Off the beaten trail from The French Quarter. A tiny gutted Craftsman bungalow, one story, an open porch. Enough space for eight tables, like we always dreamed. Two on the porch, two in the windows. The others in the middle of that slanted Creole living room we called our restaurant. You insisted we had moreContinue reading “Wait”
Category Archives: flash fiction
Whitechapel Cat Calls
When he’s gone this long, he usually leaves the terrace window open. Forgotten, or delayed. Either way, the food’s running thin, and the city’s seductions are calling. The strays in heat are yowling and leisurely carriages are clip-clopping outside my brickhouse lair. I pounce up the stairs to my landlord’s study, three flights above theContinue reading “Whitechapel Cat Calls”
Hello, I am Ego
Hello Ego, good to meet you. Again. We’ve met before haven’t we? I’m sure of it. You’ve always been there, so often in fact, that I mistake you for a friend. So often I mistake you for me. You do a clever impression of me, by the way. Your voice, your accent, the expressions andContinue reading “Hello, I am Ego”
You’re Only Visiting Here
Imagine for a moment that you’re not from this place. Not from time or space, or anything that might pass as pattern or order. Imagine instead that you’re a different sort of being, something beyond this world, and beyond comprehension. You are extra dimensional, beyond dimension or without one. An entity of pure light. TheContinue reading “You’re Only Visiting Here”
Stitch, a horror poem (image version)
Cagey Beasts (edit)
Shuffling his feet along the graveled city zoo trail, Nikolai pauses at the diverging fork and looks down at his prompt, typed neatly on a roughly cut strip of copier stock. ‘Find your spirit animal, identify one core value you share.’ This was an obvious and shallow team building exercise given to managers at anContinue reading “Cagey Beasts (edit)”
A Captain’s Compass North
The iceberg breaking hull was a master chef’s knife, wasted and gliding deftly through calm, buttery arctic waters. Clouds were pulling themselves apart and winter’s night sky constellations shone torchlights across scattered icebergs safely in the shadowy distance. This polar expedition passed quietly as the crew laid slumber and the captain handed over the night’sContinue reading “A Captain’s Compass North “
The Haunting of Mr. Query
The Haunting of Mr. Query, a gothic tale by Paul Carreo It was an autumn of lamentations, the day I broke my fell stare from pale rain-blurred windows. My name is Franklin Arthur Query of the House of Query, the last of my line. I was spending my waning days scratching at the bones ofContinue reading “The Haunting of Mr. Query”
The Hermit and the Bear
The Hermit and the Bear, a shorter fiction parable Once upon a time, there lived an old hermit in the wilderness of a deep forest who was tormented every night by a surly, burly old grizzly bear. Every evening, the bear would make her rounds to the man’s small cabin on a sunny clearing fromContinue reading “The Hermit and the Bear”
Paul Carreo 