Short Stories
The Quiet Room
“When I say it’s the quietest room in the world, nobody really understands what I mean. It only takes one step to understand exactly what I’m referring to. It means the room itself actively persecutes sound the second it leaves your mouth, beating it down into the floor, absorbing it through the jagged foam walls and spitting it out God knows where. Sound dissipates instantaneously—so quickly it really can’t be called sound at all. It takes whatever sound is left and presses it into the air around you; the air you’re breathing is full of these unanswered echoes, dissipating ghosts of noise, and then suddenly, they’re gone. They disappear completely and utterly and you’re left in the room, alone and searching for a reflection of yourself that’s somewhere just out of reach.”
Apple Has a Cougar Problem
“Some of the specimens came in at almost 8 feet from tip to tail, weighing upwards of 150 pounds. As their numbers climbed, their broad-shouldered gait increasingly mirrored the poise of a confident strut, the same swagger of a senior football star marching onto the playing field. Some sniffed at the circular black trashcans adjacent to the Teslas and BMWs, their claws sliding on the polished metal’s sheen, toppling them in their clumsy curiosity sending heavy lids flying with a clatter that echoed through the many floors of empty vehicles.”
Would You Even Know
“The landscapes they passed, if in another life she had continued to paint, may have offered her a subject. She was most inspired by the hidden worlds each passing frame represented. The thousands of onlookers like herself that had passed through here over the years and felt the same rush of euphoria, the same physical need to paint the land.”