Category Archives: Igneous Range
Catch and Release
Armen sat at his desk, watching the floaters in his eyes slide across the blackboard. With a ring of the bell, the schoolroom was filled with a muffled chorus of chairs shifting on indoor/outdoor carpet. Armen watched the sunlight flare through the exit. He watched the silhouettes of his classmates stream out into the light. [...]
Hidden Valley
Armen had heard of Hidden Valley a number of times. He imagined that it must be in a deep, narrow ravine, easy to miss because of the overwhelming flatness of the Sink; easy to overlook like the underground gardens in Fresno. Amid the two-dimensional vastness of the Sink, a highway overpass could seem like a [...]
Clockwise
Where Armen lacked flow he relied upon routine. When intuition abandoned him, he could always find a clock. As he sat in class, he found regularity in the ubiquitous dial that so dominated the front wall. It stood high in the room, peering over the teacher’s shoulder like an all-seeing eye, bullying the captive congregation [...]
The Water Lantern
One spring night, Armen waded along the riverbank into the shadows under a bridge. He noticed that the river level was rising. He climbed up the bank, and soon found himself trapped under the bridge by the rising water. The river continued to creep up the bank after him, compelling him into a culvert under [...]
Extracurricular Education
The field trips available to elementary school pupils of Slough City featured visits to Forestierie Underground Gardens and Roeding Park in Fresno, and closer to home, Fort Roosevelt, Cross Creek Dairy, and the naval air station. The underground gardens featured a house that a man had dug out of the valley floor after realizing that [...]
A Night at the Hacienda
One hot night, later in the Armenian summer of 4465, the Adroushans were watching TV before bed. The windows of the house were open to prevent the house from functioning as an oven. The Adroushans heard shouts outside that rose above the TV laugh track. Armen ran out to see what was going on. He [...]
A Weekend in Glendale
Not long after the toaster incident, the Adroushans paid a visit to Siran’s parents, who lived down in Glendale. Candles were lit throughout the Mehranian home, so Cindy hugged her grandparents and wasted no time in finding a flame-free corner of the den. She sat in an old easy chair, under the unflickering yellow light [...]
In the Heat of the Kitchen
Cindy’s parents dreaded those inevitable occasions when fire would assert its ascendancy, such as it did on the day the toaster shorted out and ignited. Cindy saw the flames. She retreated through the nearest doorway and watched her mother suffocate the fire with a stack of hand towels. Afterward, Cindy saw the scorched bread. She [...]
Wild Kingdom
The toads crawled like commandos across the Sink, under cover of darkness, reaching out to the left and right on their cold and clammy-white bellies. Unnoticed, they slipped past the cantaloupe and corn and parsley. One toad would silently drop into a trench, then another would fall into a vertical shaft; one not knowing the [...]
Harvest Ball
On odd Sundays, the Adroushans would drive up to Fresno, attend church services with Grandma and Grandpa Adroushan, and then spend the afternoon at Garegin’s boyhood home. They visited Siran’s mother and father much less often, as the Mehranian grands had moved to Glendale shortly after Siran had earned her degree. Whereas the kids just [...]