The Rake: Fiction & Humor

Asher's Land

Jill Yablonski — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 11:45:38 -0500

I just got back with a shitload of red lights. You know, Christmas lights, my wife calls them twinkie lights. At the junk store they were 20 cents a box, dirt cheap, so I bought 170 boxes. 100 lights to a box, that's a shitload of lights.

Sometimes All the Time

Cristina Cordova — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 23:26:24 -0500

Jonah's throat was sore, lately. It hadn't bothered him in the last couple days, but Jonah still waited for the pain to resurface, so that whenever he swallowed it would feel like swallowing sand, like it had for the past month or so. This waiting made him impatient, but the painkillers he took somewhat tempered his anxiety. Right now he had a eucalyptus lozenge in his mouth, and he bit down on it - not all the way through, just so his molars sunk in halfway.

Bush Money

Cristina Cordova — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 22:18:14 -0500

My friend calls it his "Bush money." When I got my own Bush money—six hundred dollars from the Department of the Treasury—I stared at the words. Economic. Stimulus. Package. I'm not one to buy China-made plasma TVs, but I did want to help the American economy by buying something I wouldn't have otherwise bought. Something fun. Something stimulating. So I decided to trade in my economic package for a different kind of stimulating package. The silicon kind.

Cherry on a Spoon

Cristina Cordova — Sun, 11 May 2008 15:55:10 -0500

What she didn't understand, Miriam thought, what she really didn't understand was this stupid cherry on a spoon. The huge sculpture sat there in its lake, its bright red cherry poised happily on the grey spoon-bowl's ridge, a symbol of Minneapolis. What about it excited people? What, exactly, was the point? She sat on the grass by the pond, head tilted upward, mulling it.

The Neglected Breast

Cristina Cordova — Fri, 09 May 2008 19:14:25 -0500

He couldn't help glancing at her legs. It wasn't just that they were long and slender and perfectly tapered, or that she had swung one over the other and now tapped the air with a sling-back stiletto, or that they were smooth and tanned and flawless, but that they were bare. Like so many young professional women down here, she did not wear stockings and for a man of his age and tradition, he found that slightly crass and sexy as all get-out.

Campfire

Cristina Cordova — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 00:42:07 -0500

One muggy Minnesota morning during the summer straddling the scrawny divide between my fanciful childhood and jaded adolescence, my best friend Robby and I found religion. It'd been hiding, not surprisingly, inside the whitewashed pine chapel of Lake Bronson Galilee Lutheran Bible Camp.

How to Buy a New Car

Cristina Cordova — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 10:16:31 -0500

The first thing I do is research the customer service program of the company that makes that new car I have my eyes on. The last thing I want to do is buy a product that makes one go to the dealer and pay $100 to ask a question. The Internet and all its frauds has also taught me that I don't want an 800 number thrown at me with someone on the other end who is struggling with my language and knows nothing about the environment my car and I live in—mostly near zero many months of the year.

Pharma Chameleon

Lisa Pahl — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 15:51:37 -0600

I have it all, from common afflictions (rashes, allergies, Sasquatch-like body hair) to those seldom mentioned in polite company (other types of rashes, irritable bowels, acid reflux, nighttime hog snore) to the just plain gross (dog breath, compacted sinuses). Thanks to modern medicine, I am generally successful in masking or suppressing the worst symptoms of these conditions—from public view, at least.

Monster

Lisa Pahl — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 16:26:03 -0600

Benjamin Blake is a freak. He is part of the new freshman class of Adelphus & Smyth Financial. He is also absolutely out of his mind. He likes to walk around his apartment with his dress socks over his hands, making his fists talk to each other. The left is always his supervisor TJ Anderson and the right is the sock version of himself—or Monster Ben, which is what he likes to call it. The hands bicker back and forth, always ending in an argument where Monster Ben seizes TJ Anderson’s neck in a death bite, punctuated by his left hand’s fading scream.

Bitter

Lisa Pahl — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 14:24:42 -0600

After the radiation treatments, my mother wanted only green bananas. Bananas that weren’t even fruit yet, not a drop of sweetness throughout.

“These I can taste,” she said. “My tongue has all but died.”

She hadn’t died. Yet. Although she was past bargaining with God, she still wanted to barter with me. She would try to quit smoking, she said, but only if I promised not to drink and drive.

I, Too, Have a Bone to Pick with Andrew Zimmern

Lisa Pahl — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 16:52:38 -0600

At any rate, what’s my big problem with Zimmern? Where to begin, where to begin? First, I should admit that I really don’t know who this Zimmern fellow is. I mean, I really don’t know who the hell he is, just as, I’m sure, he doesn’t know who the hell I am. I got wind of a recent dust-up in the blogosphere, however, and felt curious enough to search Google for images of the man. I start there whenever possible, because I have no problem at all judging a book by its cover, being a firm believer in that old business about a picture being worth a thousand words.

We Like Ourselves So Much We’ll Have Seconds!

Cristina Cordova — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 11:53:14 -0600

Ah, the all-American hot dish—when you think about it, it’s a surprisingly spot-on analogue to the American people. Both contain three primary ingredients: meat, starch, and some sort of binding agent. Both have protective exteriors, yet their innards are tender and rife with all manner of improbable juxtapositions and mysteries. And, just like people, hot dishes come in all shapes and sizes. Some are for breakfast, some for supper. Some contain unusual ingredients, like pimientos, and some don’t.

