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REVOLUTION BOOKS
American Idol is now available at Revolution Books in Cambridge, MA!
Don’t live in Cambridge? Ask your local book store to carry it or ORDER it HERE
Veidt
Do you like movies? Do you like comic books? Do you like half naked super heroines?
Well who the fuck doesn’t?
Veidt.com has all that. And it has a review of AMERICAN IDOL!
Click here HERE to READ
DUBIOUS GIFTS FROM THE MAGIC SHOP
DUBIOUS GIFTS FROM THE MAGIC SHOP
by
William J. White
Petey stood by the front door, looking out the screen as his Uncle Sully squeezed his kind-of-round body out from under the steering wheel of his vintage ‘clunker’. Sully was assisted in that endeavor, no doubt, by the use of some words seldom heard in Petey’s household. As his Uncle waddled his way toward Petey, the boy checked the lock “Hello, Uncle Sully,” he said, wishing he could have went along with his mother to the store. As Sully reached for the doorknob, Petey really wished that he had gone with his mother.
“Hey, Petey,” his uncle remarked, trying to twist the knob with his stubby hand, “Ain’t you gonna let me come in?” His wide grin showed an uneven row of tobacco-stained teeth, causing Petey to shiver nervously.
“Can’t do it, Uncle Sully. Mom’s orders…”
“So she’s still mad, huh?” He wiped the sweat drops from his balding forehead, with an equally sweaty, and hairy forearm. “Boy, ‘neph’, for a widow raising a nine-year old kid, it must be the ‘rancid pits’, but… well, she just doesn’t know how to forgive. And I don’t know why.”
“Well, for gracious me, Uncle Sully,” Petey remarked, attempting to hide his sarcasm. “You don’t think it might have been the fountain-pen from your Magic Shop that you gave her; that shot black ink all over her new white rug…nah, couldn’t be. Maybe because you couldn’t stop laughing…”
“My sis-in-law,” he said, shaking his head slowly, “ just doesn’t have a sense of humor.”
“You know, Uncle Sully…I think you might be right. When you gave her that stick of gum that made her mouth turn green for two weeks, she didn’t like that a bit. From the Magic Shop?”
Uncle Sully and his yellow teeth grinned down at Petey. “One of our best sellers.” He wiped his head with a nasty-looking handkerchief, and said: “Sure is hot today, Petey. I guess since you won’t let me in to cool off, I’ll just have to take my Magic Shop’s gift to you back home and put it in some water.” He wrapped his fat fingers around the ‘kerchief’ and squeezing out the sweat, replaced it back into his hip pocket. “They need lots of water,” he said, turning to leave.
Petey waited until his uncle was near his car, then shouted: “Uncle Sully… What kind of gift?” The boy opened the door, leaving it to slam shut while he ran to his uncle’s car. “Can I see it?”
Sully reached through the open car window and retrieved a shoebox, which he held toward Petey. With a wide smile on his face, he pulled it back, opened a corner, and peeked in. Turning to his nephew, he said, “It looks thirsty, Petey. Why don’t you go fetch that wash-tub hanging against the house, get the hose, and fill it up…”
“Can I see it?”
Placing his sweaty hand on the back of his nephew’s head; tousling his hair, he said, “Not only can you see it, but when you’ve filled that tub, I’ll let you hold it.”
Petey was away in a flash, with his uncle waddling behind him.
While filling the tub, Petey looked up at his Uncle Sully. “It isn’t a snake, is it? Mom would never let me keep a snake…”
Peeking into the box, Sully replied: “Not a snake…”
“She might let me keep a goldfish, Uncle Sully. I’ve never had a goldfish before.”
“Petey, I think you have enough water, it’s about to run over…No, kid, it’s not a
Goldfish. Come over here and take it out of the box.”
Rubbing his hands on his pants, Petey reached for the lid, hesitating for a moment to ask Sully: “It won’t bite, will it?”
Smiling down at his nephew, he replied: “Oh no, kid. He won’t bite…He might lick you with his tongue, though.” With that said, a few chuckles burst from his wide mouth. “Go on now, nephew. Reach in and grab him. When you have him tight in your hand, bring him out and put him in the tub, and hold him against the bottom.”
Reaching into the box, Petey felt something moving against his hand; something that tried to evade his searching fingers. “Gotcha!” Petey shouted, removing it from the box. “Oh, it’s a bullfrog, Uncle Sully… Oh, I’ve never had a bullfrog before… thank you oh, so much…!”
“Hurry, nephew!” Sully said harshly, pushing the boy against the tub. “Get him under the water… Keep him there until I get to my car… I don’t want to scare him.”
While holding the frog--Which seemed to be getting bigger…and stronger, Petey turned to watch his uncle scurrying to his car.
Over his shoulder, Sully shouted out some final instructions: “No matter what, kid, don’t let go of him.”
Even before Sully was able to manage himself between the car seat and the steering wheel, Petey’s hands were beginning to lose their hold. His pet was, indeed, growing at an enormous rate. By the time Petey’s hands were no longer able to encircle its body, its head was protruding above the tub; water was being sloshed all over his clothes. In desperation, Petey grabbed his pet around its fat neck. In an instant, he was dragged off his feet, and finally losing his hold, fell backwards onto the ground from where he could see large dark eyes blinking at him and before he could move, the huge flat mouth opened wide, and he was snatched up by a long pink tongue so sticky he was unable to unwrap himself. He only had time to scream before he was whipped into darkness.
While good ‘ol Uncle Sully was speeding away, he was laughing so hard, the tears were spraying from his eyes. “Okay, Sis,” he said aloud, “I bet you’re gonna love that gift from my “Magic Shop!”
