In a field full of garbage, when you stoop to retrieve an aluminum can with your lips, you taste a little of what once was in there. What you taste is not what you buy, though. For EEEE, the field is behind him, but he remembers. He remembers makeshift boots made of…
Fiction / Literature / Short Story / Writing
The sack of mangosteen falls to the ground and a fruit rolls out. Farel slams it with a rock and scoops out the rind, more sweet than oranges. Sweating on the ground, under the shade of trees in the noontime sun. Evergreens bend with more fruit. Next to him, a broad leaf. He moves it…
Hey all, Hope you’re all doing well. Just wanted to link to this blog, the Independent Writers Podcast: https://theindependentwriterspodcast.wordpress.com/2018/02/19/episode-1/ On the first episode, there’s a link to a podcast of a story I wrote a long time ago called “Pickle” (https://trentlewin.com/2016/03/29/pickle/). It’s crazy when someone else reads your story out loud, it’s like a different…
At 3 am in the morning, there is a knock on Benny’s door. It interrupts a dream of silk mountains, and he sliding down them on a plastic food tray. He’s snacking on a cucumber. He wakes up. “I hate cucumber!” He peers through the eye-hole, and opens the door. On the…
Wake up. The air smells like shit. A skunk took a dump in my boots. On the way to the coffee shop, a podcast tells me I can be rich. Me, Trent Lewin, a rich man with no worries. I like it. I really do. “What would you like?” asks…
Jin-Soo taps an apple with the golf club. It flies over the sidewalk and onto the lawn, rolls for a bit, disappears into a hole. He shuffles backwards a step, takes aim at another apple, and swings. It vanishes too. The sidewalk is getting cleaner, he thinks. Above him, a crab apple tree…
T-minus 3 days. But I suck at math, so let me back up. You’re surprised? Shouldn’t be. T-minus 5 days. There we go. In the hallway with Annette Benig’s twin sister. No kidding. She’s leans in. “You’ve got to be kidding.” I want to suck on her nose. “Nope,” I tell…
A pressing, distressing narrative this is not. It’s 1570 Spain, and I’m a missionary building a church in the middle of the forest. It’s 1960 southern United States and I’m a policeman shining the beam on a tree, and its leaves, as the sky shines bright with stars and people sing in the distance,…
You didn’t clean up before you got in the car and drove away. But I did. I stayed. You didn’t call when you got to the bar, and didn’t save me a seat, even though I asked if you could. I called, and you didn’t pick up. I sat in the kitchen and ate…
Jacob is a hat-builder. He makes hats for people with heads of all sizes. Some heads are round, others pointed, and now and then a head presents itself that is misshapen in some notable way, by cleft or protrusion – in any case, some condition that requires a mastery of hat-building. Jacob builds…
Ayyad El-Habri is a man who is best described as thoughtful, and optimally called by his last name. “El-Habri!” people have been known to cry across the street, and in a world full of people with the same last name, somehow that has always nevertheless meant this El-Habri: six feet tall and grey-haired from…
There are lots of them. When you meet one, here are some things you should say to them or do with them. Full disclosure – I’m not American. I’m not a voter in the election. But there’s this large Republican convention starting tomorrow and I was listening to the radio (a mistake, I know), and…
