anthologies: story excerpts and links In the Thelma and Louise-inspired parody, Tina and Lucille hit the road.
"Lucille, don't look now, but there's a police car behind us." Lucille took a left turn off an I-40 frontage road, cruising the gauntlet of apartments, duplexes, and ranch-style homes. They viewed a perversion of nature: harsh desert turned lush by extensive watering systems. Some homeowners simply rolled out astroturf. Others landscaped with stone.
A Southern California screenwriter works and plays.
Darkness was beautiful I thought: the deep reds of roses and blood and wine; the tan-to-brown of bread and chocolate and exotic skins; the dark liquid of brown, drowning-pool eyes pulling one in. Contrast could be interesting. I thought of sophistication and innocence; vanilla-cream swirling with caramel-tan.
Homicide detectives Strode and Harris investigate a well-known New Orleans author.
My apartment was near the river. I was between a liquor store and a voodoo supply. I could conveniently shop the odd assortment ofwines at Jimmy's or drop in at Rita's for herbs, gris gris and candles. Local real estate could be a mishmash of residential and commercial, eye candy and eyesore. Buildings seemed slightly askew, threatening implosion, cartoon-like: from the inside, seemingly spacious - from the outside, smallish, individual frontage mere slits in the block. N'awlins was sinking. The delta was eroding. The buffer zone was going. The big storm was coming.
Culinary bikers travel the American West.
The Road Killers had a growing rep. They'd kicked a bunch of ass at a bar outside Tulsa. They'd been minding their own business, having a dance together when the local opined on their motto. " 'Waste not, want not'? What kinda sissy stuff is that? Y'all one a' them anti-litterin' groups?"
The Metzlers enjoyed hot dog casserole, The Twilight Zone, plastic on the furniture, and cashmere.
Stuart Metzler sat in his 1959 Pontiac Chieftain on his Maple Street driveway. Mmm . . . that new car smell. One day they’ll bottle and sell it. He pulled a small memo pad and pen from a suit pocket and made a note. ’New car smell — replicate and market!’ He took in the car’s interior. ‘Dashboard needs more knobs! Bigger!’ he jotted. As a Strategy Formulation consultant, he had diverse information and ideas but felt occasionally envious as he watched clients succeed in theirprojects. He experienced random, uncontrollable urges to lie, and enjoyed gauging reaction. Stuart anticipated the day’s work, and wondered what his secretary Vicky would be wearing.
Marilyn Monroe experiences her last summer on earth.
"Oh, I absolutely love negative ionization. It makes me high!” Marilyn squealed. She wore a low-cut black silk dress and black heels. Her skin well took the sun. The tip of her nose had been shortened and narrowed; concavity below her cheekbones had been enhanced by the extraction of a few back teeth. Short platinum blonde locks contrastedwith tan skin, like vanilla frosting on a caramel cake. The mole on the right side of her face seemed an asymmetrical accent to her physical perfection.
“Marilyn, darling, are you sure it’s not the margaritas?” laughed her small blonde companion.
“Truman!”
“Would you believe who’s here tonight? Am I hallucinating, or is that the president of the United States standing near the buffet table?”
She laughed. “Perhaps you ARE hallucinating."A couple vacations at a Louisiana bed and breakfast, encountering literary ghosts.
A dark man in a white linen suit, brown wingtips, and white Panama hat chain-smoked Pall Malls, downed Wild Turkey and animatedly talked to a small blond man seated opposite him.
"Just listen to them go at it, would you? Their paroxysms of passion make me positively dyspeptic. It's always the same, people from the other side inhabiting our special places and invading our space. And entities capitalizing on our names. The Southern Gothic. Indeed! How long have we been here now? I wouldn't have predicted qualities of the afterlife. It takes a period of adjustment. "
"I suppose. I was here for weeks before I figured it out. I have difficulty keeping track of things."
A. F. Waddell writes short fiction including humour and erotica - and has written stories involving culinary bikers, Interior Design Chainsaw Killers, literary ghosts, women on the road, New Orleans detectives, Marilyn & JFK, California screenwriters, and nineteen-fifties culture parody. Works include: "Tina and Lucille" in The Mammoth Book of on the Road (Carroll and Graf/Robinson); "Screen Play" in The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica, Volume Five (Running Press); "Bodies of Water" in Amazons: Sexy Tales of Strong Women (Thunders Mouth Press); "Marilyn" in Wicked: Sexy Tales of Legendary Lovers (Cleis Press); "Cashmeres Must Die" in Leather, Lace and Lust (Berkeley Books) and The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica, Volume Four (Carroll and Graf); "The Road Killers" in The Wild Ones: Hot Biker Tales (starbooks); "Whitewood" in Foreign Affairs: Erotic Travel Tales (Cleis Press).
