Daniel Brown

“Succulent Story ” by Daniel Brown

"Set the succulent on the counter, Maurice. Mama's got a blender to buy," Mama growls with a bounce and cold calling grin. She bends into a lowercase r at the edge of the sofa. Italian leather squeaks beneath her frenetic body. Belches a caustic mixture of chili and draft beer as two kinetic middle-aged people with shifting blonde hair shout about "once-in-a-lifetime deals you can't afford to miss" in a stark creme room. I set the succulent on the counter while Mama barks, launching paper money at our curved TV. "Maurice, go get me anoth...

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“The World is Ugly and Everyone's Okay with It” by Daniel Brown

TW: graphic depictions of death, sexual assault, some violence, brief strong profanity I remember watching my dead horse Mollie fester in the sun not far from the barn. All my dad did was cover her with tarp. Bet Dad would have buried Mollie if she was a he, my brother Arn quipped. I swore off horse-riding going forward. Dad sponged over my eye in our claw-foot tub from the fight I had with Rennie Merea yesterday. "She spat in my tapioca, I spat in her face," I assured myself to him. "And that's when she socked you?" He sighed and...

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“Space Cat Adventures” by Daniel Brown

Submitted to Contest #134

My stomach gurgles in the engine room and I have to set down my wrench to address the emptiness. I pat my vest pockets for some semblance of food and I feel flatness.  A bag of freeze-dried barracuda strips. Beautiful. Beggars can’t be choosers though. First one out the bag and down my throat launches my body into a uniformed squirm. It’s edible enough.  The engine is fixed at last. The hull has seen better days but I’m a room over from the gravity chamber according to the blood-muddled journal of the nameless, long-deceased engi...

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“Why Do We Dream of Horses? ” by Daniel Brown

Submitted to Contest #113

“No one in this dreary cafeteria knows I dream of being a horse mid-Spring. No one knows my glorious neigh-and-gallop through sweeping vistas and picturesque sunflower fields. Everyone knows I vanish inside of a temperamental Walkman while I consume tapioca and file documents. They know the metal that swirls and shovels cassava between my perpetual chapped lips. The tape hiss and pop of a slanted Walkman window.”  My therapist Lira lowers her glasses and massages the bridge of her nose. Why would anyone dream of horses let alone being...

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“The Killing Pages” by Daniel Brown

Submitted to Contest #109

TW: graphic depictions of violent acts Day 1 I answer an ad formatted like a Black Ops mission that leads me to a colorless office building.         You come      here and   read       for  money 772 Iris Boulevard The blacked-out words catch my wayward cigarette ashes like the cracked sidewalk catches raindrops in its crevices. I stare into the grey above and wonder if the job will be as intriguing as this ad. If my burnt fingertips will s...

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“The Last Time I Saw Vivian ” by Daniel Brown

Submitted to Contest #103

Life wedged Vivian between a monumental breakdown in a law firm and an impromptu flight to Japan last time I saw her. I discovered a photograph of her in a discolored denim-clad starfish pose beneath a torii gate used as a bookmark for a porn magazine. Didn’t bother to focus on the two porn stars who my eyes skimmed over en route to the photograph but they mirrored her brunette bob to uncanny effect. She was accompanied by a quarter-cigarette and quite possibly the ache that comes with lying against concrete steps. And the back of the photog...

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“River Song” by Daniel Brown

Submitted to Contest #98

The sun glistens on Mark's wide back with a patient eroticism.  “What are the odds of us being stranded on a river?” He snickers arched over the boat like a prying gargoyle.  I want to tell him the odds are high if the oars are underwater. Tell him they are high if help is equidistant to looming clouds. That his brief descent into anger over a torn childhood life jacket launched the oars into the river and lends to those high odds. Perhaps those looming clouds swallow that glimmer and force him to zero in on the odds. Perhaps I...

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“The Bridge Between Us” by Daniel Brown

Submitted to Contest #94

I need someone to proofread my essay on how to take care of lilacs but Barry takes ages to pore over a sentence. He begins at the first word and breaks into hysterical sneezes against the margin. And he has yet to return my disposable camera. We are NOT friends at the moment. I can correct this myself at the Downtown Cafe.  I wanna enter this songwriting contest but Therese is my songwriter and she judges everything with a frown. Every fancy word I write is misspelled and every other line is “trite” or “pedestrian”. I don't know what ...

