When the order came to shut down, everyone at the company grabbed stacks of files and papers and walked out in groups of four or five, laughing uneasily at the unnerving novelty of it all. At the first Zoom meeting, …
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If I’m gonna trace it all the way back, I guess it started with a cigarette. Harmless enough. I was reluctant at first, my parents would kill me for sure, but then I remembered how sharp Brad Pitt looked in Fight Club…
A loud ring shatters my sleep, growing louder with each cycle like a police car racing up the street. I stagger to the living room, kicking a beer can out of my way. I snatch the telephone and hear a …
The child learned that a man was to be killed on Friday. His father read the headline from the newspaper, addressing the child’s mother, who was by the kettle. “Oh,” she said. Followed by a period of silence. Father shuffled …
Lapidus, a recent recruit, was inconsolable.
That the tanning shed could misfire and leave your skin a pale color was not what he was expecting. Everyone needed to be the same shade since one’s military review was based on the …
They come to the Diorama every September, just as the season comes to an end, and just as the children are going back to school. Harry and Mandy will ask for the same room overlooking the pool and the dolphin …
“Harold, wake up. It’s almost time.”
“Huh? What?”
“It’s 1:30. 1:30 AM.”
“Why can’t they set the clocks back at 2:00 in the afternoon?” Harold painstakingly untangled his limbs, forcing himself to sit up on the couch. “It didn’t used …
New Orleans, Garden District. Magazine Street sits quiet on a lonely Tuesday night, the humid air thick enough to chew. A neon sign flickers green above the entrance to a two-story dive, Tommy Rouge’s, where inside, two patrons sit against …
Summer, 1995
The last of several strokes put my mother in a nursing home in Flushing, Queens, where my father’s constant visits and meddling in her health and welfare unnerved the aides, the nurses, the therapists, and the entire managerial …
Would she miss him? She’d soon find out. Slam. Click.
Phyllis DeMarco is a published writer in numerous genres. Several of her stories have been read by various theater groups in both New York and Florida. She has written poetry for children’s …