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Tag Search Results For 'very short novels' (139)
Enough Asparagus
Very Short Novels | October 3rd 2008 by davidbdale
I feel as if I’d met you yesterday though it’s been thirty years and at my age that means I die tomorrow or at best the day after. So what shall we do this blue evening streaked with gray? If I’m to cook you one last dinner, I want to know youâ read more
Particle Accelerator
Very Short Novels | September 21st 2008 by davidbdale
Ron and Don are in the same class. Jesus wept. Lovely, youthful, naive boy-god Jesus didn’t know the half of it. I go behind the burning bush outside the cafeteria and puke. They could so easily be separated, I tell the principal in her sheer gray read more
Foreplay
Very Short Novels | September 16th 2008 by davidbdale
—What if she dies while I’m away? —You can’t stay home until she dies. —I can’t leave either, while she’s alive. —I don’t like where this is going. —What would you do? Would you call me? —What would you want me to do? — —How read more
But if These Chains Should Break
Very Short Novels | August 31st 2008 by davidbdale
With every swing she ages—sometimes younger by a minute, sometimes older by a generation—away she swings, back she falls, away. I stand on widespread feet, in sneakers on sand, in one spot for hours, pushing, waiting, pushing, but even I, bending read more
Boy Band
Very Short Novels | August 27th 2008 by davidbdale
More crosstown than up or down, they blew through the city like leaves. At the river, they skidded into a headwind off the water and eddied through islands of trash that fronted the docks, swirling beneath the bridge they had never crossed, and went read more
Welcome Signs
Very Short Novels | August 24th 2008 by davidbdale
The sign at the border with firm politeness welcomes me in my own language. I take it on faith it doesn’t play favorites but welcomes readers of other languages with equal grace, though why it thinks the Chinese will follow this road here I can’t read more
Message in a Bottle
Very Short Novels | August 22nd 2008 by davidbdale
Chapter Four. If you retrieved the first three bottles, you know the urgency of our confinement and how to help us. If anything, we are more desperate now as the authorities close in on the operation and, despite the value of what we produce, it matt read more
Fully Loaded
Very Short Novels | August 17th 2008 by davidbdale
As far as I’m concerned, no teacher goes into a classroom without concealed weapons. I know I never have. Chalk is a bullet in the right hands. Students have no idea what I’m up to or whether what I’m teaching them is algebra or how to live. Th read more
Feed the Jar
Very Short Novels | August 15th 2008 by davidbdale
He didn’t sleep at night until he had fed the jar. He hustled pool and won: nobody figured a kid could shoot. Mondays he caught shifts at the deli unless the regular slicer came back sober from the casinos. He ran deliveries of whatever didn’t bu read more
Death Threats
Very Short Novels | August 12th 2008 by davidbdale
I wonder if the President feels as threatened as I do when I read his mail. So many citizens feel so wronged and express it in similar ways. We’re not naive at the White House; we know the country isn’t perfect, but how would torturing the Presid read more
A Choir of Tubas
Very Short Novels | August 10th 2008 by davidbdale
Travelers are forever being told the whens and wheres of the city: when the church was reconstructed, where the Romans took their baths, how the rains affect the rosemary crop, but all they really want to know is why the sad man shuffles on his knees read more
The Proper Use of Man
Very Short Novels | August 8th 2008 by davidbdale
As I packed my bags for Chrysalis House, I reviewed conflicting reports from staff whose clients, all old, had achieved 100 years or more and begun the change. I make no claim to their veracity. Some on the floors had started a third set of teeth, I read more
Breaking Camp
Very Short Novels | August 7th 2008 by davidbdale
We haven’t always envied clerks and stockers at the Big Box store. Now we chat with Carl in appliances or listen to Edith at register 6 and we dream of following them home for a hot dog dinner and a night with the TV. A night in the family room. A read more
How the Kite Got its Tail
Very Short Novels | August 6th 2008 by davidbdale
Nature didn’t stand a chance against ruthless inventor Volante Volanti. By carving a simple channel through a gentle rise, he changed the course of a river for the noblemen he served, thus moving the border between two city-states and annexing to h read more
Writing Prescriptions
Very Short Novels | August 5th 2008 by davidbdale
Her guide did not lead the new doctor all the way to the village; instead, halfway up the rise, he gestured with his stick toward the cluster of huts in the high distance. Four days they had traveled together without talking, by oxcart, by flatboat, read more
