin...

It was difficult to be the type of person Serenity was in this day and age. Her last boyfriend Crenshaw did not understand her attraction to buildings over people. He didn’t understand why she hoarded, collected housing magazines and architecture manuals like others collect other more normal things. It was the geometry and beauty of them. They held a kind of symmetry that humanity didn’t. And so when she found this house,...

My soul is my gothic violin with the bow of the picador played softly in solo in the world of my dark oyster warming my marrows blood running cold in a caravan with a melody of strings and the madness it brings fathoms deep among the dead... my soul is my gothic violin

A shadow of screeching silence in a silhouette of all my fears a nocturnal coronation of widow wax dark as the ferries of night of my fleshless anatomy dragging my melting crayon wrapped in loneliness listening to the agony as it drips my forgettable

He really tried his best, but it was impossible. He just could not get interested in the talks and lectures at the ‘Agricultural Innovations For Sustainable Economic Landscapes’ conference, but afterwards, there was drinks and a buffet, deep in Mexico City in one of its most upmarket hotels which was attached to the centre, so that was okay, but his wife loved it. She lapped the whole event up, and he was secretly glad th...

Turning the key in the garage door, there was a satisfying click as it locked. His left hand held a claw hammer which was swung at it. It took three swipes to break the key. He nodded in satisfaction. “There, now we’re locked in,” he said, dropping the tool, then turning and walking across to a full-length Hanoi mirror, leaning against a drawer chest. In its reflection he could see the object of his disgust, Kenneth May,...

It was just a stupid joke. Everybody made fun of the deaf kid. He talked funny. And he did! We weren’t mean about it. He couldn’t hear us anyway, right? He was frikkin deaf. All we did was make fun of the way he talked. We said he sounded derpy. It’s not a bad word. It’s not even a swear word. Derpy. He did sound derpy. We weren’t wrong. Whatever. The sign down the block from where the deaf kid lived said DEAF CHILD AREA....

He stared out from behind the glass of a small frame, the picture taken 22 years ago as he stood on a beach, the sea behind him beneath a cloudless sky. She wanted to feel emotion at his passing, wanted to shed a tear, but couldn’t. He hadn’t been a bad husband, and he certainly hadn’t been good, but then neither had she. Yet he had seemed to treat her as though she wasn’t really there. She had been someone he could fall...