Below you’ll find some dark and (hopefully) unsettling short fiction about booze and death.  Enjoy!

Proposal ( text | pdf )

Occasionally I’ll drive past a garage sale and notice an odd piece of furniture displayed out in the yard, and I’ll think to myself, “I wonder if that furniture is haunted.  And if it is, I wonder what would happen if I bought it and took it home.  Would my house be haunted?  By proxy, I mean.”  Should I ever find myself in this situation, my house infected by my new boarder from the beyond, what would I do, I wonder?  Or rather, what would someone more… enterprising… do?

Fallout ( text | pdf )

Sometimes when I go jogging at night, I like to brainstorm eerie ideas to see if I can scare myself.  One night I was thinking of shadows doing weird things and then I noticed a shadow right behind me.  I jumped.  It was just a mailbox, but hey, mission accomplished.  The shadow idea turned into this tale, my attempt at a ghost story.  Turns out it’s really more of a “killer” story than a ghost story, but I guess in fiction, it often takes a killer to make a ghost, right?

Charlie ( text | pdf )

I was sitting by a pool one night, drinking wine with my brother and sister-and-law. They asked me a question about something, and I responded by pretending to carry a lantern down some cellar steps and motioning to “the skin walls.” They decided to call it a night after that. Note to self: drink less wine.

An Alcoholic Returns Home From Work ( text | pdf )

I’m not sure, but I doubt alcoholics spent a lot of time focusing on self reflection. If they did, however, this is what I think it might be like.

My Shaking Leg ( text | pdf )

One night I went to bed kinda drunk and had a dream which was pretty much the last sequence in this story (dude with “gift” hopping to wife). On my way home from breakfast the next morning I remembered the dream, and I laughed out loud at how damn messed up it is to dream that. So I figured I’d write a story about it.

The Last Barfighter ( text | pdf )

I thought it would be fun to write a series of stories that were sort of a Knight’s quest to find a princess, but with a present day, violent, misogynist theme that would allow me to fantasize about bar fights in some of my favorite pubs. Will it ever become more than a one episode series? Ah, hell, I don’t know.

Bones’ Pet Control ( text | pdf )

There’s this dog that lives across the street from my house and barks nonstop. One day, I noticed an exterminator van parked in a nearby driveway. On the side of the van was a decal that read “Pest Control”. As the dog barked relentlessly, I thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool if that said ‘PET Control’?” Anyway, if you read this, please don’t think I really hate pets. Yours I like.

The Girl with the Glass Eye ( text | pdf )

I was sitting in my room with a girlfriend at the time, and decided to creep her out with “hey, imagine if I opened the closet door, and inside was…” I ended up with an annoyed girlfriend and a new idea for a story. I’m single as I write this. Go figure.

Holes ( text | pdf )

I liked the Photoshop thing in this one, and I figured it made sense to wrap it with some wine and a hooker.

google ( text | pdf )

This one’s kinda long, but it’s still probably one of my favorites. It also reads a lot darker than I remember when I was writing it. But oh well, I still think sci-fi and self-loathing makes for an interesting mix.

The Dance of the Bar Rat ( text | pdf )

An early pass at a short story. Figured I’d go with something simple to get my feet wet – A pathetic drunken dude at a bar full of young people. No really, it’s fiction. For real.