Corky tipped the bill of her cap back and scratched her forehead, staring up the length of the tall pine.
Fantasy
Lula at Forty
Lula, at forty, was too old to be a whore, and too smart to be a madam. Scratching a living from the arid Oklahoma soil did not appeal to her.
She never did cotton to book learning. At least, not the kind of learning offered at the town’s one-room school house. It squatted at the edge of town like a carbuncle, Continue reading
C’mon, cough it up!
Hands on hips, furious, pleading, she is at the end of her rope. “I know you have it. It was here just a second ago, right on that coffee table.”
He looks up at her from their communal couch, brows raised, close mouthed, hands clasped and resting in his lap.
Powerless
More than powerless: feckless. More than feckless: foolish.
Not foolish: mere spot on a distant edge of
Evening Patrol
Her body flickers dark and light, sinewy through shadow and scarlet setting sun. Already, slender blades of grass collect dew, in lieu of abundant and nourishing daylight. The snake’s rustling passage drops to cooler notes, notes soon to be silver and silent in the moonrise. Midsummer is long past, and her time to safely pass through the neighborhood and into her burrow is scant. Still, she pauses in her nightly patrol and lifts her diamond-shaped head, scenting vanilla and the rich tang of coffee from the small square of patio behind the one-story home. Continue reading
Tale from the Land of the Midnight Sun: Hjordis
A single star streaked through the wind-slashed northern night, highlighting the ice shards that skittered across the glacier and collected on the pelt of Magnhildr. Shivering, she howled as another contraction rippled through her body, and dropped to her knees. She panted and leaned against the single granite outcropping that pushed through the otherwise flat, blue expanse, broken only by shifting dunes of snow. Continue reading
A Tale of Two Tunnels
Burt the badger
Burt the badger had problems. There they were, the two of them walking past his new home, the home he had scraped and dug and built over and over because somebody kept dumping dirt into the entrance. It broke his tiny badger heart to see the Pam and her hubby together, laughing and pointing, knowing that he might never have his heart’s desire.
Valley of the Trolls 