William J. White was born and raised in Cincinati, Ohio. He graduated from High school, served four years in the US Navy, and then went to work for the city of Cincinnati. After retiring, he worked for Edgecliff College in Cincinnati for five years, retired again, and moved with his wife to Monticello, KY where they built their home adjacent to huge Lake Cumberland.
William started writing short stories in January of 2010, four of which are still trying to find a home with some lucky publisher. Lark Magazine has published: DON'T MESS WITH LILLY 7/10/11
DUBIOUS GIFTS FROM THE MAGIC SHOP 3/21/11
WISDOM SITS ON A PARK BENCH will be published 11/6/11
Thick-skinned Cat's Can't Hurry Love
Each month (give or take) I plan to post a piece of fiction from a guest contributor.
This month’s Story Of The Month comes to us from Kyle Hemmings.
Thick-skinned Cats Can’t Hurry Love
by
Kyle Hemmings
Kat is looking for a boy with green pumpkin eyes, the kind that glow in the after-glow. Darkness may be his sister who died at a young age, falling from a tenement window. Nobody heard the sound. Nobody can confirm the progress of their own deaths. It's just another unspoken lie, the consistency of peanut butter eaten from fingers. Kat thinks she met this boy one night at the Soho club, Detritus from Stars. She was too drunk to laugh at the number of krazy girls falling on their asses or pretending to be suicidal cherry blossoms. It was obvious that nobody on the dance floor had any kind of glue.
The boy with green after-glow eyes was saying something about sole or soul, then he whispered into Kat's ear that they could both have type XX blood. He disappeared and Kat went home with a stranger who had an arthritic mother still living with him. On an old army cot, a real collector's item from the 4th Ave. Wars, they were quiet, palm against each other's mouth, dancing without the need for amphibious feet. In the morning, Kat slipped past the snores and goat-sounds of the arthritic mother, who slept with her shoes on. At home, Kat had the sensation of green fur falling from her life, which she associated with the boy she never got to know. She thought about him throughout her day at the paralegal office, among the Tupperware parties and the bosses banging shadows against walls, among the men who had given up on speaking and those who had become high-tech walkie talkies without the need for charging.
Kat visits the old magician, Octosullus, on the second floor above an antique lamp shop in Chinatown. She tells him about the boy who had whispered code into her ear, about the dream-type they might both share. Octosullus listens patiently; he has miniature fir trees in his eyes. The boy who will love you, he says in a voice of spark and red leaf, has a double X cut into his heart. But be careful at night. This is a city of serial killers who work slow and without electric drills.
The old man says that he needs to see Kat's heart.
Kat stands and pulls off her Tee shirt, the one with The DeathRock Mutants design. Octosullus reaches inside the body cage and pulls out the heart with the ease of pulling rabbit tails from under the streets. Yes, says the old man, inspecting the tortuous vessels, it has a double X near the coronary. He must have touched you in some way. You will find him on the outskirts of the city. Only at night. He can't sleep. He collects the edges of all sorts of things. He is bleeding from your wireless love. He might return to you when you feel love is impossible.
I never thought love was impossible, says Kat in a soft, wiry tone. I always thought it was improbable. But then again there are pigeons in the air.
Yes, says the old man, nodding, there are pigeons in the air.
Kat twists her head and torso through the Tee shirt. She sits down and stares pensively at the old man. His eyes are tired; the fir trees sink into a red dusk. She listens to the rustle on the pre-dawn street, the tough talk of jealous lovers: man to man, girl to guy, self to self. She sees herself and the green-eyed boy lying side by side near dumpsters, the next casualties in the 4th Ave. Wars. Perhaps murdered by the loveless mutants living on L-shaped streets, turtle-shell sub-lets. But the moon will still rise. Young girls with odango hairstyles, who loved being called "Bunny," will still pose before lonely mirrors. And the cats. The cats will survive too.
Kyle Hemmings is the author of several chapbooks of poems: Avenue C (Scars Publications), Fuzzy Logic (Punkin Press), and Amsterdam & Other Broken Love Songs (Flutter Press). He has been pubbed at Gold Wake Press, Thunderclap Press, Blue Fifth Review, Step Away, Elimae, and The Other Room. He blogs at http://upatberggasse19.blogspot.com/
PULP!
69 Flavors of Paranoia. Well now you can own it as part of this kickass anthology from Twit Publishing
BUY from Twit Publishing
Five Before Chaos
AMERICAN IDOL gets a kickass review on
Five Before Chaos
READ it HERE
THE BOX
American Idol
is available for pre-order from Black Bed Sheet Books
Keep your eyes peeled for reviews
This book is going to shake the earth!
Pre-order from Black Bed Sheet Books
Gospels of Blood Psalms of Despair
Gospels of Blood Psalms of Despair from
S A M Publishing
Gospels of Blood Psalms of Despair is
Sex and Murder Magazine’s first year Best Of anthology.
Check it out on Amazon.com
SHADOWPLAY
It’s available at Amazon.com
Darwin's Demons
Ring in the New Year with tales of terror! Read my story Darwin’s Demons over at 69 Flavors of Paranoia!
Here’s the LINK
Novus Creatura
It’s available at Amazon.com
storySouth Million Writers Award
The storySouth Million Writers Award Notable Stories of 2009
“the best online short stories published during 2009”
My story “THE FACE” first published in UNDERGROUND VOICES
was selected as a storySouth Million Writers Award Notable story of 2009
Here’s the LINK y’all
Sideshow Fables
I have recently learned that my story, The Box, will appear in Sideshow Fables issue #3.
Sideshow Fables is a magazine of freaky circus fiction. You can link to their website HERE
I’ll provide further links and updates as we near the publication date.
Welcome
The site is in its infancy, so it’s still a bit sparse, but I’ll be making updates as I go along.
Please let me know if you encounter any difficulties.