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“Who Loves the Sun? ” by Daniel Brown

Submitted to Contest #92

The sun makes me wheeze hard. It makes me grow spots and welts. It makes me strip naked and roll around in my front yard to stop the intense burning and sweating. I confine myself to the house and shut the blinds. People call me weird but they don’t understand because- “-they’re not allergic to the sun.”  “And you are?”  That is Falicia Myers over the phone. She's my alleged best friend who doesn't believe I'm allergic to the sun. Despite me bailing her out of middle school detention when the teacher slept underneath her news...

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“The 8:15 Train to Vanessa” by Daniel Brown

Submitted to Contest #90

“The 8:15 train to Vanessa is leaving the station. Stand clear of the closing doors.”  I wander in after a rush of people scramble into the train. Three high schoolers chat about drugs and swing around a pole. A nondescript businessman mumbles to himself in a cracked phone. And two lanky thirty-something lovebirds point handguns at everyone. They're fake and I'm smart-ass Lamar today.  “Empty those pockets. Let's go,” the guy shouts in a goofy stroll down the car.  People drop their wallets, watches, and more in the girl...

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“Who Dreams of Cut Flowers? ” by Daniel Brown

Submitted to Contest #86

“Who dreams of cut flowers?” It felt like an idiot question that deserved an idiot answer. And at a time where the moon was especially bright, where its glow turned the usually dark diner into a paper lantern, Rainbow and I appeared particularly idiotic. Alone in a diner, charred fries, two greasy, untouched burgers and warm, denim-clad bodies who blabbered about dreams of cut flowers.  “I dream about different ones on different nights.” I started, like the engines of cars that zoomed past.  “Like last night, I dreamt of a ro...

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“Not a lot is going on here ” by Daniel Brown

Submitted to Contest #85

This Sunday heat presses a reckless thumb against the bodies of wealthy and impoverished alike. Kids wrench open fire hydrants to prevent them from melting into the sidewalk like their defenseless popsicles and cones and sundaes. And parents and cousins and siblings and aunts and uncles, necks craned beneath the unity of an officer's bent knee perspiring through the uniform and the sizzling asphalt boiling their skin. Their cries melt into the sidewalk too and the streets, thinner and more fragile as the pressure compresses them into a flesh...

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“Nine postcards in a white room ” by Daniel Brown

Submitted to Contest #84

June- Ronald’s perspective It's been a week since Darnell collapsed off his roof to his untimely death. Who knew setting down new shingles in the sweltering heat could be dangerous?  This is why I'm writing to you bedridden in his white room, not from a degenerative disease unless you consider this all-encompassing intense sadness to be one. Loss of appetite, no showers, no work; every day folds into one another as one contiguous big nothing. Because Darnell is gone. Because the acerbic wit, playful banter, chaotic driving, and laug...

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“Because we love each other” by Daniel Brown

Submitted to Contest #81

“Cheyenne, remember when we screamed over... what was it, who would take the reins for dinner?”  “You wanted to make green bean casserole.”  “Which you said was, and I quote, the kind of dish you make for someone you despise.” “My mom went to her grave without a kind word for me, and made green bean casserole every other night. Can you blame me?”  “I guess not. And you had on this, let me see if I can remember.”  “It was a heather grey sweatsuit, Mitchell.” “Oh yeah and this furiously long ponytail.”  “...

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“Forgiving the Outline of a Man” by Daniel Brown

Submitted to Contest #79

The sun-soaked evergreen of Dora Park darkens in the presence of this mold of bearded flesh in nicotine cologne, cross-body bag, unkempt business casual clothes, wan smile. Yellowed teeth and four-dollar cigarette breath greet me before anything else. Claims he's my father. I scoff toward the trees as a group of scattered wise oaks bend over to hear us. My dad is an outline of a man, I deadpan. A silhouette of boozy nights and casual trysts with countless women. His lanky chest caves, glassy eyes the color of rain clouds sink into thei...

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