Charles Turner
Bio
My work is based on who I am now and have been in the past. It is based on a lifetime of reading. Autobiography, standard fiction, sci/fi, fantasy, westerns. I plan to put together a collection of short stories to publish via Amazon.
Stories (76/0)
The Ring of Faces
There existed for a time, in a location not known to the rest of us, a ring of five faces, each with a countenance settled to fully view the others, but with one turned just slightly akilter, yet still able to look upon all of the other faces. So arranged by a puckish whim of nature when a cargo of severed heads tumbled off a donkey cart and rolled away from the path down a long slope. They came to rest on a field of short, deeply soft, clover. That same nature that placed them there deemed that none had died, at least for now. And so they were settled, looking around with eyes wild with terror. The faces blinked in disbelief, trading stares and simply blinking at one another, amazed to be like a miniature Easter Island of balanced heads. None believed their individual sparks of intelligence would continue to burn for very long. For a time they were still. Then the flooding memories of recent horror consumed them. Tears of anger and self-pity. Moans of fear. Screams of agony. The need to retch but no retching mechanism extant. No one blamed any of the others for choices of expressions against the outrage of being beheaded by a vengeful society. Throughout the day it lasted, then all during the night residual groaning. As the day burst upon them, almost like on-switching a light bulb, they were mostly cried out. By degrees, their terror eased in the sweet morning air. And they took stock and began to communicate with looks and expressions. A few gave the others encouraging half-smiles. As yet no one ventured to speak. Then a butterfly settled on a young feminine nose. Her eyes crossed, to look at it.
By Charles Turner3 years ago in Fiction
Larry Donovan's Tongue
There was this invasive creature that his imagination could just vaguely describe - No words came to express a concrete image - Which viciously pushed itself between his lips and teeth to nip away his tongue. The monster then attached itself inside his mouth where the tongue had been rooted. It did this each night, between four and four-thirty, several horrible times in succession, and he, desperate to eject it, straining, yet unable to make the slightest defensive motion. He would finally jerk awake and then seek out the clock, which always proclaimed it to be four-thirty-one.
By Charles Turner3 years ago in Fiction
A Metallic Gleam
Henry sipped a brackish liquid from a thermos, poured from a jug sitting on a chest of drawers, mindful the jug was nearly empty. Rain pouring from the blackened sky was his only hope to refill it. The liquid was harsh going down. His stomach reluctantly kept it in. He looked around his "kitchen."
By Charles Turner3 years ago in Fiction
Evicted
It was the final straw, that notice from the Social Security Administration. According to it, Darryl was deceased. Not just that, but he died four years previous and therefore his estate owed the government this humongous figure, he could not remember how much, for continuing to receive money after death. He was a bit simple, poor man. At seventy-five he still could not grasp the ways of the bureaucracy, had no notion how to procure legal help. His online applications for jobs, made on library computers, went unheeded. His rent, two months overdue, had prompted the eviction notice that was left on the kitchen counter, along with the keys. He stepped, with a suitcase in hand and inside his shirt a pocket organizer and pen, onto the sidewalk, after carefully shutting the door. He wondered, for the hundredth time, where he ought to go. He believed, if Mom still were living, he would not be in this fix. But Mom was cremated, her ashes strewn in the flower bed she once cultivated. Her check had never been much, but she always knew what to do. His steps automatically turned in the direction of downtown, the part where the street people hang out. His mind was filled with tangled references to a younger day, fifty years ago, when he was essentially a hobo. In those times, he did not need to think about it. There were day jobs for the taking. All one had to do would be to show up and wait in line. Life was so easy then that he had hitchhiked across the Midwest multiple times, owning just a few clothes and having less than five dollars to his name each time. Still, he found a bed and food at the end of any journey.
By Charles Turner3 years ago in Fiction
A Glitch in the Distributer
Gina’s new dorm mate had golden skin and eyes like emeralds. Her name was Karfa. She was extraordinarily good-natured and kind. Her good nature communicated itself through Gina, until she began to act the same as her. Always seen together, avoiding the other students, sitting quietly, talking. They were interested each in how the other lived and what past experience they could draw upon to cast relevance in the present.
By Charles Turner3 years ago in Fiction
Hunting Wasslenorf
The monkeybirds at the window reminded Hadley he was on a foreign planet. He dutifully sent them a few of the green fruits he had saved out the slot he’d made in the screen for that specific purpose. The monkeybirds scooped the fruit up and went off to either eat it at their leisure or else feed to their young. Hadley watched as they sailed away through the white leaves until the vegetation seemingly swallowed them up. Returning to his coffee, he sat, still wondering why the expedition had left SL5 so abruptly, without informing him or asking if he were ready to leave. He had paid to hunt the wasselnorf only, not to emigrate here. The dead wasselnorf was in its case, already loaded for shipment to the museum. So why did they not take him along to deliver it?
By Charles Turner3 years ago in Fiction
The Reconstituted Man
Clausen blinked his eyes repeatedly before the unexpected brightness. He was suddenly here when his memory held him elsewhere. He remembered a doctor, an anesthesiologist. Then, nothing. An absence of sensation, and light. Without knowing, without being. He turned suddenly, aware of someone‘s presence.. “Huh. You.”
By Charles Turner3 years ago in Fiction