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Brew Fiction: Twice A Maharaja

April 25, 2014 · by Oliver Gray

He knew it was a bad idea to split his soul again, but with the curved blade inching nearer to his heart and the garlicky, bearded breath of his murderer beating down on his face, there weren’t many other options.

He closed his eyes, whispered in a language long forgotten by man, and felt lightning blast through his veins. For an uncountable flash he was a bolt, pure power, a god incarnate.

When he opened them again, he was looking down at his old body; feeble, mangled, gasping through the blood and tears of a life about to end. He locked eyes with the white and hazel that had been his for 70 some years, watching the confusion unfold as the assassin tried to understand that he had, thanks to the Maharaja’s hidden talents, just murdered himself.

A copper pan fell and clattered on the floor, and the king leapt back, bloody kukri held out in front of him, still dripping lethal red warning. This body wasn’t as young as he’d hoped his next would be, but it was lithe and flexible, built to run and climb and kill. He lowered the blade and slipped behind a nearby pillar of ornately carved sandstone, hoping to catch a glimpse of the unlucky voyeur.

Silhouette sprawled across the bedroom floor in furniture and curtain shaped cut-outs of pale, lunar glow. The moon was full and fierce but half the room remained pitch and hidden, plenty of space for another assailant to hide. He eyed the corners behind the massive royal bed warily, for any slight sign of unwelcome movement.

Shiny fur, more obsidian than matte, slinked through the night, weaving in and out of shadow like it was made from, or part of, the darkness. Two jaundiced eyes ruined the perfected camouflage. The cat silently jumped onto the king’s table, disrupting the maps and military figures he’d been obsessing over only a few hours earlier.

“Oh, it’s just you?” He reached out and let the cat sniff his fingers. The digits were knobby extensions of an ugly hand, hairy, scarred, betraying a life of poverty and thuggish petulance. It had been so long since he inhabited another, that the sudden unfamiliarity of his limbs made him feel dizzy, and he grabbed the edge of the table to keep from falling.

The sudden movement scared the cat, who darted to safety under the bed. The king knew he needed to eat and rest, but the scene in the bedroom had to be cleaned up before the servants came to preen and dress their lord for his morning rituals. He grabbed a earthenware pitcher from the table and swallowed greedily. Where he had expect water he got beer, malty and warm, left out of cold storage for too long. It felt good to have something in his stomach, and the alcohol ever so delicately shaved the edges off the pain still echoing in his brain.

Even though the body was no longer his, the memory of the blade’s bite remained, sending phantom messages to his nerves and flesh, who sung dissonant songs of pain in return. He had long ago mastered a way to keep physically young, but his mind was layered with a millennium of memories, a hundred different lives, some rich, some poor, some blissful, some agony. He wondered, wiping the beery froth from his coarse unkempt beard, what this new body, this next life, would teach him about the world.

A far curtain rustled, and the king turned to see what the cat was up to now. But instead of finding more feline antics, he found three men who had presumably entered through the window, all wrapped in faded gray linens, brandishing knives just like his. The biggest of the three looked down at the pile of bloody regal robes, then back up at the king’s new body. He opened his mouth and sounds came out, but the Maharaja did not recognize them as words.

“व्हत् हप्पेनेद?” The assassin used the tip of his knife to point at the corpse. “तेल्ल् मे व्हत् हप्पेनेद!”

He poured through his history, through all the books he’d read, all the places he’d lived, trying to decode the message coming from this gruff intruder. To buy time, he grunted, feigned exhaustion, even knelt in faux-fealty, hoping, assuming, that this man was his superior in whatever gang they represented.

Unsatisfied, the three moved towards the king, silky hisses of sharpened steel being drawn from leather following close behind. The Maharaja panicked for the first time in a century, unsure he had the energy to stop all three men, given how recently he’d changed corporeal residence. He held the kurki forward, but his arms were weak. The first parry knocked him back into the table, soaking the maps in the remainder of the beer.

Just before he was stabbed for a second time that same night, just before giving the man a chance to imprint another painful puncture, just before the world turn blindingly white, he closed his eyes and whispered those ancient words.

This time the lightning was more like fire, his soul an insatiable inferno moving between realms.

When he opened them again, he could see the hunched backs of the three men, bent over the space he’d so temporarily rented. The room seemed much brighter than before, but the colors were muted, as if some were missing. This body felt good; springy, agile, seductively sneaky.

