Strychnine Over(ride) pg2

    Adam, as his 23rd girlfriend had once observed, could be effectively described by the periodicals which he took but did not read. The Economist, for his father, so that he'd have something to discuss with a man he never called. Spin, because he couldn't take Rolling Stone seriously. The New Yorker, which he scanned for the cartoons and then ignored, for culture. Those he did read were less revealing.
    Monday, Adam had a newsstand New Republic boiling in his backpack. Off the table, he kept it well out of sight while grinding down the day behind the half-wall which provided the illusion of privacy. Adam kept his desk clean, cold comforting contrast to those around him, all stuffed animals, memos, photos and inspirational slogans, attempts to soften the sharp edges of where they were. Adam's only inspiration was as obvious as it was invisible: it doesn't matter. His work never occasioned complaint, steady, conscientious, silent; nor compliment, either, relentlessly doing what he was asked and no more, a slow mechanical rebellion.

News Post


  Ignore the category- the following announcement is not, in fact, fictional.

  I've recently been engaged in writing a one-act play (originally intended to be the libretto for an opera which may or may not ever be composed) dealing with Pablo Picasso in 1904-07, and the various circumstances and influences surrounding the creation of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Well, it's done now, and since I could find no better use for it, I've made it available under a Creative Commons license on that self-publishing hub, lulu.com. For anyone who'd like to take a gander, my storefront can be found here . If the link doesn't work, here's a cut and paste: http://www.lulu.com/CarsonMcNabb.
   Anyway, now that I've got that wrapped up, I can hopefully get back to regular updates in my preferred genre.

The Park Avenue Hovel, page nine

    Ray's letter, in substance, was not unexpected; it was the particulars that Michael had to know, and couldn't face. Funding for the shelter was always tight: the counselling center kept above water fairly easily, an obvious community resource the city couldn't excuse cutting off, but the night shelter for at-risk and homeless youth had a harder time staving off crusading law-and-order councilmen who called it criminal coddling and tried to shut it down. Ray had a few choice things to say about the last mayor, whom Michael knew, and the new one, whom he only dreaded, but reported happily that the new Social Services director was not the kind of bleeding-heart idiot the last one had been, instead willing to take suggestions and favor experience over ideology.
    They were still, always, fighting a losing battle out there. Ray didn't need to tell him that, and he didn't, focusing instead on particulars, details and progress on cases he'd been working on before Michael left, some he'd taken on since. There was hardly any mention in his letters of Michael's old cases, an omission of either tact or the opposite, and Michael went back and forth on which he thought it was. If Ray wanted to think the worst of him, he had good reason: Michael had run out on those kids, abandoned them to the monsters he was supposed to fight. If he was just trying to be kind, to shield Michael for a time from reports of the things that had driven him away, give him time for his own wounds to heal, then Michael could appreciate that; Ray knew him as well as anyone, too, and knew that his guilt would make any news harder to hear. In any case, he kept writing, and Michael kept reading: it wasn't much, but it was something.

Strychnine Over(ride)

Thursday     The sigh behind him as Adam's feet landed square at Michigan and Vallejo could have come from those feet, or hands or eyes or elbows that swung, or shoulders as the job drained from them: only the exhaling bus doors closing, though, that breath fitted in, the last part in his working day. Adam kicked heels after toes and walked away, letting the job with its myriad petty headaches and tyrannical urgencies drain away, sheepish shadows filling cracks and stormdrains in his wake. Down a block and then left, then up four flights and it was almost gone: lights up over his furnished one-bedroom Adam swung the door behind him and the ... (read more)

News Post

   Thanks for reading. Having come to an important decision about what I really want to write, I'll be back by the end of the week with something that's pretty new but has its roots in something rather older. Mysterious? I guess. Suffice it to say that some times you have to go through hard to get to easy, and in order to write something anyone else can read or understand, I've first got to finish writing something that I can read and understand. Stay tuned: this promises to be interesting.
C/McN

Further, from "Artifacts"

    When the phone rang, she let the machine answer it.     "This is a message for Rebecca Mulroy, confirming your ten o'clock appointment with Dr Ostler on Wednesday the seventeenth. If you are unable to keep this appointment please contact our offices to reschedule. Have a nice day." Her physical therapist's receptionist was at least concise; her calendar, on the wall beside the fridge, corroborated. Without sparing a glance to the book, she made lunch, chopping vegetables with irritated care.     The rest of the day went by without incident; she checked her mail, took her medication, and put her left ... (read more)

The Park Avenue Hovel, page eight

    Ten years ago, or fifteen, or five, or even six months ago, she had thought that people didn't just wake up and not love each other anymore. It wasn't possible, she thought, to simply not love someone: it had to slip away or drain out somehow, giving notice before it left. She had thought that right up until one morning, twelve weeks ago, when it had happened. Now, listening to faint music filtered through two walls and the plumbing stack, she couldn't identify where or how it had gone, and certainly had no way to follow it down and get it back.     She didn't hate him. She filled out another form, signing her married name ... (read more)

The Park Avenue Hovel, page seven

    They ate in the second kitchen, tucked by the back stairs, originally for the servants' use, being half the size or less of the main galley behind the dining room. She watched Gwen move from fridge to cabinet to table, fully at ease in the small space, admiring her hands and feet as she pulled a decent meal out of raw materials. Lunch cleared away, Adrienne left Gwen to get on with her errands and returned to her own room.     One of the two on the top floor, her bedroom faced a long, narrow room that held a billiard table and bookcases, the full bath between her and the quiet woman, going through a divorce, whom she could ... (read more)

From "Artifacts"

    She was waiting for him to come back, content in the knowledge that he would not. She was waiting because it gave her an excuse to not do anything else, and so that, later, she could say that she'd waited. Watching headlights come over the hill, she wondered how much longer she had to wait, until she achieved plausible deniability. Until she could say "I waited half the night, but he never came back," and everyone would nod and frown and not ask questions. She was waiting because it would seem too strange not to, later, explaining it. Idly, she wondered where he was. It was his business, of course, but she couldn’t help ... (read more)

The Park Avenue Hovel, page one part 2

This goes, straightforwardly enough, between page 1 and page 2.     The house had been built on cattle speculation money, Horace Aloysius Yarbough's second fortune, after the railway came through in 1886. He'd won and lost his first fortune living out of cheap rooms south of the stockyard, but when he made the money back he'd built a cattle baron's house and transported his wife and children down from Chicago to live in it. Three floors not counting basements or attics, it included servant's quarters, two kitchens, and a set of stables and carriage-house behind it which Horace's son had converted into automobile garages and an indoor ... (read more)