Literary Fiction

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Fantasy as you Like It

Originally published in the Chaffin Journal (as Charlie Martin)
Winner of the 2006 Chaffin Award for FictionIncredible Hulk #1 (Marvel Comics)

A man in a lab coat stands in the middle of the desert. His mouth hangs open in an extended scream as his body twists and grows. His glasses fall off and his clothes tear at the seams. American soldiers surround him on all sides, their jaws slack in shock as they watch an ordinary man become a seven foot tall gray-skinned behemoth. A giant question mark hangs in the air behind the scene, invisible to all but the reader and posing one apparently all-important question.

IS HE MAN OR MONSTER OR…IS HE BOTH?

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Out Now: Second Position

Forget about your bleeding toenail. Forget about muscles that want to betray you. Forget about the you entirely. Right now, you’re nothing but the dance.

Now part of the Winter 2022 edition of The Avalon Literary Review, “Second Position” is a piece of flash fiction that tells the story of a woman’s transformation as she gives herself to a career in ballet. Delving into matters of introspection and gender identity, it is an exploration of a person’s psyche as she handles her own past under the harsh lights of the stage.

“Second Position” and many other great short stories are available now in The Avalon Literary Review, which is available in both print and PDF!

Click here to order a copy of The Avalon Literary Review!

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The Simple but Significant Plot Shift of In the Heights

The excellent Broadway musical In the Heights received a film adaptation this summer and, like most such adaptations, it went through some changes from stage to screen. Character arcs shifted slightly, some numbers got cut, and a few items got added to make the show more topical. But one particular change left me really thinking, and I feel that it subtly alters the tone of the entire story.

Read more at the Screamsheet!

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Femme Fatale

Awesome Adventures, web comic by Andy Porwitzky and I, ran for six months in 2010 and 2011. 2010 ended with a one-page Christmas comic written and drawn by Andy, which you can find here. As 2011 rolled in, we noticed that the comic had yet to include a female character.

The first woman to appear in Awesome Adventures starts the story gagged and bound to a chair. I’ll let you read the comic and decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

If you’re interested in more of Andy’s work, you should take a look at his website, DoktorAndy.com.

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The Discount Hitman

Back in 2010 and 2011, my friend Andy Porwitzky and I collaborated on a short-lived series of one-shot webcomics called Awesome Adventures Comics. These comics have recently been recovered, and I intend to post them here over the next few weeks.

The first comic, “The Discount Hitman,” was Andy’s take on a silly short story I had written.

For more information about Andy’s work, head over to DoktorAndy.com for a full listing of his fiction and non-fiction publications.

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The Yellow Dart

Published in The Lyndon Review.

Dart Board

The purpose to her moving my computer into the bedroom was twofold. First of all, that meant that she didn’t have to go into the living room, which by then had become the victim of a hostile takeover led by spilled ashtrays, moldy bread, dusty furniture, and several roaches, each of whom I had jokingly named Fred. Secondly, it meant that she could keep an eye on me and make sure that I didn’t spend too much time at the keyboard. She made the move while I was working the night shift at the gas station down the street. By the time that I got home I had been up for seventy-two hours straight and I didn’t care enough to make a complaint. Thus I became shackled to the bedroom, leaving only to work and to make my occasional and vain attempts at putting the house back into a state that remotely resembled clean.

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The Winner

Published in The Lyndon Review.

Fist

Lil and I had been fighting for about two months. Even if one of us did win an individual battle, it proved to be only a cosmetic victory, patching our relationship for a few hours or maybe even a day at a time before the well-stocked armies of our tempers clashed again. In the realm of the purely physical she outmatched me every time, beating her fists against my torso and sinking her nails into my arms while I stood motionless, unwilling to retaliate. My best bet was to make her cry early on, to hurt her with words so quickly that her temper would overload like an exploding boiler and send her running out of the room wailing. When I managed this feat I could always wait to the count of sixty before following her and apologizing, making for a teary-eyed and blissfully quiet session of makeup sex and a nap before the next battle. When I didn’t manage to avoid the attack I had to wait for her to exhaust herself, which could take some time because throwing a punch required remarkably little energy from her. When she left the house in a rage I would take my defeat out on whatever inanimate object presented itself. Through this post-loss ritual I managed to throw a portable phone through the thinly plastered wall and blind myself by crumbling the metal frames of my glasses into a ball and tossing them into the pile of uncollected debris next to the brooms.

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