dreamszilla

It’s difficult for me to cut down a pretty plant, even if it is suspicious. But I learned a lesson when I planted one particular tree a few years ago. I thought it would grow tall next to a wooded area inour yard. Instead, one day a vine draped itself over the branches of my tree. It was pretty, so I thought I would let it grow. I didn’t pay much attention to the tree and its new friend because it was at the corner of the lot, and I wasn’t around it that much. So the summer went, people came and went, I came and went, and then I suddenly realized I couldn’t see the beautiful tree I had planted. As I walked in its direction, I realized that the once pretty vine had become an invasive monster, consuming my tree. There was no longer any recognizable trace of it. I began to pull and cut the vine away, but it was robust and belligerent. It felt like a tug of war, as though the vine was determined to keep the tree. So I kept cutting and pulling until it was all gone. Underneath was my...

via American Short Fiction https://ift.tt/GYgwy9j

When Leslie moves to Oklahoma to try and make his way in the world, he finds himself with a job opportunity, a girlfriend, and a moral reckoning; by Mark Saha. "The horse doesn't feel a thing," Steve Willit said. "They position the captive bolt gun right about here." He placed two fingers to his forehead above his eyes. "The bolt fires directly into the brain. Activists like to post videos of horses thrashing around. You're just looking at a carcass. The horse is gone. It's like a chicken flopping around after its head is chopped off." We were eating breakfast in a booth at Josie's, a little café on the west side of town where he had agreed to meet me. It was the summer of my first year at Oklahoma University, and I had stayed over in Norman for a great literature seminar taught by a famous visiting professor. I was in need of pocket money, but the country was in the second year of the worst recession in recent memory and there wasn...

Jonathan Steinman has had enough of Gary Jackson's boastful bullying, and challenges him to an ill-fated boxing match; by Stuart Stromin. Irving Rosen was a sniveling, wiry haired whiner, unpopular with the other high school students, and you really could not blame them. He invited that kind of irritation. He was annoying, no matter what, and he was not half as smart as the smug know-it-all air which he projected. Even so, it was not right that he should have his brains bashed in at a boxing match on account of his personality. He was getting his brains bashed in on a summer afternoon on the square lawn of Gary Jackson's house in the suburbs, and Gary Jackson was doing the damage. Jackson had a short blonde haircut and a face marked by whiskery moles and acne, but a lean, muscular body and a devastating reach. For the last ten years - since Gary's sixth birthday - any visitor to the house within striking range was challenged to an immediate fist fight between the oak t...

Lessons From Papa’s Garden Our children and grandchildren were visiting for the weekend, and they all love mashed potatoes. So I told my husband we needed some more potatoes for dinner. He said he would get some. Then, he asked our grandson, Donovan, to come with him as he walked out the door. Going to the store with their Papa is always fun because they know he will buy them a treat. So he jumped up and ran to the car while my husband was walking around the back of the house. When he realized he was walking alone, he turned around saw our grandson sitting in the car. He asked him what he was doing, and our grandson said he was waiting for him to go to the store. My husband laughed and said no, we’re were going to harvest them from the garden. I watched out the window as he explained how important it was to plant potatoes in the right place. “You have to make sure that the soil is sandy, loose, and dry, he told him. That’s why I plant mine on a hill.” Then he showed our grandso...

Carol's boyfriend hopes their relationship has a future, and who better to prognosticate than Psychic Trevor; by Mike Hickman. Psychic Trevor didn't have a crystal ball, although he did have a mightily shiny head. On his purple-hued Photoshop cheese dream of a flyer, his bald pate sparkled with enough lens flare for a JJ Abrams movie. In real life, his dome was hardly any less gleaming. It was almost a relief when he smiled and the wall of teeth took their turn to become the brightest things in the room. I could see the girls eyeing him up, and I was sure that he wasn't so much wearing the tight white trousers for a dare as to please this very particular demographic. "Hen parties a speciality," said his flyer, although tonight's was a more domestic arrangement. Just Carol and the girls. And me. If Trev thought I was the Odd One Out in Carol's cramped living room, he didn't say. As far as Carol knew, I'd been lonely and in need of the compan...

In 1970s USA, Bill Tope's character takes a road trip to Washington DC with a drug-fuelled group of activists, where he meets Beth and gets stranded far from home. That first day we drove for almost ten hours, from Edwardsville, Illinois, a college town just across the Mississippi from St. Louis, bound for Washington DC, to celebrate the Fourth of July, and to do our part for drug reform. We had a modest caravan of older model vehicles; I rode in an ancient VW bus, with its many windows and bench seats. With me was Rod, the driver; his wife Teri; Stevie, Rod's best friend; and little Kay, who subsisted for the whole trip on amphetamines and cigarettes. She weighed about ninety sexy pounds and had propounded a dating philosophy that stipulated, "Never sleep with the same person twice in a row." It wasn't a gentle ride: the bus jostled over the contraction joints in the highway, frequently tossed us high enough to bonk our heads on the ceiling of the vehicle. A...