The men seemed happy with their work, and went to rifling drawers for royal secrets and treasures. The Maharaja watched them closely, perched atop a bookshelf, his two yellow eyes the only sign he was there at all.

“And so sepúlchred in such pomp dost lie,
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.”
― John Milton

Lucky 2.0

March 17, 2014 · by Oliver Gray

A year ago today, I posted the original version of this story. I, and it, have since gone through many things together: publication at Outside In, thesis revision, several glasses of Jameson, several bottles of amber ale, achievement, loss, grief, recuperation. It’s been a hell of a three sixty five.

I’m re-sharing this in part to show how important close editing is to the health of a story and a writer, but also just because I like it and it’s thematically appropriate.

Lucky

When he finally mustered enough courage, he looked up. He stood near the doorway of the old building, taking a moment to remember it. The dirty, butt-stained sidewalk that hosted dozens of drunk denizens who smoked in the Boston air, the flower boxes that sheltered and nurtured his mother’s favorite purple butterworts, the green and red knot work sign that proudly cast the name “Flaherty’s” over the tiny side street, all now burnt and hollowed out, everything ruined by smoke and flame and the power of unattended random chance.

If he hadn’t been late that morning, if he hadn’t been so slow to rise with head fogged by one too many late night whiskeys, if he hadn’t needed drink after drink to quiet his guilty conscience, James thought, maybe, just maybe when the piles of overdue bills in the unkempt kitchen caught those fledgling flames from that gas oven that should have long been replaced, he might have stopped it; not had to watch his father’s dream, an Irish life reborn and infused with Americanism, billow and ascend, smoke colored black by all that carbon and shame.

He imagined his father standing next to him, ginger hair turning grey at the temples. He’d looked almost like a fox in those last few years, still wily in spite of, and now svelte because of the cancer. Not that James had actually seen him outside of the pictures he’d found on the internet; he wasn’t even in the same zip code when that grizzled pater familias left the party early, lymphoma on his arm. He’d gotten the news from his second-cousin, late one night in a craythur haze, that the family name was now his alone. Still, Sean Flaherty hovered there unable to speak, but in his head, James could hear the vitriol his father would be slinging if he’d seen the fate of the bar he’d tended for near forty years.

The claims adjuster was late. James kicked at some fallen wood near the door, careful not to venture too far inside the shell of the building, worried that it was still in the middle of its death throes, still capable of collapsing any minute. The morning air gusted, picked up the scent of charred memories, kegs and coat racks and day-old beer. Inside the doorway he could feel the warmth still radiating off of the remains of the tall tables and long bar, all the stored energy seeping out of the wood like it was bleeding.

James lost focus at the sound of a car clumsily hopping up the curb while trying to park. A fat man, maybe twenty-nine, thirty, struggled to lift himself out of the driver’s seat. His pants were an inch or two too short, his tie a hideous spotted yellow, and his receding hair line barely visible in the stubble of his buzzed blonde hair. James could smell his Old Spice, old school, from five yards away. “James? James Flaggerty?”

“Flair-tee.” The mispronunciation of his name, his father’s name, at this moment, in this place, felt like dirty fingers in a fresh wound.

They stood outside the husk, peering into the darkness just beyond where the door had been. “Oh, sorry.” The adjuster turned to his papers, shuffled them to find a specific line on a legal-sized form, and then looked up. “Oh man. You’re lucky this fire didn’t jump to these neighboring buildings. That would have been an insurance nightmare.”

James kicked a beam of wood that had come loose from the siding and fallen onto the pavement, uncovering a half-burned coaster. A tiny shamrock, the only Irish cliché besides Guinness that his father perpetuated, was still clearly green and alive on the bottom corner of the cardboard. James did not smile. “Heh. Lucky.”

That night it felt wrong to sit in another bar, drink, even kind of enjoy himself. But the whiskey burned nice and the ice melted slow, and red ale chaser was just as his father would have liked: malty, crisp, sneaking hints of hops that lingered on his tongue. It was from his father he learned to drink, so it was to his father he drank the next one. And the next one. And the next one.

Each drink washed away another sin. In the first glass of single-malt he apologized for storming out so rashly, back in those eighteen-year-old days when he thought he knew everything and his father knew nothing. In the second, he cursed his father for leaving the pub to him, making him come back to this place fifteen years later against his better sense of pride. In the third, he found the courage to keep back the tears that had been welling since the police had informed him of the incident, the damage, the loss. In the fourth, he laughed, and ordered a fifth.

