Craig’s car stopped and opened the door for him. He gave the simple instruction “drive home,” and headed up a winding flagstone path to the front door as the car drove through the other end of the horseshoe, around the pond. The rubber tires squeaked louder than the whirring electric engine and the windows rolling back up. At the front door, Craig was greeted by an electronic voice that recognized his wifi footprint and greeted him by name before sliding open into a climate controlled foyer. Randy came through the inner door and welcomed his friend in, shaking his hand, as the air was quickly sucked out of the foyer through scrubbing filters. Randy’s mother had terrible allergies. …Read the rest »

Craig spent much of winter break mastering his Invisilens. He especially liked taking aimless drives in his mother’s car. To get to his favorite burger joint, way over in Stafford, he spoke the address just as he would if he was using the car’s onboard navigation. Invisilens painted a line for him to follow, making directions unmistakable. As he approached the destination, the car asked for permission to be remotely navigated by the restaurant’s control tower. A long string of cars were lined up ahead of him. Craig consented and a window popped up with Estimated Time Till Service: 8:37. The car moved into the turning lane and slowed down. Ahead was low concrete building with cacti planters surrounding plastered walls painted to look like the Alamo. Music requested permission to play on the car’s sound system. Craig decided what the hell, and a tinny Mariachi band struck up a song. Waiting in line, the Tornado Burger sign whose company logo was a red Texas Twister, rocked back and forth in the wind, squeaking. Craig watched as one of the restaurant employees dressed in white shirt, black pants, and a red apron, made a slow circuit around the building removing plastic grocery bags from the various cacti needles. …Read the rest »

(This was my MFA thesis at BU. Come here for the podcast and scroll down to “Home and Garden Section 1.” I am sorry about the formatting of the text below–if it is too hard to read, I would be happy to send you the attachment!!)

Home and Garden
28,800 words
By Roman Sturgis

One

It was six o’clock on a humid Thursday evening in May. Martin Matishak, a middle-aged man in his early forties, a tall and clean-cut blond, came home from work to find his wife, Alicia, sitting on the concrete stoop leading to their kitchen. She had a glass of red wine at her side and her cell phone pressed to her ear. …Read the rest »

A Short Short by Roman Sturgis

There is a dog who lives with an old woman in a double-wide trailer. Buena Vista Estates outside of Chammysville if you really want to know, but save yourself the trouble of going. Ain’t nothing there cept poor trash: black, brown, and white—a unicultural neighborhood to be sure.

Dog’s name is Duke, sometimes “The Duke,” more often “you sorry sonofabitch” which is what the old woman calls him when she finishes making her drink of Popov vodka and diet Schwepps tonic which she stores on its side to keep from going flat. Or maybe she’s saying it to herself, not The Duke. Hard to tell. She old. Her name Mary.
“It’s for the damn mosquitoes, the quinine, it prevents the malaria,” she’ll tell you if you give her any lip about it.

Mary, she’s a right ornery cuss. And the Duke? Him too. They act like husband and wife, you want to know the truth, the way they fight. “Get off the damn sofa you lazy sonofabitch!” and The Duke just looks at her with those big eyes drooping with watermelon rinds.

Mary, she’s old. Damn old. So damn old she’s got wrinkles on top of wrinkles. She’s so wrinkled, she’s gone smooth again. Like a walnut, that’s what her wrinkles look like. Like a damn walnut. And she’s walnut colored too, from sitting in the sun with an LP cover wrapped in tinfoil under her chin.

She been working on a quilt forever. Forever. By hand, she sews rhinestones in the shape of Elvis’s head. Didn’t start out that way. Started out as a quilt for the seasons, but then she heard Elvis music in 1955 and that done changed everything.

Sometimes she gets up to change the channel on the TV. Or step outside to smoke her Virginia Slims. Or make another drink. And when she do, that old Duke, he get up off the couch and pull out some of them rhinestones with his teeth, cause he know that when Mary finish that quilt, the world gonna end.

What would happen if I were to write a new story week by week, and share it with my most important audience (you!) like a television series? I’d set the posts to publish on a regular schedule, say Wednesday mornings, so you can set your RSS feeds to deliver 15 minutes of fun fiction on Hump Day. I’ll keep it to short chunks, say 1000 to 1500 words, so people can take a good bite, and then get on to reading the Times, or whatever. …Read the rest »

Craig Senior had an appointment to get his Blue Tooth re-drilled. He took his son with him to their family practitioner, Dr. Altman, who installed a new Blue Tooth in Craig Senior’s lower left molar. It was quick and not very messy. When it was all over, Dr. Altman gave Craig Senior a pill for pain. Then the new device was tested by making a call to his wife. As the line was ringing he traded seats with his son, who was reading a magazine article about lacrosse gear on a thin video tablet. …Read the rest »

 

 Standard Podcast [6:34m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

My current writing project and a bit of memoir from the 90s.

(Home and Garden Section 8 will be up next.)

This post is also available as a 6.5 min podcast here:

I am working on a new story that is somewhere between Scent of a Woman, The Diamond Age, and Harry Potter. Post-cyber punk in a New England boarding school setting. I find myself drawing on early stories about boarding school, science fiction, and fantasy. The Alliance of The WarAngels, my high school gamer clan, will know what I’m talking about. For the uninitiated, in high school, my closest group of friends which could be best be described as the chess playing wrestler thespians, formed a group called the Alliance of the War Angels in 1997. (Hence my original e-mail handle, ATWRomulus. Romulus was the second founder of Rome, and at the time, a cool nickname, I thought.) If you want to really embarrass me one day, you can go look at our old site, which is still up at atw.valkan.com …Read the rest »