Space Junk
Very Short Novels | August 3rd 2008 by davidbdale
I do so much more than gather data. My predecessor, the AIM12, was essentially a gather-and-analyze drone, but even she had vested interests, if I may say—and because of my protocol, I may—before they unloaded her higher functions and transferred read more
The Boat Ride
Very Short Novels | August 2nd 2008 by davidbdale
They came at night and brought me and my son down to the boat. I told him to bring his doll, but he thought we would be coming back. He didn’t want the men to see him carry a doll he called Mommy. The men were not patient. They didn’t speak our d read more
Liplock on the Clock
Very Short Novels | August 1st 2008 by davidbdale
Their lips locked, as if to prove nothing is casual. They had gone in for friendly affection and found themselves committed to something much more. Had they been teens in braces, snagged wires would have explained it; as it was, some inexplicable suc read more
My Black Baby
Very Short Novels | July 29th 2008 by davidbdale
People assume we adopted her. (I would assume so too, except that I witnessed her unlikely birth to my very white wife by way of a nearly transparent, very white, me. I don’t object to the riddle of our mismatched hues—what am I saying?, object?, read more
Litany
Very Short Novels | July 24th 2008 by davidbdale
While I still remember, the color of the snow before me while behind me on the high ridge, fire sings through the dry timber at dawn, driving us down to the river. Before there are none, these trout like muscles flexing in the current as they track t read more
The Cutting Board
Very Short Novels | July 18th 2008 by davidbdale
The next day was entirely different. Longer hours of sun were bringing the thaw. Victor had gone ice-fishing alone on the mostly frozen lake, not frozen enough where he had fallen through. I sat in the kitchen with his wife smoking cigarettes while t read more
Rescue Work
Very Short Novels | July 12th 2008 by davidbdale
I’m a matter-of-fact girl in a clerical collar with a few things of value to share. One, it’s good to share. Two, everybody has value. I can’t explain death or the consequences it casts backward into our lives or forward onto our survivors but read more
The Other Way Around
Very Short Novels | July 5th 2008 by davidbdale
Read aloud quickly, starting now, repeat if necessary. I drive a Vitamin|Energy truck. It’s one of those drinks that looks like a prescription. You’re not supposed to care how it tastes, which is lucky; it tastes like kids’ cough syrup, on read more
Hopscotch for the Blind
Very Short Novels | July 2nd 2008 by davidbdale
When our favorite couple decided to marry and chose for their date a Saturday in July already charged with bright significance, we had to insist, they couldn’t have it. A valiant naval captain had gone down defiantly with his ship defending our coa read more
Trashpicker
Very Short Novels | June 26th 2008 by davidbdale
I spend the week wondering what I can do for him, not just unload but bestow on him to brighten his prospects without, I admit, ever wanting his hopes to glow more brightly than mine and yet, I want him to be happier to receive than I am to relinquis read more
Too Much Ice
Very Short Novels | June 22nd 2008 by davidbdale
Sit here and wait and don’t move. I’m tired of telling you. Good, now stop squirming. Good, and stop whimpering. I need a moment’s peace. Are those your feet on the furniture? What do we say about that? Good, there’s hope for you. Now use you read more
Executioner’s Weekend
Very Short Novels | June 19th 2008 by davidbdale
If paper targets came to life just once, I’d never return to the range—I might set down my weapon forever—but while they’re silhouettes of simple black on simple white, I’ll shoot until the world is out of ammo, and surprisingly the opposit read more
Weekday Executioner
Very Short Novels | June 16th 2008 by davidbdale
Nobody has ever asked me to find anybody they didn’t want me to kill. I don’t mean to complain. Unlike others in our group, I have a clear objective, but it’s not the way I’d like to be defined, as a killer per se, except in relation to a job read more
Disproving Angels
Very Short Novels | June 10th 2008 by davidbdale
—So, what are we looking at here? —You tell me. —It’s a . . . smudge, right? —Charlie says it’s the soul. —He also thinks gluons are guardian angels. —That’s hard to disprove too. We’ve seen it all—or most of it—in this lab, a read more
Temple’s Mentor
Very Short Novels | June 8th 2008 by davidbdale
Between the weeklong mentoring retreat and the four-day money migration futurecasting conference, Temple had only one day left for work, and perhaps because of that pending workload, his adventure in idol worship began that day, at a train platform o read more
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