James didn’t stumble home, his careening so practiced that it was just one long graceful fall from bar stool to pillow. The whiskey normally stifled his dreams, but tonight they flared and seared, father and fire and failure all whirling together in an inferno of nightmarish scenes. He woke up, head pounding, throat dry, vomit lurching in his stomach, to remember both his father and the bar were, in the waking tangible sunlight of reality, gone.

His phone buzzed. He looked at the clock: 10:49. For a moment, he thought about letting his head sink back down into the pillow. The number was familiar, but not one that he’d stored in his phone. He waited for the third buzz, sighed, and answered.

“Mr. Flaggerty?”

The already horrible headache intensified. “Flair-tee. What can I do for you?”

The adjuster sounded even more nasal over the phone. “I just got the report from the fire marshal. I’ve got the final coverage numbers, but the inspector found something I think you should see.”

The pub looked less dejected now that the fire had completely gone out of her. Most of the debris that had fallen loose had been cleared from the entrance and the street. She looked scarred and damaged but somehow respectable, like she refused to give up so easily.

“Mr. Flag…Flair-tee. Thanks for showing up at such short notice. Most of the worst of the mess has been cleaned up, so if you’ll just step inside for a moment, I’ll show you what I was referencing earlier.” The adjuster did his best to move gracefully through the rubble, trying to avoid getting his ill-fitting khakis stained by any soot. They passed the slumping, massive piece of oak that had been the bar; two patina-pocked tap stems, standing proud, the only things that seemed relatively undamaged by the fire.

Near a large hole between some broken floorboards at the back of the pub stood a walrus of a man, a man whose stature and uniform said authority but whose huge white mustache and kind eyes said grandpa. He looked at James then back down at the hole. “Did you know this room was here?”

Confused, knowing the back of the bar as only a place of refuge from the commotion of the patrons and the trajectory of drunkenly tossed darts, James didn’t know what the man was talking about. He inched closer, pushing past the combined girth of both inspectors, peering down between the broken floor boards. Boxes, clunky filing cabinets, three rows of large wooden shelves, and what looked like several beer casks lolling about in the dusty shadows.

“I’m going to try to climb down there.” The fire marshal huffed and recommended otherwise. Ignoring the man, who probably wouldn’t fit through the hole, James threw his legs over the edge, found his footing on the old wooden framing, and slowly lowered himself into the room below.

James used the screen of his phone as an impromptu flash light, shining it over the oak barrels with iron bands that rested on their ends, unmoving, like a dozen enormously fat men wearing belts too small. The blue light bounced through the surprisingly cavernous space, and the stone walls, all mildew and damp, radiated with eerie fluorescence. Three thin metal pipes came from the walls; forgotten hand-pull tap lines that at some point, years ago, had been connected to the casks that lined the rows of wooden racks.

Against the far wall, dozens of clear glass necks poked out of wooden crates in rows of six, columns of four. He grabbed a bottle and brushed away the dust and the ashes that had fallen from above. Eyes wide, trying to make out the text in the dark, he read the labels on the bottles. Tullamore, Bushmills, Midleton; ninety, ninety-three, a hundred and one years old, some even more ancient. All intact. Perfect, pristine. An army of golden soldiers in glass armor. He held an unspoiled fortune in his hands, felt the weight of years of Irish tradition, salivating over the idea of how much he could charge for even a shot of a vintage this rare.

The digital light made the place seem unnaturally cold, like a ghost had sapped the heat from the air. He imagine a specter of his Grandfather, hiding from the prohibition-crazed police, storing all his precious homeland still-runnings down here, beneath sealed floors, until they weren’t at risk of being poured out on the street as a warning to other bootleggers. He shivered to think even his father didn’t know of this treasure trove, and that he may be the first living Flaherty to stand in this room in nearly half a century.

James moved to the filing cabinet. Years of rust and dust had seized the runners, but with a little force and a lot of curiosity, he slid the middle drawer open. He thumbed through the yellowing paper, tilting the phone to get a better look at the faded writing on each page. The first folder housed records, names and bills and income for years well before James was alive. The second folder was empty, except for an antique wooden-handled bottle opener. The third, packed nearly to the point of bursting, fell from his hands as he lifted it from the cabinet and spilled all over the floor.

