“Oh my God. I’m not gonna’ make it,” Nick says, stumbling up to the intersection of Baxter and Milledge Ave. At two-thirty in the morning, the intersection is still relatively busy. Young sorority and fraternity members are shuttling each other home after the parties. The downtown crowd is going home too.

“C’mon,” Travis argues. “It’s good for you.” To prove his point, Travis inhales a deep breath through his nostrils, filling his lungs to capacity with the warm night air.

Nick catches up to Travis and mocks him in a whinny, self-righteous tone, “It’s good for you.” He shakes his head. “It’s good for you when it’s three o’clock in the afternoon and you’re not wasted.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re doing, then.”

Read the whole story so far: Carousel Cowboy

Characters and Places: destiny, Love, Nick Vaughn, Travis Fleeting

“You know you’re never gonna’ marry anybody, Travis” Kristin says.

Travis furrows his brow.

“Yeah, dude,” Ian says encouragingly. “Vaquero. You’re a cowboy.”

“No time for dames,” Nick agrees gruffly and then quickly corrects himself to Kristin and Daphne. “Except for you two luscious ladies.” Kristin and Daphne make duh faces.

Travis shakes his head. “I was at a party a couple of months ago, trying to explain to this girl that I was a misogynist—she asks me if I had to go to school for that.”

Read the whole story so far: Carousel Cowboy

Characters and Places: Daphne Dearborn, fuck, Ian Fleming, Kristen Shelley, marriage, Nick Vaughn, Travis Fleeting

“I love you. Marry me,” Travis says, grinning like an idiot at Dizzy. He is tipsy and loving and has just plopped down next to his Caribbean ocean blue-eyed crush.

“Hey everybody,” Dizzy says, talking to the whole table, “Look who it is! It’s Travis!” She leans over and gives Travis a big, wet kiss on the cheek. It’s a mutant double-date: Travis, Ian, Kristin and Dizzy, four people that have love but can’t see one another, all sitting at a table by the front door of Mean Mike’s. Travis and Dizzy are on one side, Kristin and Ian opposite them. No more perfect pair of pairs that could never exist ever existed.

“Don’t avoid the question,” Travis says, trying to be irritated—something he can’t manage with Daphne. She looks at him and beams, and he smiles back.

“I told you we’ll get married when we’re thirty.”

“Oh c’mon,” Travis whines.

“What?”

“You’ll have found a perfect, gorgeous, rich guy by then.”

Thinking about it while sipping on a jack and coke, Daphne nods excitedly at Travis with a bright smile, and replies, “Okay!”

Read the whole story so far: Carousel Cowboy

Characters and Places: carousel, Daphne Dearborn, Ian Fleming, judgement, Kristin Shelly, Love, Nick Vaughn, Pittsburgh, Travis Fleeting

Travis turns from Melissa as he watches John walk into the bar and shows the bouncer his driver’s license. He waves as John starts to pass him by, almost missing him.

John steps up to Travis and Melissa, hands in pockets, and a box underneath one arm. “Hey.”

“What’s up, Lardo?”

John shrugs.

“Hi,” Melissa says.

Travis makes introductions.

Reaching out, John shakes Melissa’s hand. “Nice to meet you,” he says plainly, and Travis looks at his friend more closely. Something is wrong. “You all right?”

John tilts his head left then right, and then says, nodding slowly, “It’s been an interesting day.”

Read the whole story so far: Carousel Cowboy

Characters and Places: ER, Jon, Jon Riffing, Melissa, Travis Fleeting

Consequences and the laws of thermodynamics are the only things that matter, he thinks, his eyes empty of focus, but still occupied by a small errant red balloon drifting up and away over the parking lot. The best laws are estimates for the illusion of causality anyway. Just below the jostling dot, an atrophied calypso of rusted roller coaster tracks. The returning mistress winter strokes his cheek through the open window of his van, his head settled dog-like on the mantle, and he turns his collar up. After a moment, he cleans his glasses. Distracted no longer by the red traveler in the monolith of the Octobering sky, reality creeps back into to Gene’s gauzy perceptions. He can see her face in the door of the morning bedroom, half-hidden by the frame, spying on him.

“Hey you.” She smiles, slightly. “Everything all right?”

He can see the tears in her eyes. This was what, now, a week ago? Yes, on the bed beside him: a paper with the article he had been reading in disbelief.

Coney Goes Kooky

A new attraction may take Coney Island’s status from revered hispter/freak hangout up to the esoteric realms of the surrealists. Dubbed “Little Congo,” a new attraction, that has recently gained political endorsement from the Borough President as well as neighborhood businessmen, will be a drive through wild animal habitat housing up to two troops—nearly twenty-four—African Chimpanzees. The attraction will be one-of-a-kind in the world and actually has support from a large number of groups that would otherwise be politically at odds with one another. It would seem that strife and difficulty with poachers in the African inlands has made a plight of the Central African primate…

That she’d had anything to do with it hardly mattered compared with how she’d had anything to do with it. He wasn’t sure what paled more in comparison, her loss of resolve for them or for her own ideals. Either way, she was unrecognizable.

