Author Archives:
Spaceflight
Darkness swallows the East Hills almost utterly—even today, on the edge of the mammoth agri-industrial complex of the Great Valley. The startling exception to the darkness and silence is that interstate artery—I5—that seems, to a bystander or a pedestrian, to be a channel of rockets, roaring and flashing in two opposing streams, utterly enclosed in [...]
A Walk Along The Rim
The job was good medicine, but Armen would feel even better with cash in his pocket. Inconveniently, his paycheck would be deposited directly to his bank account, so he’d need to take a bus up to the Valley to get his hands on it. When he got to the bank, he couldn’t remember his PIN, [...]
The Portal
“Grandma,” Armen started over the sandwich she had prepared him for lunch. “Yeasss?” “Do you still have m—do you still have those baseball cards?” “In the garage. Over the car.” After lunch he looked through his old Topps cards, some in sleeves and some in stacks. Coming upon his 1976 Brooks Robinson, seeing the glossy [...]
Homecoming
The southbound bus rolled into the Fresno Greyhound Depot at daybreak. Armen stretched as he stood up, picked up his paperback and notebook, and stepped up the bus aisle with his hands stepping from seat to seat. After claiming his pack, he picked up a Sunday Bee, sat down against the depot wall, and scanned [...]
Natural Neighbors
Maps generally depict the cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles as hundreds of miles apart, and their residents would have you believe it were thousands, but the facts on the ground establish that the two cities are adjacent. They are nearly standing in the same space. There is a secret passage that will get [...]
Santa Cruz
He walked around town and into a diner. He found a newspaper amid the detritus of someone’s meal, and took it to the next booth. Not much there. He dug a pen out of his pack and circled a couple blocks. At the pay phone outside he found a couple addresses. He jotted them down [...]