At the sound of this, the fire marshal called to him, shining his flashlight down to see if James was injured. This beam of light caught the papers on the floor just long enough for James to read the titles: Flaherty’s Oatmeal Stout, Flaherty’s Pale Ale, Flaherty’s Irish Red Ale. Next to each recipe was a hand drawn green shamrock, perfect mimicry of the one his father so insistently included on anything associated with the bar.

The claims adjuster’s head appeared, upside down, from the hole above. “Are you okay? Looks pretty messy down here. You’re lucky you didn’t get hurt.”

James smiled, picking through the rest of papers that had spilled from the ancient brewer’s book, and thought for a second, he felt a hand come to rest on his shoulder. “Yea. Lucky.”

“My heart is quite calm now. I will go back.” – James Joyce

Brew Fiction: Black Friday Rules

November 29, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

Unsure of the why but well practiced in the how, Liam pulled the straps on his father’s kevlar vest tight, jostling the back plate to make sure it didn’t move and expose any vulnerable vertebrae near his neck. Reminders of past years nicked and slashed the thick canvas, letting the ballistic plastic below smile through as a dozen plaque-stained grins.

His father shrugged forward to test his gear, twisting and bouncing like a sprinter preparing for the one hundred meter. He pointed to the machete lazing on a stool next to the fire. Liam lifted the blade, watching the flipped images of the flames dance on its polished face, careful not to cut himself on the edge so recently honed to skin slitting sharpness.

It was too much ferocity for a ten-year old, too top heavy, too awkward and inelegant to be an effective weapon. But in his father’s hands, rough steelworker’s hands, it snapped through the air, a cobra striking with steel fangs. After three quick flicks he slid it into the scabbard already mounted on his hip with a satisfying shlink, like a key settling into a lock. “Dad, why do you have to go out?” Liam studied the flames, trying to scry the answer before his father responded.

“We won the tickets this year. I have to go. We’ve been waiting for this chance since your little sister was born.” He sank into the ochre couch as he bent to tie his boots, the tension in the room tightening with each pull of the black laces. Liam swallowed the mix of fear and tears that filled his little body to emotional maximum. “But…last year…”

His father didn’t look up from his boots. “Last year was different. I was just part of the mob. I thought maybe I could…but we don’t have to worry about that this year. I got tickets. I’ll be right up front. I probably won’t even have to use this.” He pet the machete like it was his loyal pet, man’s best metallic friend. The boots tied, he stood up. Where his lanky, underfed father had stood twenty minutes ago, a soldier stood now, a man made for war, ready to face or deal death, whichever came first.

From the window, Brooklyn looked split in two: slowly dying fires twinkled down the shadowy streets of the burrough, while those few who could still afford electricity blared prosperity from the top of the skyline like a decadent halo. Liam thought he could see into those impossibly high windows sometimes, catch a glimpse of the people in colorful clothes watching little men dance across digital screens, look into, however briefly, the life his father promised to bring home for them every November.

“Why can’t you just stay home? Me and Jess don’t need a TV. We’re OK, Dad.” His father stopped adjusting the filter on his gas mask and met the boy’s unblinking stare. “It’s not that easy, Liam. I want to give you the chance you deserve, and to do that, we have to fit in. One scan shows that we have no TV, no computer, and that keeps me from even interviewing for a better job.” He dashed a pile of high gloss ads off the kitchen table, casting a rainbow of sales across the sparsity of the ground-floor apartment.”We need this stuff, and today is the only day I can get it.”

A scream shattered the glass serenity of the night, the last cry of some unlucky soul falling early to the violence in the streets. His father knelt and put a hand on his shoulder. “It won’t be like last year, Liam. I promise. This time I’ll be there right when the meal ends. Right next to all the stuff. I’ve got a plan to get there, my whole route home. We’ve got the gear and I’m more prepared than ever. This year might mean we can move to the tenth floor next year.” He slung the empty sack over his shoulder, trusting the strength of his own bag more than the thin white plastic with the blue and yellow logo.

He moved towards the door, heavy boots marching out a funeral dirge on the wooden floors. “By why, Dad? Why does it have to be this way?”

His father turned around to take one last look at his son before he put his life, and his money, in the hands of the corporate machine. “Because it’s always been this way, son. There isn’t any other way to make it in this life. Those are the Black Friday rules.”

