A Contemplative Collage

a digital scrapbook with short stories and various musings

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Category: Fiction

Roles of Reflections

August 8, 2020July 31, 2020Leave a comment

After we switch reflections to see what that’s like, you leave the bathroom. I follow you into the kitchen where you fix us a snack. I guess you’re hungry and assume we’ll switch back later in the afternoon. We don’t. But that’s fine. I’m not particularly attached to my reflection and having yours instead is a refreshing change.

Transient Tranformations

July 29, 2020July 28, 2020Leave a comment

She can only be referring to one thing, and that sends jealousy coursing through me, pushing out all other feelings, displacing every thought unrelated to the power. But the hegemony of envy affords me one piece of consolation: better one of us with the power than both without it, which is the way it’s been for years.

Prescribed Burn

May 13, 2020May 13, 2020Leave a comment

So she rigs up a transdermal hormone delivery system that will hit her endocrine and nervous systems with a custom combo of dopamine, adrenaline, serotonin, oxytocin and vasopressin to engender a romantic attraction to her best friend.

In the AI of the Beholder

March 9, 2020March 6, 2020Leave a comment

It’s just another one of those mid-afternoon lulls in the office when your beauty tracker app pops up a peripheral-vision notification informing you that you’ve only gotten 2 instances of beauty so far today.

Access to Emotional Reserves

February 24, 2020February 22, 2020Leave a comment

I head to the desk in the guest bedroom and pick up the envelope that contains my passport and the latest account statement—the documents I’ll need to access my emotional trust fund. It matures tomorrow, and I can’t wait to finally have the rest as my parents still call it—the half of their love, affection, pride, etc. they withheld, certain that emotional abundance would spoil me, resulting in overconfidence and entitlement.

On Computational Creativity

November 18, 2019Leave a comment

When it does come, however, trouble befalls you in a way neither of us expected: one of your book club members becomes obsessed with the AI-composed novellas.

When The Past Settles In

April 24, 2019April 23, 2019Leave a comment

I am caught between being supportive of this younger, idealistic self of yours and being an honest friend to you, her super-pragmatic successor.

What Becomes of Time That’s Saved?

April 9, 2018April 8, 2018Leave a comment

Issue 2 of Black Dandy has my story “When To Use What Has Been Saved,” which looks at the utility of extra time in childhood and adulthood.

Quizmaster Rivalry

April 3, 2018April 2, 2018Leave a comment

A kerfuffle over the color of peppermint launches a frenemy dynamic of trivia hegemony in “Hearing the Siren Song,” which is now on The Flexible Persona website.

Defense Mechanism Engineering

August 28, 2017August 22, 2017Leave a comment

We sometimes suspend judgment and disbelief, but when jealousy and ambition are suspended from the ceiling, what’s going on there?

My story “Overhead” is in the latest issue of Panoply.

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