Drippy Musings
59 Original Stories posts. Fiction and essays written here: the Decameron 2020 project, the Westenra Memorial stave, the ninth-anniversary novel post. The writer behind the repairman.
Exponential Splat By Bill Meelayter This is just a pretty photo to catch your eye. It has nothing to do with the story. Sorry. Splat! The broom-flattened moth dropped to the kitchen floor as a brown-gray powdered clump the size of a nickel, leaving a dark stain on the ceiling. That’s weird, I got one…
Well, my friends, we’re two months into quarantine/lock down/self-isolation…whatever you want to call it. By now, you’ve caught up on all of your TV shows. You’ve binged watched your favorite movies. You’ve read that book that’s been collecting dust for a few years that you’ve been meaning to read. Household projects are getting completed. What…
Jason Turnberry By Art Cerf Jason Turnberry was a jerk, but he had a marvelous cat name Hector. Well, actually, Hector belonged more to his wife, Mary, who adored him. The cat and Jason kept a wide berth of each other. Yet, if anyone else came into the house, Hector was happy to greet them…
A Joke By Art Cerf Three ghosts drift into a bar. The ghostly bartender says “What will you have?” The first ghost says, “A Corona.” The second ghost says, “Me too.” The bartender looks at the third ghost and says, “A corona?” The third ghost says, “No thanks, I already had it.”
July 2021 By Art Cerf Sunset Behind the Wisconsin River. Wausau, Wis. April 2020. By Nathaniel Cerf By now, billions of people, indeed, half the world’s population had succumbed to Covid-19a. A year ago, people got tired of sheltering in place and ignored all the scientific warnings to stay in place and keep social distancing,…
Among my many careers, I was a fencing portrait photographer. The following are photos I used as advertising and pose options. I own the copyright to all of them, so please don’t steal them, without permission. Latching the floor cord to the D-ring just above Jill’s left hip, Dan took a moment to appreciate that…
This is me on the left with my University of Montana fencing mates after we had just kicked the asses of our arch rivals at Montana State…on their turf. Snapping a crisp salute by bringing his foil blade parallel to his unmasked face—inches from his nose—Dan’s grey eyes sharply gazed upon his opponent across the…
Carlotta By Art Cerf Carlotta was a killer. Ruthless, relentless and no regrets. She had been that way it seems forever, and she never considered being anything else. And if she had children, she assumed that they would be killers, too. And she showed no bigotry in selecting her victims, black or white, rich or…
The Taste of Brown By Nancy Bach This White-Breasted Nuthatch in its tree-hole nest has nothing to do with the story. Stories just seem to get more attention with photos. Crouched in the humid, smothering darkness, Magda Zeller examined the dead thing. It lay buried in a shallow trench at the base of the newly…
Lester Duncastle by Art Cerf If you were looking for a single word to describe Lester Duncastle, it would be annoying. He wasn’t bad or evil, just annoying. He’s the fellow who stands too close to you, speaks too loudly, tells rambling, pointless stories and laughs at his own jokes. If you had a middle…
Starlight By Nancy Bach It was a steamy Chicago night when I pulled the thread of her unravelling. I squatted beside the dumpster in the alley, my eyes glued to the back door of the gallery where I had worked for the past five years. A car’s headlights chased shadows across a brick wall, and…
“Oh my God, Ray,” said Valentine, sliding into his side of their usual booth with a tumbler of craft bourbon. “I just had the worst date of my life.” Ray cooly swirled his bourbon around an impossibly oversized single ice cube. “Worse than the blind date your boss set you up on with a high…
