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By S. Harry Zade
Browsing All posts tagged under »fiction«
The Epiphany Cafe: The Museum
It was coffee break time at the Epiphany Cafe and I was exceedingly pleased with myself for what we had here. I wanted to preserve it forever, so that future generations could see how we lived and learn from our successes. I envisioned a coffee shop museum, a little like those historical houses you see […]
Intersections: Chapter 49: Cooking
May 12, 2013
Cooking is a wonderful thing, thought Larry, as he watched his daughter prepare dinner. You take some stuff that’s really not very good in its present form, dead and beginning to decay, yanked from the ground dirty with shit, or pulled from a bush and inhabited by worms; you dice it up, cut out the […]
At the Epiphany Cafe: Theresa
May 8, 2013
She was so thin that she scarcely disturbed the ground when she walked. She was not especially pretty, but had a habit of looking you full in the face, so that it affected your heart. She didn’t make it beat strong, but pulled it out of your chest a little, so that you felt more […]
Intersections: Chapter 48: Naomi
May 5, 2013
The first thing Larry noticed about his daughter was a droopy blouse and a bare right shoulder traversed by a purple bra strap. Flakes of snow landed on her skin and sizzled. Her face lit with what he, in normal circumstances, would’ve thought was an authentic smile, except he had caught the passing look of […]
At the Epiphany Cafe: Love and the Prisoner’s Dilemma
April 28, 2013
My scheme to separate Cowboy Tom from the Lisping Barista backfired. Because this was their last shift together, they redoubled their flirting and Tom gave her his number. I decided this was the perfect time to send him to the back room to count the beans. I opened my laptop at a table between them, […]
Intersections: Chapter 47: The Belly
April 21, 2013
As if it was waiting for Larry’s total humiliation as its cue, a winter wind swooped down from the Dakotas and blew in a hard, stinging snow. A chill reached his bones. If the police were coming, he decided he should change his wet shirt while he still could, before the process was impeded by […]
At the Epiphany Cafe: Entropy
April 17, 2013
As soon as I gave Cowboy Tom a job at the Epiphany Cafe, I regretted it. Oh, he was fine with the espresso machine, could whip up a frap in seconds, and had a steady hand making all those flower designs on the mochas. The cash in his till always balanced out, the tip jar […]
Intersections: Chapter 46: Doors
April 12, 2013
It was winter, but Larry, a big man, had worried up a big sweat. By the time he got to the correct door, his shirt was darkened at the very places where he was biggest. He wouldn’t turn back now, though. If he stopped to look more presentable, his thoughts would catch up to him […]
At the Epiphany Cafe: Without Memory or Desire
April 6, 2013
I’ve always wanted to be a ghost. So much so, that I don’t want to wait until I’m dead. I want to pass through doors and look down upon sleepers as they doze. I’ll kibitz with a married couple over coffee and toast, glide footless down darkened hallways and hover sullen above soundless stairs. I’ll […]
Intersections: Chapter 45: Surveillance
April 3, 2013
Larry parked on a street in a small Kansas town and stalked his ex-wife. A 4×4 truck, undoubtedly the possession of her current husband, hulked in her driveway. In the past, Larry might’ve surreptitiously keyed similar trucks; sight-obstructing, gas gulping, behemoths, as he walked by in the parking lot. He never failed to give them […]
At the Epiphany Cafe: Cowboy Tom and the Ghosts of Onion Hill, Part II
March 30, 2013
Cowboy Tom was beginning to attract a crowd. The earnest web surfers of the Epiphany Cafe slammed shut their laptops and inclined their ears to his old fashioned story. He spit into his cup. I waved the Lisping Barista over with a new latte for him, just to keep his tongue loose, and one of […]
At the Epiphany Cafe: Cowboy Tom and the Ghosts of Onion Hill
March 28, 2013
Not everything is as it seems. Not everyone wearing a cowboy hat in a Colorado Springs coffee shop is a cowboy. Not every moody, taciturn man, brooding in his latte, has a story to tell. But, sometimes things are exactly as they seem. Funny how it always surprises me when that happens. I was determined […]
Intersections: Chapter 44: Cornflakes
March 23, 2013
Driving through a fiery corner of Texas, up the frying pan of Oklahoma, and into the porterhouse slab of Kansas, Larry was in the part of the country that motivates people to buckle themselves into crammed flying tubes to avoid: flyover country. They say it’s boring and flat, but he’d been immunized. He’d eaten his […]
At the Epiphany Cafe: When God Made Coffee
March 18, 2013
Today was a big day at the Epiphany Cafe. The deal went through and I was the proud, but titular owner of a vital, thriving small business, having exchanged an anorexic 501(k) for a gluttonous business loan. I worked behind the counter, bumping asses with the Lisping Barista. Then, by making a dramatic error with […]
Intersections: Chapter 42: Light Beams
March 13, 2013
It was dark by the time Larry reached Baton Rouge. That’s when he observed the light beams, a phenomenon he’d not noticed since childhood. He couldn’t have even been school age when he sat in the back seat one night, returning home with his folks from Thanksgiving at his grandparents, or some such event. The […]
At the Epiphany Cafe: Undercover Boss
March 10, 2013
Being a businessman is something new to me: hiring and firing, having to make payroll, playing the big shot when I walk in the door, the supplicant when I go to the bank. I really didn’t know what I was doing, running a company, so I performed some research. I watched some back episodes of […]
Intersections: Chapter 41: The Glove Department
March 6, 2013
Larry had to clean out the contents of his crunched-up car and transfer the items to the new one before he could be on his way. He never thought the glove compartment could contain so much: a driver’s manual that he never consulted, unreadable receipts, a water bottle half filled with ancient water, a book […]
At the Epiphany Cafe: Lay Offs
March 2, 2013
The rest of the story with the Lisping Barista at the concert will just have to wait, I have important things to do and people depend on me, now. I have other stories to tell. Suffice it to say that we got back to Colorado Springs in one piece. The LB dropped me off at […]
Intersections: Chapter 40: The Deal
February 26, 2013
Larry had his Toyota towed from the corner of the fabulous and the mundane. Although the car was wrecked, he was reinvigorated, as he always was, by even a distant encounter with death. For the first time in longer than he could remember, he was glad to be alive. No matter how heavy and sodden […]
Intersections: Chapter 39: Tourist
February 23, 2013
Larry was no star struck, obsessed fanatic, but he had picked up a guidebook of the rich and famous of New Orleans. He went to see, but not to gawk. He went to see why people gawk. His encounter with Papa Legba, the African god of intercessions at intersections, made him crave junctions and conjunctions. He was drawn […]
May 18, 2013
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