“Thousands they grieve as the Black Friday rule” – Flogging Molly

Longhand Fiction – Vote for your Favorite!

July 16, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

Pens and pencils down! Quite literally.

I’d like to thank everyone who entered, and hope you had fun writing with a pen on some paper, especially if that forced you to change up your writing routine a little bit.

The hard part is done. Now we get to read all the wonderful entries from all the wonderful writers who scribbled these inken mini-masterpieces.

Voting will be open for one week; you only get one vote, so make sure you read all of the entries (they’re all well worth it!) and choose wisely.

I’ll announce (with much pomp and fanfare) and feature (with much respect and admiration) the two winners next Wednesday, July 24.

The stories (in the order they were received):

Beast of Burden – by JH Mae
The Virus – by Stuff and Things
My Blood for your Thoughts – by JC
Bereavement’s Brew – by Regina LaValley
The Grownup – by Phillip McCollum
The Wonderful Cost of Climbing – by Exist for Zen
The Writer – by John W. Howell
Dmitri – by Tkipsky

Cheers and enjoy!

Brew Fiction: Firestone Walker Double Jack

July 2, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

The flames speak.

Each crack a noun, each snap a verb, each sizzling hiss an adjective. All part of a language no person can comprehend, part of an infinite chain of echoes that has been flaring and dying since that first bolt of lightning kissed the trees in the Earth’s infant years.

Interconnected, but not a hive-mind. Sentient, but not sentimental. Alive, but not quite living.

The flames sing.

They repeat every story ever told to them, mimicking the words and waves that thump out a beat for their endless dance. They absorb and become those stories, fueled by the tales and their troubadours, perpetuating the oral tradition with burning lips.

Every campfire a ghost story. Every grease fire a spitting satire. Every bonfire a Homeric odyssey.

The flames rage.

They’ve seen it all, those eyes in the inferno; the wars of steel, the wars of hearts, the wars of gold and greed. They know our history as it is their own, and lash with red-hot whips against the conflagration of our culture.

Unable to stop us. Unable to tell us. Unable to do anything but burn us if we get too close.

The flames die.

Their energy dissipates, leaving only the light of elder embers and the chants of a slow dirge. The heat leaks, and with it the story, warming the air and ground and soul of the planet, sprouting into new fledgling flames somewhere in the unseen distance.

In every flick then lick of fire or flame a word and idea. In every human eye a reflection of the glow. In us all a burning need to tell.

Brew Fiction: Southern Tier 422 Pale Wheat Ale

June 17, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

The waves never relent. A group of Sanderlings, all grey and brown and white like they are made from the same sand they run on, chase the ebb and flee the flow. Two boys, lathered with lotion and stung with sun, fight over the height of their tiny Tintagel. The high tide washes over my feet, baptizing them in the name of this unchanging summer ritual.

It’s impossible not to notice the surfers, the dots of purple and blue and orange on the horizon appearing and disappearing behind troughs and crests. I watch their practiced patterns: wait, paddle, stand, ride. I admire how they jump up from their knees to their feet, like proud warriors against the waves. I cringe as they fall, face first, into the greenish brine. From the dry safety of my chair I’m with them, balanced as precariously between awake and asleep as they are between surfing and swimming.

As a black wet suit and orange board peaks at the top of a foaming surge, another surfer slides by, thrashing wildly on the stubby East Coast wake, like a shark caught in waters too shallow for comfort. He turns hard, spraying water behind him, before the energy of the wave is spent, and his ride unceremoniously ends. Slapping the water out of frustration, he pulls himself back up onto his board.

I’m sure out there -weightless, bobbing, free – we sand-slugs look silly hunching under umbrellas, sprawling on towels like jerky left to dry in the sun. Out there, in the endless tides, where a dolphin is more than just a fin in the distance, a man can be calm. Out there, where the only focus is feet and wax and waves and wonder.

Out there.

I swear to myself I’ll ride one of these days, feel the spray of salt on my face. I swear I’ll know the freedom and fun of a day on a longboard. I tell myself to just stay positive, to work hard, to take it one day at a time. I tell myself that practice makes perfect and without pain there is no gain.

I call to my assistant. The thin wheels of my chair are stuck in the wet sand. This happens every summer, when I demand time at the beach, and then demand I wheel myself to a ramp, off the boardwalk, into the sand, down to the water.

