B.A. Durham
Bio
Literary Fiction | Midwestern Gothic | Science Fiction
Stories (4)
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False Memories. First Place in 3:00 AM Challenge.
Again, I am walking through the arcade at our childhood vacation spot in South Carolina. It smells like cigarette smoke and the ocean. Wood balls clack in a Skee-Ball’s feeder. I want to play, but I am out of coins. I keep walking. Amber lights flash on the ceiling, followed by the ratcheting sound of a ticket dispenser. I head past the pinball machines to the ice cream counter, where a woman in a blue and white striped uniform dips a soft-serve cone into a bucket of red candy shell. A rainbow of other colors are lined up in what looks like paint cans beneath the glass counter. My dad is sitting at a table nearby. A man in an ice cream shop uniform sits across from him. They are holding hands, but when I get close, they pull their hands back. The man’s name tag says Mark. I ask my dad for some ice cream, but he says we have to leave.
By B.A. Durham2 years ago in Fiction
The Cat With the Abalone Eye. Top Story - July 2023.
A hole had swallowed all of Lake Walter that summer. Lydia told me it went all the way down to the bedrock. She said she had heard that from her teacher, though it was more likely the fourth-grade illiterati. Mom said it drained into an underground river that flowed through a network of caves, but she drank nightly, and her facts seemed less believable after dinner. Still, the implications of what she said could swallow me in a spiral of morbid thoughts: swimmers struggling to exhaustion, small animals drowning in their hovels, Indian artifacts swept into unreachable crevices or expelled from the hillside, forever lost amongst the scree. To an eight-year-old whose toys were a pocket knife and a collection of spark plugs, that hole had more teeth than any folk creature in the county.
By B.A. Durham3 years ago in Fiction
Haven. Runner-Up in Microfiction Magic Challenge.
Seven days old. His achromatic eyes could barely see. We were, to each other, soft, living shapes. I’d known my daughter better. I often lay by her crib, holding her hand when she cried. Her cot death was silent; our hands were still touching in the morning.
By B.A. Durham3 years ago in Fiction
