dreamszilla

Dan Keeble's character hurts his ankle while hiking in Azerbaijan, and has an encounter with the locals that teaches him a surprising lesson. I rested above the path that followed the stream. My back leaned against the grassy hillside, and I tried to ignore the throbbing in my ankle. Bright green moss cloaked damp bodied trees. Water-waving moss in the stream clung to the wet stones. It made crossing the stream hazardous. My steps across last year were confident with the guided group. Returning alone to Azerbaijan's Hirkan National Park maybe wasn't a good idea. It was simply because I wished we could have stopped a little longer in this or that spot to drink in the beauty of the rapids that spent their energy on the mountain. Now immobile, I had plenty of time to watch them meander down the hillside before splashing onto the rocks. I savoured the solitude and peace of the woodland. Tall chestnut oaks and ironwood trees emerged from lush green fern fronds that bobbed...

Steve and Ellie go for a weekend away with friends at a fire-encircled cabin in the woods, and their relationship is sorely tested, in Dennis Chen's amusing tale. I didn't have many rich friends growing up, so when Ellie showed me the photos of the palatial cabin while in the checkout line at Trader Joe's two weeks ago, I'd gotten the wrong idea and made a quip that we'd have to cover the windows on the lakeview side to afford a place like that. "No, it's his cabin," she'd informed me. "You remember him, my friend Sophie's boyfriend, the guy who kept calling you Steve-O. We met them that at the party at Bungalow Sur." "I thought it was the other way around. As in, your friend Kirk and his girlfriend Sophie." "What? Oh no, that's just Kirk. He's everyone's best friend. So, what do you think?" "What about your work?" "My boss already gave me that Friday off as comp for all the...

via American Short Fiction https://ift.tt/y2uZ9kn

Barry Garelick tells the nostalgic tale of dropping out of university and having a brief relationship with a girl called Sherry, in Michigan in 1970.   In the fall of 1970, I dropped out of the University of Michigan during my senior year with the intention of never returning. One week later, I got stoned with a girl I wanted to go to bed with and took her to see Yellow Submarine . The theater was packed; the crowd was stoned. The projectionist/manager announced that because of the fire laws, he could not show the movie until people cleared the aisle. No one moved. Someone stood up and pleaded that the people leave. An intense serious-faced, bearded young man, an aisle-blocker, shouted "No leaders!" After ten minutes, the projectionist/manager cancelled the show, screaming at all of us that we were "nothing more than a bunch of blue meanies." As if talking about it were unhip, neither of us mentioned the event on our way back to East Quad dorms, where Sherry no...

Kenneth Schalhoub tells of a stagecoach journey through the perilous Wild West, fraught with highwaymen, hostile natives, and deadly smallpox. 1858 - New Mexico Territory Day 1 We depart at sunset. I share the stagecoach with five strangers, three banker types across from me, one extremely pallid. Next to me sits a young woman with wavy coffee-colored hair mostly hidden by a flowered hat. Next to her rests an angular monk, his head buried in a bible. We are passengers on an Overland Mail stagecoach. The company's main source of income is the mail contract with the federal government. We, the paying passengers, share the coach with mailbags under our feet. And although most find their bodies stiff and twisted after a long stagecoach journey, not so with me. Being born on a Conestoga wagon train prepared my bones for the travel conditions on the rutted, muddy ways. I am a storyteller, or rather, an embellisher of the truth. I sell my stories to newspapers throughout the ter...