Pitt Griffin
Bio
Stories (31/0)
Baptism
On my first morning in Kauai, I woke up next to my wife of two years, knowing I would see things of great beauty. Some of the planet’s newest land, as yet unsmoothed by time and tide. Plants and trees of startling vibrancy. And sea-life from the ungainly, and unpronounceable, humuhumunukunukuapua'a to the majestic humpback whale. But that day, at the suggestion of an old man, I would also experience something I did not expect.
By Pitt Griffin3 years ago in Fiction
Being Here
It is not often that you ride in a limo driven by a bull. But as the bull explained, driving for a living was not his first choice. Initially, he had planned on an agricultural career in Cyprus, his native country. But things often do not go as planned. In his youth, living on a large farm, he had been happy. But after he reached adulthood, circumstances changed, and he emigrated to America.
By Pitt Griffin3 years ago in Fiction
Time's Thread.
As a girl, whenever Maria got the sniffles, grippe, headache, or an upset tummy, her bisabuela would dose her with an aromatic tea made from the flowers of the cempoalxóchitl plant - which the English, hard-pressed to replicate the subtitles and nuance of the indigenous language, had named 'Mexican marigold'. To this day, its tart, sweet taste of anise reminded Maria of her great-grandmother, Colel, with her flaming red hair, unusual in a Mexican. She was a ‘roja’, a ‘red’, and her hair was a testament to the European adventurers who came to make their fortune harvesting henequen in the Yucatán.
By Pitt Griffin3 years ago in Fiction
The Suspicious Brown Paper Package Murder.
Anastasia Gault was a gullible young lady. She was the sort of trusting soul who made life profitable for conmen, charlatans, and snake-oil salesmen. There was no extended warranty she wouldn’t buy. No sob story that didn’t break her heart. And no plea for alms she wouldn’t honor with a few dollars. Although, in fairness, she had yet to send any money to a Nigerian Prince with cash flow problems. And for this, she congratulated herself on her common sense and perspicacity.
By Pitt Griffin3 years ago in Fiction
Death by Chocolate
Artemisia Absinthe was a precocious girl. And while her parents’ boast that she could read by the time she was two was probably an exaggeration springing from parental pride, it was clear to all she was several laps smarter than her older brother, Cyril. Who, even at seven, still lacked the skill to pick his nose - and had never been known to open a book, except to look at the pictures.
By Pitt Griffin3 years ago in Fiction
Animal Barn Revisited
The elderly pig walked through the sagging doors of the old barn that had been his home as a youth - when he was first called Snezhok. No animals lived there now. The feed bins were empty. The sharded glass of broken liquor bottles laid buried, mixed with bones, in dust-clad, desiccated straw. Traces of animality remained in the hoof and trotter tracks pressed long ago into the hardened dirt of the barn’s floor. But the debates and philosophical discussions of how the community would grow and prosper existed only as memories.
By Pitt Griffin3 years ago in Fiction
Twenty Twenty Four
People rushed to help the woman who had collapsed to the floor. A tall youth gently cradled her head as she lay on the bare floor timbers of the ruined house. Although now close to middle age, she looked much as she had on the day she, a newly-minted graduate, married the man who had taught her to love literature. It was soon after she married that the troubles started.
By Pitt Griffin3 years ago in Fiction