Urban Noir

Just One

Just One

  194    
666

First thing that happens is that mom dies. Technically, it isn’t the first thing because there is all that banality of childhood; riding bicycles, scrapes with other boys, the chugging humdrum of school. But this is the very first …

Those People

Those People

  170    
588

I get in bed early – 8:30pm. With a book. Kindle, rather. Nothing like a good book in bed; It never has a headache. It’s been hot lately so only psychopaths and people who hate puppies sleep in clothes. …

Seven Thousand Kilometers

Seven Thousand Kilometers

  207    
679

His father was a pugilist. He also dabbled in some martial arts. But nobody knew him. He never stepped into a boxing ring. His ring was the ghetto. He came from the village in Western Kenya without education and …

Rice

Rice

  210    
917

I received an email. It was the length of a fish finger. I read it from my phone, at home. I had just watered my plant. Yes, now I’m the guy who has a plant. I bought this potted …

Ten Year Dawn

Ten Year Dawn

  287    
1078

She sits over there, near the big shelf full of old files and you sit over here, by the louvered window that never opens. Her computer is the old type that the IT guy constantly has to come to …