20 Minute Fiction
The Small Warmth of the Sun
Billy had gone when the poplars started to bloom, and when they did the last thing he was doing was lying in the winter dead grasses of the hydro cut between the dogs and the dogs laid there with him, Dublin asleep against Billy’s thigh and Maggie at a small distance watching ravens against the…
Read More7:45
It’s a broad shadow at nighttime. An instant thing. First the blinding sun strong against the horizon. Then it sinks to a small sliver of itself above the tops of the mountains. And then finally, suddenly, it hides behind Mount Rundle and those of us below begin to shiver in the cold and wrap ourselves…
Read MoreSix Ravens
Six ravens in the sky and one peeled off from the rest. That left 5 ravens together cawing their way up, circling on warm air pocketed below the mountain and one raven ditching toward the forest canopy with it’s wings tucked tight against the body, twisting and checking speed and balance, twisting into the branches…
Read MoreThe Bits of Me
Sometimes there are bits of me that scream energy, a fierce kind of passion. Those bits rise and carry me with them and the tingling at the back of my neck and my hair rising and full with goosebumps. But they die quickly. The most of me is afraid and quivering and hiding. Full stop.…
Read MoreBilly in the Maron Valley, snippet
Melissa smiles and the boy relaxes and he smiles at her too. She puts her hand on the rear railing and swings herself out of the truck to land in the dirt underneath. A little wind whistles through the grasses nearby and Melissa looks toward it, wild oats bending with the breeze and the rigid…
Read MoreThe Bunkhouse, An excerpt
There is no wind tonight. The heat from the fire in the woodstove hums through the chimney, air racing into the flue to feed the flames and then racing again, tempered and smoky out of the metal chimney and into the night sky. Tenaya is cleaning up the kitchen after dinner, her night for the…
Read MoreAs Plain as Day
Toward Morley on the Trans-Canada highway, out of the mountains to the west of the reserve and then the foothills, passed the casino sitting blank with flashing lights and waiting on the future for its payday to come home, along the ragged asphalt watching pickup trucks on the reserve roads dragging dust clouds behind them,…
Read MoreIn the Shadows
In the Peaks of Grassi the elk have been gathered for weeks. They lay in the hydro cut in the cold with the wind coming through Whiteman Pass. When they are still over the night hoarfrost grows white crystals on their fur. And in the night, if the clouds part in the sky and the…
Read MoreShortest Days, Revisited
“This will probably be it for me. I can’t imagine I’ll see another Christmas.” Billy holding the steering wheel of the truck. “How’s that?” “I just don’t expect to be around much longer. Once the thaw is in I’ll be out of here. The old man doesn’t want me around anyway.” It isn’t early in…
Read More