I tell myself that soon I’ll be unstuck. I won’t need an assistant to wheel me back to the van. Soon I’ll be able to feel that water washing over my feet, feel the sand burn my soles. Soon I’ll have an orange board and a black wet suit of my own. Soon it will be the power of the wave carrying me forward, not the power of my arms.

Soon I’ll be out there.

Writing Contest: Liquid Literature

April 26, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

I am pleased to announce the first official Literature and Libation writing contest!

The rules are simple: write a piece of flash fiction or a short essay – no shorter than 300 words, no longer than 1000 words – post it on your own blog or site, and link to it in the comments below.

To round out this week’s theme – Writing and Drinking – choose one of the following and base your piece on it either directly, metaphorically, or thematically. Include the number in the title of your piece:

Pale ale
James Joyce
Bar stools
A brutal hangover
Sangria

Submit your story by 11:59 PM, next Friday, May 3rd. I’ll create a public poll on Saturday May 4th so that everyone can vote for their favorite story. In addition to the voting, I will also choose my favorite from the bunch. Voting will end on Saturday, May 11.

Once all the votes have been counted, all the words read, all the stories digested and reviewed, I’ll post the winners on this here blog. The two winning writers will receive my feedback on the submitted story and an editorial review of another shortish piece (either fiction or nonfiction) like a book chapter or a longer story/essay.

I look forward to reading the entries!

“In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is Freedom, in water there is bacteria.”
― Benjamin Franklin

Review: Fordham Copperhead

March 1, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

It was in that pub, appropriately old and charismatic, that they decided to meet, meet and rekindle a friendship that had long ago been extinguished by the complication and tribulation of growing to adult from child. For years he’d held an image of her in his head: eighteen, dirty-blonde hair tangled in the sea breeze, a simple smile against the backdrop of summer sand, a swirl of love and lust.

He’d held onto this perfect version of her for so long that the twenty-five years between memory and present seemed inconsequential. To think she had remained a pristine object of juvenile attraction was ridiculous, as he saw in himself almost no resemblance to the teenager he had been. He no longer chased an idealistic boyhood dream, but instead settled into the comfort of events expected. He’d made his career accidentally, falling from one unplanned, unwanted success to another, until he had reached a position too deeply buried in the expectations of those around him to ever pull himself free.

He arrived early, emotions flaring in his stomach, nervous in a way he hadn’t known since first held-hands, first tongue-kisses, and first pseudo-romance. His work had instilled in him an almost necessary fearlessness, but this was no corporate merger or board meeting or greedy executive to be manipulated. For once, he did not have the upper hand. For once, he would be on the defensive.

He ordered a beer.

Stealing furtive glances at the door did not help calm his mind. He agonized over what he’d say, how he’d sound, how his hair looked. Their fates had slipped apart long ago, each taking a path completely unlike the other, each eventually finding happiness in a world where those hushed promises, whispers in the backseat of an old truck, were nothing but fragments of another forgotten reality.

As the halfs lurched into hours, his nervousness dissolved into disappointment. The bottom of his glass felt like the bottom of his heart, nearly empty, the fizz of excitement all but spent and released into the nothingness of the night. He checked to make sure he hadn’t come to the wrong place or come on the wrong day. He checked for missed calls or an overlooked text. He checked to make sure he hadn’t missed her sitting at the bar nursing a glass of chardonnay, waiting on him like he was waiting on her.

He ordered another beer.

For weeks he’d known this was a bad idea, a stupid flailing grasp to reclaim some part of his youth in the same way some men buy sports cars or divorce a perfectly amazing woman to marry an amazingly imperfect one. But he’d agreed and she’d agreed and he’d convinced himself a shared drink and a few hours wouldn’t tear open the wound he’d spent decades stitching back together.

The abandonment reared, hissing forked tongue insults of I-told-you-so. Loneliness, a pit viper hidden behind blue eyes, sunk its teeth into his heart, replacing the pumping red of life with corroded copper acid. He had lived with so much regret over her that it seemed fitting to leave with a little bit more.

As he swung his jacket around his shoulders and downed the rest of his orange painkiller, he turned to pay his tab. Out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw something: forty-three, dirty-blonde streaked with subtle grey, a simple smile against the backdrop of barren bar, a swirl of longing and lament.

“At the innermost core of all loneliness is a deep and powerful yearning for union with one’s lost self.”

Review: DuClaw Devil’s Milk

February 15, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

It was born in a storm that dyed the sky coal. Lightning, wiry spasms of an offended god, lashed against the coming darkness.

