Extremophile

Okay now look see hear skip a beat as Janie holds on to Mark’s arm and absently strokes it like it’s a cat, strike that, the cat, the old cat, Doctor Teeth, the skittish orange tabby who liked to sleep under Mark’s ancient blue Mustang until a forgodsakes twelve-year-old trying to pop a wheelie on his brand new BMX came down on the Doctor’s poor little orange cranium after a nap. Watch Mark keep his arm mostly limp as Janie looks nervously over his shoulder and out the window at the blurred pavement, feel her flinch slightly (but with her entire body) as the grinding snarl of the tires turning against the badly hotpatched tarmac abruptly drops out leaving the roar of the elderly prop engines – too much roar, too old a plane, why couldn’t this stupid little aircraft be just a few years newer? Mark asks this silently, loving his high-strung wife and missing that goddamn cat,

Okay now look see hear skip a beat as Janie holds on to Mark’s arm and absently strokes it like it’s a cat, strike that, the cat, the old cat, Doctor Teeth, the skittish orange tabby who liked to sleep under Mark’s ancient blue Mustang until a forgodsakes twelve-year-old trying to pop a wheelie on his brand new BMX came down on the Doctor’s poor little orange cranium after a nap. Watch Mark keep his arm mostly limp as Janie looks nervously over his shoulder and out the window at the blurred pavement, feel her flinch slightly (but with her entire body) as the grinding snarl of the tires turning against the badly hotpatched tarmac abruptly drops out leaving the roar of the elderly prop engines – too much roar, too old a plane, why couldn’t this stupid little aircraft be just a few years newer? Mark asks this silently, loving his high-strung wife and missing that goddamn cat, Continue reading “Extremophile”

More to come

I’ll be posting regular fiction and essays here over the next six months, maybe longer. Hopefully I’ll be a better writer for it. I’ll be writing every day and hopefully posting most of what I write. It’s tempting to post it all, just for the sake of keeping a public record and making sure quality control doesn’t go by the wayside (i.e., “Oh, I’ll write something today, but it’ll be junk that I slam out in a hurry and I won’t have to post it anyway.” I know myself well). So we’ll see. Watch this space – will get loud about this in about a month so lurkers are welcome. Please feel free to comment as regularly as you want. If you post spam on this page I will ban you from commenting forever and scour the internet for your username and report every domain you link to as a potential phishing scam to anyone who will listen, so please don’t do it.

Today, I live in Brooklyn, am 28 years old, married, and work for a few different newspapers around the city, where I have friends and go to church and eat a lot of really bad Mexican food and read whatever I can put my hands on. I’m on my lunch break right now. My name is Sam Thielman.