John Strong
Stories (3/0)
The Hit Train.
To my left there was a hairy older fellow with a big beard. He was sleeping. There was a window. And the world was trying to catch up to us. There were flocks of birds. And the flaps of their wings were like little flip book pictures. It was early. I knew this because the staff was pouring orange juice and coffee. I could see a woman wearing red at the front spreading jam. I thought about the shallow funds in my bank account. But my friend back home reminded me to not worry anymore about money. And that it would replenish if I just learned how to be myself again. How could I be myself if I was always in a different world? I didn't even know where I was now. Or where this thing was headed. Matter of fact. I never ordered a train ticket. There was a ticket officer approaching my cabin. He asked for everyone's identification. But of course, I had no ticket. He was fierce. This was obviously an expensive trip. One man fumbled. He was sweaty and attempted to sprint to the restroom near the back of the cabin.
By John Strong2 years ago in Fiction
New Orleans
New Orleans had been destroyed by a dozen different occurrences. But it was more throbbing and vibrant than every other muscle in America. Perhaps that's because it had been killed so much that it was so sturdy. I'd arrived on the edge of Mardi Gras a couple months after abandoning California. I was as vulnerable as a robin nest on the lip of a great pond. Although there was a scorch in me that was too hot for most quiet and civilized areas. But it ignited with this place like a July fire show. I banged on Frenchmen Street with my typewriter. It afforded me decorated bed and breakfast houses and well bourbon from Checkpoint Charlie's. A hole-in-the-wall bar where large rats scurried by your ankles. But more valuably, they hugged me and at best cried when I read to them. I may not have been good for much at regular employment, but my work here would burn forever like Orion. And I wasn't afraid of where I'd end up afterward.
By John Strong2 years ago in Beat
Georgie, The Matricide Man
The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. The grounds were forgotten and unattended and almost unheard of by anybody except the ghosts of the old lake town. And they were too innocent to haunt anything. Occasionally, there were drunks from the north and outsiders that came here to bleed. But nobody was here tonight. There was only me and my gym bag and that odd glow in the rotten cabin. This whole edge of the native river was to be finally destroyed after the tech companies infiltrated the commerce. And I wanted to visit before it was swallowed. Like many failures, I had travelled. And across the uncertain and odd America of the twenty-twenties, I went back home. Or, to one of the areas where there was an idea of what home used to be. A memory where that demolished boy was still looking for me timelessly as he tugged from the shadow in my subconscious that I was embarrassed to look at. I hid from it everywhere like a disobedient shepherd. But I found a respite in this woody corner where once upon a year I was ripped from myself.
By John Strong2 years ago in Fiction