Writing thank you notes is a lost art, one I only found after marrying my wife. Sometimes it’s a point of conflict between us, as this story shows. Published in September 2018 in the now defunct journal, Gravel.

No, Thank YOU

by DL Shirey

My wife holds her mouth a certain way when I don’t pay full attention to something she said: lips parted, jaw unhinged, bottom teeth standing out like white-helmeted soldiers. These troops mass at the border between impatience and anger as Lynn waits for my response. Breakfast is over, the last of the coffee poured, I am half-listening, half-reading the newspaper. More the second than the first.

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There are stories that make me proud I wrote them and there’s this one. Writing sometimes takes me places that aren’t pleasant, with characters who are unlikable, where a scalding shower might be needed to wash off the scum. Fortunately, there are journals like Close To The Bone who love this kind of stuff. They published my story in October 2018.

Inevitable Lies

by DL Shirey

The conversation needn’t be engrossing, pleasing would do. Pleasant enough for Della to ask one question: ‘What kind of movies do you like?’ If she chose to ask, she knew how the evening would go, just not how it might end. Like a good movie, it’s better when the end comes as a surprise.

Della never tried the same bar twice, yet the script was always the same: guys asked if she was alone, plied her with drink and said anything to make small talk larger. They were looking to get laid, but so was Della. While they took furtive glances at her unbuttoned V of skin, she searched the men for lies.

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This story was first published in August 2018, nestled within a forest of pieces in The Writers’ Cafe Magazine (RIP). Walk quietly or you might frighten it. The theme of Issue 11 was “Into The Woods” and you’ll find an amazing amount of quality poems and stories to read. My story is reprinted below.

Hollow

by DL Shirey

Trees masked the remains of daylight, the forest floor now darker than the sky. Greens and browns of pine and fir barely colored the cold, gray shadows. It was time to camp, but a distant, interminable howl kept me hiking forward. This was animal sound; a creature’s lament, the last, weak fragments of pain. There was no other noise, not even wind. Nothing but still, feral death.

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This piece is less about being a band geek in high school and more about adolescent humor and bad judgement. It stars my pal Charlie Banks and kindly published in July 2018 by Twenty-Two Twenty-Eight.

Belts

by DL Shirey

It went like this: Two high school buddies square off in mock confrontation, voices brimming with testosterone. Mine’s longer than yours. No way, mine’s longer. Belts are unbuckled, giving the impression to nearby girls of an imminent comparison of penises. They are whipped out with a flourish–the belts, I mean–and held up to one another to see who wins.

This was foreplay in 1973, when I had no idea what it took to attract the opposite sex. Acting the buffoon was a way to get attention, as was ’70s fashion statements like bell-bottom Levi’s, flower-print shirt and a white belt. I even had a pair of platform shoes, which, thank God, went out of fashion before the year was up.

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This Drabble, a story exactly 100 words long, was published in September 2018 by Friday Flash Fiction. It’s a tale of an unnecessary medical procedure. Unnecessary because, well, that would be a spoiler.

Pathological

by DL Shirey

The MRI hums to life and the technician says, “don’t move.” I do. I smirk. The thing that nests inside my head isn’t easily fooled. It doesn’t move very fast but is always a step ahead of the doctors.

The machine clanks and chirps in earnest. Too late. The soft, warm bed atop my left parietal lobe is empty. No telltale traces will be found where it slipped down my brainpan, nor handprints on the ladder of my spine.

I can feel it now, spidering to the back of my ribs where it will stay until the test is over.

END