One Reason I Don’t Go to the Beach Anymore

kristin harper — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 14:41:30 -0600

A long time ago, a lifetime ago, really, I rented a lovely summer house by the sea. Not exactly by the sea, but close enough, and it had a big pool, and five bedrooms and a sunroom and an English box garden and you could see the ocean from a widow’s walk on the roof. It was owned by these two interior decorators so everything was just so and it was all kind of perfectly done in an English country house kind of way and filled with light and shadow. It was everything my apartment in town wasn’t and it was just swell.

Family Arrangements

kristin harper — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 14:48:57 -0600

The neat, large farmhouse was different from what he remembered. Even though he had been back for a few months already, it still took him by surprise some mornings: the wide plank, light wood floors, butcher block countertops in the kitchen, cool tones on the walls, books everywhere, fresh coffee brewed by the time he stumbled in from his bedroom. It was a bright house. Clean everywhere, new towels hanging in the bathrooms, even his sheets coming up crisp and changed every few days, his laundry hung in the closet, folded into the dresser.

Moon Pies

kristin harper — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 14:43:24 -0600

I go over and over the day that the blue girl drowned, and still I can’t think why I didn’t help. I turn it over in my mind, that first image of her out in the lake, already blue, the girl who turned blue and stayed blue, the girl who drowned and yet still lives. Why didn’t I jump in, why didn’t I swim out to her?

1984 Dodge Ram Roadtrek II - $4500

kristin harper — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 14:50:44 -0600

I bought this Roadtrek II, “the motorhome that drives like a van,” from a private seller (I want to say his name was Dan) three years ago. As transportation and sometime residence, the Roadtrek II has performed yeomanly. It is only because my mental health seems to be calling with some urgency for full-time non-vehicular lodging that I’m selling her at such an act-now price. I paid seven thousand dollars, cash on the barrelhead, for the Roadtrek II, on 7 April 2004.

The Prairie Town

kristin harper — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 14:45:33 -0600

She says, everything happens somewhere. Directs those eyes like lighthouse beams someplace west. Doesn’t find what she needs. Looks at her feet. What she is out here: alone. It’s not so bad.

When he landed he was only sixteen and piloting a light craft. One wing bent earthward and the old man slumping. Alone among planes of sand. Goggles to keep out the glare, met no one for hours by his watch. In three o’clock radiance he rested under a shelf of rock.

A Christmas Tale

kristin harper — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 14:29:45 -0600

Every Christmas when I was a child, much of my extended family would gather at my grandparents’ farm outside a small town in Illinois. My own family would usually arrive early in the afternoon on Christmas Eve, and many other relatives who lived nearby would come out to the farm for dinner that night.

My grandparents had raised seven children, so there was always plenty of room for everybody at the farmhouse. My uncle Dick, who’d never married, still lived there and helped out around the farm. Dick was a bit of a drinker, and a big, jolly fellow.

National Guardsmen Roamed the Subway

kristin harper — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 14:47:24 -0600

Things changed. National Guardsmen roamed the subway terminals now in their fatigues and black berets, brand-new assault rifles cradled in their arms. The homeless were suddenly visible again. Irony had reached the far end of its arc—Johnny Cash was covering Depeche Mode’s homage to Johnny Cash. It was a confusing time for me, after my neighbor went missing.

“Who?” Jenny said.

“The guy in 2B,” I said. “I forget his name. But it’s been days since I’ve seen him.”

Celebrity Match Game

cristina — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 15:06:04 -0500

[rakead:Middle1]

Buona Sera

cristina — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 16:54:10 -0500

“I’m home!” Lydia cries out.

“Dov’è la biblioteca?” says Lyle. He’s at the stove, his back to her, tossing something into a pot. His voice is steady, reassuring, as seductive as the all-night jazz radio host who inhabits the parallel universe that of late has revealed itself to Lydia—a world populated with graveyard shift workers, or people like her, who have lost the innate ability to sleep. [rakead:Middle1]

Storage

admin — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Last week we played out the deathbed scene and it wasn’t a life-changing experience, but with Dad dead my tool collection tripled. I have enough power drills to arm a framing crew, which I do in fact arm, since I run a framing crew. We’re the guys who put up the outlines of houses—braces, trusses, etc.—and then other crews come in for the interior and surface work. [rakead:Middle1]

Inquiring Minds

admin — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0500

[rakead:Middle1]

“By drawing freely from the subconscious, the painter can bestow upon the canvas images most people could only access under the influence of hypnosis or in the depths of sleep. In my métier, I find myself time and again exploring the lure of the forbidden.”

Mass Migration: A Virtual Fable

admin — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0500

[rakead:Middle1]

Destination

admin — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0500

TC paparazzi catch real people in celebrity moments!

admin — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Excavation

admin — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Smells Like [insert town name here] Spirit

admin — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 00:00:00 -0500

How sad and impoverished must life be for the anosmiacs among us, those poor wretches who have lost the ability to smell? [rakead:Middle1]

C’est tragique! as Marcel Proust might say, who also said, “When nothing else remains from the past, friends and things long gone, the odors from their living remain as tiny drops of their essence for you to remember.”

Dog Day

admin — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 00:00:00 -0500

The Eco-Jargan Bargain

admin — Tue, 29 May 2007 00:00:00 -0500