Returning to the Pits of Meaningless Despair

“Expect some turbulence,” the pilot announced as the plane drifted over the snow topped peaks and began to glide through the canyon.  On her lap she held a copy of the SF Chronicle.  A man and woman, only in their twenties, had been attacked by an intruder to their rooftop flat.  Both were bound and […]

The Perfect First Line

Written by Carol Teltschick, an Honorary TinHatter They whispered it to her as she rounded the corner of Rose and Thornton at thirty-five miles an hour, careening downhill out of control, as usual.  It was the perfect first sentence.  Absolutely perfect – every word, the nuance, the flow.  Shaking badly she pulled off to the […]

She fell off the earth

Jan, she tells me, it’s amazing.   And then I can make out no more.  The house was shuttered and no one answered the door for Mary Alice. I can see her now knocking on the door as John Lynch rocks back and forth down on the sidewalk.   “Carol?  Carol?  It’s Mary Alice Lynch.” […]

The King of Concrete

The one armed bandits the pit boss watched over through the graveyard shiftfed her children … all five of them,cared for by neighbors even though the eldest (a boy) at nine:Didn’t need no sitter! His name was Georgie and he decided we would be married someday.The nights I spent at his house I was not […]

The O in Hollywood

The continuing saga of The Demise of Dickey by, and starring, Girl Pokey Trevor Lamour slowly regained consciousness dangling twenty feet in the air from what appeared to be a gigantic O shaped sign. He could feel pain in his right ankle and curled upward until he could see the rope. In horror he realized […]

Girl Pokey Needs Your Help!

“John at the Motorsickle Storage and Rare Book Disposer got me a much better payin’ gig cuz, like he says, ‘publishing, well it don’t pay diddly squat. So Girl, I’m sending you to HollerWood!’” Parole Officer Moss Goodie swallowed the TicTac she’d been rolling about her mouth.  “So that’s how you were able to … […]

Girl Pokey writes again

At precisely 2:20 pm on February 2, 2020 Parole Officer Moss Goodie got a message that Girl Pokey was waiting in the lobby to see her. Because she was superstitious about such things Moss Goodie googled the date and sure enough, it was the end of the world. “I got the second chapter of The […]

Just before defeat

as grows dark the night I wear my black robes so soft like a spider’s web. I soothe my aching body with sweet port and then, tea of camomile and wonder will my life ever fulfill the promise of the doe’s eyes, or the hare’s, hung to bleed out, on concrete below me as I […]

Some other god please

A continuation of The Debris They finally found Cousin Gloria in the holding room for new arrivals at a convalescent hospital tucked behind a strip mall.  An old television flicked mutely in the center of the room and, although its purpose was to entertain, none of the half dozen people lying on gurneys gave a […]