fiction
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I was over at Sam Disher’s place last Friday night. I walk past his house every day after work, and that evening, because of the heat, I’d picked up as many bottles of beer as I could carry. They were clanking around in the bags as I walked, straining the plastic, and he was standing…
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Of course, I was just holding out for adventure. I had a filmic view of the world, taken from watching movies on television with my mother. I tended to leave the room before the endings—I dreaded the sudden shift from film-world to reality. So I learned to love the snatches more than the whole. To…
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He turned out the light, lit a cigarette, and watched the street. The building opposite darkened. He developed his idea that behind one of its windows sat another, hidden observer. Usually, this would have thrilled him. He didn’t like to close his curtains, preferring the implied invitation of a nighttime room, lit or unlit, revealed…
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A tall glass, clean and sparkling, smelling of linen from a warm tea towel, is rinsed in cold water, then placed, wet, onto a rack in the freezer. A lime is quartered on a wooden chopping board. Limey fingers are licked. The freezer is opened again. The glass is surrounded by ice-smoke, which billows and…
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He took off his shirt. He dropped it onto the floor. He opened his laptop. He lit a cigarette. He opened the window. He poured two fingers of gin into a tumbler. He sniffed it. He put the glass on the ledge. He looked at himself in the mirror. He sucked in his stomach. He…
Barry Lee Thompson 