Read the whole story so far: Ing Speare Typ Chimpan Shakes Zees

Characters and Places: Balloons, Coney Island, Gene Copeland, Janet Gaines, thermodynamics

Travis has been watching a girl at the end of the bar for some time, a little perplexed. She has raven-black hair. She is intriguing, sitting a couple of stools down from anyone else, apparently content to sit—no magazine or book. He thinks, as cliché as he knows it is: she is too pretty to be sitting by herself. But there’s something else. She’s not just pretty—she’s familiar. He keeps trying to discern mood through motions—the way she orders her drinks, speaks to the bartender. She certainly doesn’t seem interested in anyone despite the fact that she’s dressed smartly. She frequently looks around the room, staring at things—not people. And there is plenty to stare at in the Engine Room—odd antiques, broken furniture, engine parts, and old store signs hanging from the walls and dark ceiling.

Finally, Travis decides he has talk to her. And of course, right when he decides this, a handsome young man walks up and greets her. At first Travis just shakes his head, unsurprised by his luck. Then, it becomes apparent that the two know each other. Travis sits back in the booth, overhearing Nick for a moment—“Absolutely nothing happened in the Baroque period,”—and watches the girl and her friend exchange pleasantries. After a moment, the young man turns and walks away down the bar past Travis to the bathroom. When Travis looks back from the bathroom to the girl, he catches her glance. There’s a moment, and then she looks back to her drink. Still, Travis caught the curiosity and decides that if the young man comes back out and doesn’t rejoin her, he will.

Read the whole story so far: Unthreaded

Characters and Places: Chris Mullins, Kandinsky, Karen Hughes, meetings, Melissa Keller, Nick Vaughn, Travis Fleeting

Nick opens the door to the Montego and leans over to unlock the door for Travis. Then, he strokes the dashboard lovingly and says, “Good evenin’, darlin’.” They pull out and get on their way, rolling the windows down to enjoy the breeze. The sun is just starting to go down on Baxter.

Travis says, “I decided that my muse is a fat nagging housewife.”

“What?”

“Yeah. I was thinking about what kind of personality my muse would have—that’s what I came up with. She eats hostess cakes by the handful!”

Read the whole story so far: Carousel Cowboy

Characters and Places: art, Everclear, future, Nick Vaughn, The Montego, Travis Fleeting

The phone rings. “Hello?” Travis calls out to the room. Nick gets up and fetches the phone from the armchair.

“I’m dead if it’s for me,” Travis says.

“Hello?” Nick says. He listens for a moment. “No, I’m sorry. He’s dead.” He listens again.

“Well,” he starts with some reserve, “I could check again, but, I mean, at least an hour ago he was dead.”

Travis looks at Nick and mouths silently, Who is it?

Kristin, Nick mouths back.

Travis waves for the phone.

“Oh my God!” Nick hollers, “It’s a miracle! It’s a miracle! He’s alive! Here.” He hands the phone to Travis.

“Hello?”

“Hello, freak,” Kristin replies dryly. Travis can barely hear her over Nick screaming, “This will be the best Christmas ever!”

Read the whole story so far: Carousel Cowboy

Characters and Places: death, farting, Kristen Shelley, Nick Vaughn, stink, Travis Fleeting

The moon shines, three-quarters full from the bottom—so unusually and evidently spherical—casting cescents of shadows on the dunes of the beach. Sitting with his arms around his knees, Eric watches the shiny tide, all too aware that behind him lay thick tropical jungles shielding their contents from the blue-white orbiting search-light. Before him, ten yards down toward the water, the sillouhette of a small boy bounces, occasionally stopping to examine some unknown gem of mystery embedded in the sand. Aside from the receding waves, the night is quiet, even the looming canopy behind him emanating only occasional nightcalls, and most of those pleasant, if not sleepy.

Read the whole story so far: Tsunami

Characters and Places: boy, Eric Tufts, tidal wave beach, tsumnami, weather

Travis is lying on the short couch watching the television—even though it’s off—one leg sprawled lazily across the couch, the other sliding gradually to the floor. His arms are piled up around his head cradling his brain, which is testing daydream music lines. He’d just finished playing, but even though he’s set his guitar down, the music is not done with him.

Some muses are wary ones, approaching artists carefully, only when sure of inspiration. Some are romantic, desperate to be real and alive with their chosen watch and the inspiration is a constant, needy one. Others are lazy, tossing an artist morsels, crumbs, just enough to drive them mad with need. Travis’s muse is a fat nag, and it never shuts up. Like a town parade, a constant, incessant procession of melodies march and stomp their way across the crevices of Travis’s cortex—most of them awful, like earworms. If he isn’t talking or playing, she is annoying him, sending tunes by the thousands and yelling after all of them, asking if they’re wearing clean underwear. He plays and plays his heart out when he sits, struggling, sweating through catharsis after catharsis, and still she nags him. No matter how long he plays or hums, moans or taps, his muse returns when he stops, screaming in a high-pitch, shrill voice, “Travis! I can’t hear you playing! Are you playing? Why aren’t you playing, Travis? You need to be playing—it’s good for you—you’re gonna’ die if you don’t keep playing!” Travis can see his muse sitting just above his head, three hundred pounds over weight, with curlers in her fiery red hair. She is eating hostess cakes whole, spilling crumbs down onto his neck where they tumble into his t-shirt. He rolls over on the couch and hides his face. “That stinks! Play somethin’ else!” she hollers. And then she burps. Loudly.

Read the whole story so far: Carousel Cowboy

Characters and Places: calendars, Kisten Shelley, Nick Vaughn, time, Travis Fleeting