The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Friday Fiction: 100 Word Challenge

by Smitty Swings the heavy door shut, turns the key a final time. Mother’s illness has been a second womb. The lengthy second gestation is done. She’d been ancient; he, merely old, wife taken by cancer decades ago, only son taken by war, siblings estranged. Hand lets go of the brass key. He feels liberated. […]

Friday Fiction: 100 Word Challenge

by Smitty [Read Darleen first, as this is a continuation. And Happy Valentine’s Day!] “Solved it,” said Steve. “Do tell. What’s that man doing?” Kristy squirmed. “I was in the Navy. If you interpret arm positions in the pictures as semaphore, you get: ‘WYMM’.” Blank stare. “Yeah, maybe.” Steve turned the camera over, revealing a […]

Friday Fiction: 100 Word Challenge

by Smitty The girl (later known as Mindy) blowing by, is the penultimate humiliation. Not the first. That’d been the blind runner, seeming to putz along with his guide, casually passing my struggling flesh. No, the final thing was the arch cramp, reducing me to a limping skip for the final miles. But by the […]

Friday Fiction: 100+ Word Challenge Christmas Edition

by Smitty Six points gird the star glowing, supernatural above, as the dusk bathes now the field. A mystic symbol of love, and to Three Wise Men showing, the power of God to yield a means as mild as a dove; that the world be reconciled to His justice from falling to sin when serpent […]

Remembering 9/11: Friday Fiction Special

by Smitty “Samantha?” she asked into the darkness. “Mother?” answered the raw voice of her sophomore daughter. “School?” she inquired, wondering why only the lamp was on in the living room. “Yeah.” “Tell me.” “My Political Science professor went on a rant about 9/11. He said that capitalism is evil and that that ‘freedom fighters’ […]

Friday Fiction: 100 Word Challenge

by Smitty The knowledge that one has been hoodwinked: they took my cockandballs. I sit on a step before a temple ruin. My flesh is become a metaphor for it. A cautionary tale. One should reject every Progressive utterance. There. Is. No. Corporate. Guilt. Not your country; not your civilization; not your gender. Their nonsense […]

Friday Fiction: 100 Word Challenge

by Smitty Steps onto the porch and freezes. They come at him from the front and both sides. He’s already used the planter to jump up for a support. Gives the attacker coming from the right a face full of fragrant hibiscus. (They’ve already rifled the house twice seeking it.) Lands on the right side […]

Friday Fiction: 100 Word Challenge

by Smitty He looked at the picture, staring forward at his grown self. He glanced at his watch, seated at international arrivals. Sign said she’d arrived. He and his sister had been fortunate to be taken in by an orphanage shortly after the picture. He’d lost her not long after his adoption. They had sought […]

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