SlickFiction

Dr. Michael J. Bello The notorious fellow He’ll bitch about the way you dress Don’t worry he just has P.M.S. P.F. Neville The English teaching rebel The sanctity of Marist he protects He fears nothing but the opposite sex Iron Mike Leahy Was once asked gaily What was his lesson plan for next semester He said, “Season Two of Dexter”

Construction When I was a kid, some time during the summer of my senior year in high school, I did a little construction work for my father’s company. It was hard as hell. I can still remember some days my brother and I could barely make it; the muscles in our arms would almost give out under new loads at the end of the day. There was this old Italian guy there who’d pretty much worked the job his whole life. Construction was just about all he knew. He had one of those old gravelly voices, the kind only men like him could have, the kind who had lived and worked their entire lives, the kind that only knew backbreaking labor, and wh

  A while back a colleague of mine brought up in a conversation that somewhere in the world someone dies with every second that passes by. On the other side of that coin, he said, every second someone is born. He said it so matter-of-factly, as though it made perfect sense that there be some sort of universal scale of grief and happiness, life and death. I don’t know for sure that what he said was true, but today there’s two particular seconds I can’t seem to get off my mind. I used to have this business associate by the name of James Silver. He was pretty young to be as far along as he was. I can’t honestly say that he h

 My mouth is dry. I lost myself again. I sat down for a moment and started thinking. I’m pretty sure I was trying to remember the name of this one song I used to like when I was a kid, but one thought started another and now here I am, my mouth dried up and my eyes watering like I haven't blinked in a century. My body feels relaxed, like I just woke up. I stand up, but not to do anything really. I'm restless. There's this energy running through me, but it's listless, it's stale. There's nothing out there that could satisfy me and somehow I know that. Without meaning to, my eyes start tracing the wall, running over every bump and impe

Bob, Who Could Kill You at a Moment’s Notice If you ever saw Bob you wouldn’t notice him. The only thing his passing leaves behind is a faint air of uneasiness. Your mind remembers something that’s not in place, something that’s not quite right, but you have no grasp of what. That’s Bob. A brown suit coat hangs sullenly around his thin frame, draping uncomfortably over an old suit. The suit itself has not aged really aged. The only indication marking that it has been on the planet for a significant amount of time was the style. The shoulders jutted out too much, as if the wearer had no confidence in his own. It w