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Absolute Pitch

young bearded man with curly hair

The Man with Absolute Pitch

Greenlaw Tewkes Barret gets a burr in his bonnet. Auren Han gets another ulcer.

Dance gets…well, he’s getting something.

The viola… it’s great. It’s fabulous, Auren. I wish it were mine. “I will take the Ring, though I do not

Some New Doggerel for Bennie

Remember Bennie?
I do.
Poor guy, sitting there drinking cappucinos all the damn day, chatting up barristas with boobies, and getting paid for it. It’s sad. He says silly shit about shooting people, and they laugh. It’s all true, but …

Just a Back-Fang Spitting Viper Man

She remembers thinking, on the very first day of this flight into exile, that she had plenty of days where she looked at Dance, thinking, ‘Whatever that is, I’ve been doing my bloody best to fuck it into perfectly

legs in black mirror scale stockings

Democracy in Action

The place is full of birds, chirping. Quiet. Reverential, Preacher might say. Trees rustle along the river below the flat spot where the speakers stand. They’ve brought chairs, for those who are waiting to speak. There’s a whole row of …

Pen holding his coffee

Weathercock

Pen doesn’t want a cigarette. He wants a drink.
His girlfriend is out back again, high in the trees. She’s pulling feathers again, doesn’t even know she’s doing it. Scares him to death.
He puts down the little stack of …

candles lighting brown stairs

Iscen

Pen, hand on the bannister, looks from Iscen to Callie Moorehouse, his mouth open in disbelief.

Callie is nine. Nine. Dav’s age. She’s littler than Dav. Her hair is tied back in one of those hairties with bobbles on it, …

dark old truck on dirt road

Wind Is Picking Up

It doesn’t matter that it’s been nearly three years since they were both – officially – killed in combat over in Afghanistan, along with the rest of their squad. They’ve spent that time flying below everyone’s radar, and it’s kept …

bearded older men in tall hat

Keys

“Well, first of all,” Barret is saying in his dream, “I don’t really get why there’s such a reluctance to actually get the instruments to play together, in these student pieces. Unless we get all Adorno on it and talk …

colorful lichens on branch

A Lesson in Improv

It started off quietly.

Bored, Dance had lain back there resenting the heat. They’d parked on the last one of three concrete house pads at the end of a rough-graded gravel street. The developer abandoned the project some time ago, …

Just Love the Smell of Bug Ichor in the Morning

The two men are watching them as they get out of the Jeep, the way a man who has nothing left to lose watches something that he suspects might kill him – half anticipating the worst, half eager. Drin has …