dreamszilla

Two rival writing groups engage in a literary rumble for access to their favoured corner of the Mega-Libro Bookstore. Image generated with OpenAI I had no idea how it had escalated to this, but there we were in the Java Jones Café in Mega-Libro Bookstore downtown ready to rumble, two writers' groups face-to-face in a confrontation that resembled a Saturday Night Live parody of West Side Story. Just beyond the Prose and Cons, a coffee barista had leaned over the customer-free counter and watched our exchange as he sipped away at a foamy mocha-cappa-frappa-something. The Prose and Cons was the other writer's group whose members mentored recently-released criminals, encouraging them to use writing as a creative outlet. I had hated the Prose and Cons. Maybe not so much the whole group, but I had hated their leader, Rich. He was a smarmy, egomaniacal 30-something substitute teacher who had a few publication credits in small magazines. To hear him talk, you'd think he'd won ...

Meg reminisces about her summer vacations growing up, reflecting on her friendship with Charlie and her interest in Henry. Image generated with OpenAI When the three of us were eight, I saw Henry for the first time. He painted on the rocky pier above the tidepools where Charlie and I hunted for hermit crabs. Even back then, Henry wore a tan fedora hat like an old man, and I knew from the serious way he studied the easel that he was on a whole other level from us regular eight-year-olds. His presence made me notice the world more: the cove with its fishing boats bobbing near the cliffs, the dogs with their salted fur stealing sandwiches from unguarded blankets, the tourist women lying face down with their bikini-tops untied. I tried to keep Mom's word about them, slutty , squashed down in my mind. But whenever I saw hints of skin, the word slutty popped back up again. Even the twelve side-by-side cabins of the Seaside Motel where Charlie's family and mine stayed, seemed more...

In Budapest, a teacher visits the home of one of his students and is struck by the contrasts in his city. Image generated with OpenAI The 11th district has wide streets and trees so tall they nearly cover the tram wires. When we walk to the schools to talk about the virus and the blood, the air smells like lime blossoms. Balázs is a student who listens; he wears a sweater that is too thin for November, and he sits in the front row. He doesn't say much, but he looks at the diagrams of the cells with a focused, quiet intensity. Veins branch blue and red across the projector screen while the other students whisper to one another or stare out the windows toward the street below. Balázs watches as if the body is something he himself might someday need to repair. One day I see him at the fruit stand near my house. He is stacking apples, making sure the bruised ones are at the bottom. The owner of the stand is my acquaintance; he tells me Balázs is a good worker, that a colleague gave him...

A woman is so preoccupied with her dying husband that an alien invasion fails to make much of an impression. Image generated with OpenAI I was at the hospital when the aliens landed. I'd made up my face that morning, but I'd eaten since then, and cried, and laid my cheek against his. I wiped my face naked with wet tissues and rubbed it with my bare hands, something soothing about the gesture despite everything. At the hospital, other patients often said they were bone-tired, and the metaphor of the phrase had lost all meaning for me in literalness, but I was. And nerve-tired and sinew-tired and lung-tired. Pericardium-tired. The muscles in my palms were sore where I'd squeezed his hands for hours, and my calves ached, and my lower back didn't bear thinking about. I hadn't slept since the morning before, and I thought I'd have a sandwich and then get some sleep on the cot in his room and maybe, if I were very lucky, I would die in my sleep and not have to watch...

Careful, frugal, boring tax lawyer Jeremy is baffled at how he has attracted a beautiful Lebanese boyfriend half his age. Image generated with OpenAI Jeremy was old. Jeremy was out past his bedtime. There was no chance in hell this gorgeous, willowy, bearded twenty-something maybe-Lebanese dervish with the percussive laugh could possibly have any interest in acquiring the digits of a chubby forty-nine-year-old corporate tax attorney spastically shuffling all alone in the southwest corner of Club Fascination. Jeremy had trouble remembering his number. He had trouble spelling his name. To the dervish, watching Jeremy fumble with his cell was probably like watching an animal lacking opposable thumbs manipulating a pair of pliers. Humiliated, Jeremy returned the phone. The dervish glanced at what Jeremy had entered. He flashed a thousand-watt smile. "See ya later, Jeremy ." "Wait! Wait! What's your name?" The dervish vanished. Shirtless dancers converged on the ...