“Dempsey” by Shayne Youngblood
I am sitting in Row A, Seat 1, dressed in a double-breasted dark oxford gray suit, a plain white shirt, and a dark blue silk tie . . .
I am sitting in Row A, Seat 1, dressed in a double-breasted dark oxford gray suit, a plain white shirt, and a dark blue silk tie . . .
You might think that she was a monster, but she really wasn’t . . .
7:30am, Okay; coffee, laundry, then walk . . .
We saw him running. Down, down. From the mountain, across tracks, across highway, State Route 111, Southern California, right there alongside the Salton Sea. Salton Sea. Why is it named so? . . .
I was seventeen in 1965. The “Sally Bumps” gang hung out at Vinny’s Bar. Their main racket was stealing copper from the telephone company . . .
The road to Vegas is its usual Friday afternoon parking lot. We are meeting friends and plan to do mushrooms—as in those kind of mushrooms. It’ll be my first time. . . .
It was rumored that Miss Neela’s spirit roams through the village in the dead of the night with her fetus wrapped in her arms . . .
Your eyes widen, heart clenches, fingers dig tightly into the pliable steering wheel cover, and you stomp on the brakes, your quadriceps forcing the pedal down as far as it’ll go, and the heavy, heavy SUV swerves and fishtails and pitches you forward, rubber shrieking, but it’s too late.