He knew it would be born and where and why and how.

To save the baby from having to suffer all those physical examinations with crude probes, thermometers and no dignity, he performed the ancient rites, called down the incantations he had long ago memorized, exhausted the will etched onto the pages in blood and then, spirit spent, extolled those lesser deities which many overlook, cloaking his words in fire they loved, drawing invisible xenoglyphs in sulfur-twinged air, having requested doctors to seek the baby in the natal ward, where by his efforts they would find nothing but an empty crib.

And deep below, with bottle to lips, feeding on the ambrosia already fermented and fortified, the tiny thing suckled. The liquid, thick and cloudy, it drank like a greedy piglet, splurging and slurping unconcerned by sharp obsidian comprising and surrounding its bed.

Emptying one bottle, it cried for another, juvenile tail whipping like honed razors. On its head two points broke skin, red anger, heralds of destiny, the future of this child which had already been written and rewritten in a cycle often beaten but never broken.

It would play its part, this crimson milk. It would nourish and fuel, passing will and malice from father to son.

This story brought to you buy DuClaw's brewing, Ed Pearlman's teaching, and Anthony Hecht's writing.

This story brought to you buy DuClaw’s brewing, Ed Perlman’s teaching, and Anthony Hecht’s writing.

Review: O’Hara’s Irish Pale Ale

September 21, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

(Forgotten Friday will return next week when I stop being such a slug brain and remember to upload my pictures to the correct computer)

O’Hara wasn’t sure what to do with himself now. Sarah had told him to meet her in the parking lot of the Tesco, just after her shift ended. He parked his old Volkswagen Golf around the corner, hoping to surprise her when she appeared with a rushed hug from behind and a kiss to the neck. He always thought she liked that kind of thing.

But the sun had long set, her shift had long ended, and another was about to begin. O’Hara sat watching the next round of employees mill at the dirty back entrance of the grocers, smoking cigarettes and murdering time before starting their work for the evening. Their actions were perfunctory but oddly charming, like watching a family come together to eat dinner after very long, very different days. As the last blue-aproned employee ground the butt of her cigarette into the ground, O’Hara was all alone in that parking lot.

He spread himself across the hood of the car. The dusk air was cold, but not yet freezing. If not for a dwindling wind off of the coastline, he probably wouldn’t have needed his jacket. The emerging stars were obscured by the storm that was still lingering after its earlier tantrum, but every few minutes a gap appeared, pouring the black sky and its tiny diamonds through his eyes into his outstretched unconscious.

The pills had little effect. Flynn could never be trusted to deliver, even when he promised “great stuff.” O’hara closed his eyes to the invading stars. Sarah’s face – like freshly washed linen pierced by two sapphires – appeared as a smokey wisp. Her features were soft and motherly. Her hair flickered like campfire. She was so delicate the he thought his mind might break her.

Her face merged into a xylophone of colors, which spread from the periphery of his view to the dead center of his vision. He could hear her laughing somewhere in the basement of his memories. The giggles echoed and rebounded, getting louder and louder until they seemed more like surreal bird calls than a young girl’s laughter.

The sound smashed into the colors; a car crash of imagination and hallucination. Heat built in his chest. Spark plugs around his heart exploded into beat after beat after beat with the rhythm and power of an ’65 Mustang. Her laughter came from every angle, except directly behind him. As his mind lost the ability to process the stimuli, he heard Sarah’s voice; low, sad, crying, asking him to stop.

The light above the rear entrance was out. Only a weak security lamp shining from behind a barred window illuminated the empty blackness of the street. O’Hara realized that he was aching from the cold. The night had turned and was siphoning the heat from his skin like a vampire on a fresh kill.

His Golf was alone, all the other cars had gone home to sleep in their garages and carports and freshly asphalted driveways. He slid off of the hood, stabilizing himself against the side view mirror as a hammer pounded at head from the inside of his skull.

His mouth was dry. His eyes hurt.

He slid into the seat of the car, taking a moment to right himself and shake the cold from his arms. He pulled his phone from his pocket. Three missed calls.

Sarah.
Sarah.
Sarah.

The keys fit into the ignition like they had thirty thousand times before. The engine labored, but that old VW just wouldn’t start.

9 out of 10.

Glass and fancy backsplash courtesy of the Riverside Hotel, Kilarney, County Kerry.

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