Story Snacks is a book of eleven short stories you can read one bite-sized story at a time while enjoying a favorite snack. The stories all contain an element of suspense - a dystopian future society, mannequins as neighbors, a cab that takes you where you need to go, not where you want to go.

Chapter 12 is a sort of palate cleanser, a series of six tankas (found below) which cleanse the palate in preparation for the attached bonus: an excerpt of my first novel, The Absence, a story about a chemist mourning his dead wife who produces a drug that, while asleep, transports him to specific memories of their life together, and their niece who steals the recipe for her own purposes. Adventure awaits!

Note: The stories in Story Snacks all carry an element of intrigue, suspense, or death. Please be aware that there are several deaths and in one of the short stories, someone unalives themselves.

 

Chapter Twelve

Tankas: Palate Cleanser

Tanka: a Japanese poem consisting of five lines, the first and third of which contain five syllables, and the others seven, making 31 syllables in all, and giving a complete picture of an event or mood.

Couple

Silver crowns of hair

Filling in each other’s space

Words caressed his ears

Her magic crinkles twinkled

She seduced exquisitely

 ≈

Subway Ride

Lights brighten, dim, strobe

Train’s moving, people jostling

Complainers complain

I said get out my face, yo!

Welcome to New York City

  ≈

 Unfamiliar

He used to know me

Back when I was his pumpkin

Only memories

Remain, only inertness,

Disdained. Now we wait, resigned

≈

Bottle Service

Time to scrounge around

Another day without a

Dollar, another

Day to get those bottles, out

The cans they sit in, waiting

≈

Fear

Is that a bug? Is   

That a bug? Is that a bug?

Is that a bug? Is

That a bug? Is that a bug?

Kill the bug, kill the bug, kill…