Jack Kimball

“The Words Change” by Jack Kimball

“The words change,” she’d whisper to me at night in our bedroom, winter sleet against the windowpane. “They shift," she’d say, her eyes runny, terrorized, hidden in shadow.I didn’t know what she meant.My wife would come down to breakfast, not eat, just pick at her eggs, red-orange yolks. The kitchen air would crackle, an electrical charge in her presence. The smell of burnt wire. Her nails were chewed to the hub; tattered band-aids wrapped her fingers, blood seeped through. She'd left her senses by then; her face waxy, white...

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“Hope on the Mescalero” by Jack Kimball

The young man lay staked out, his arms and legs spreadeagled. He’d been dead for some time, chewed on by wolves.Jeb'd been tracking near three days on the Mescalero high desert. Endless flat grasses, peyote cactus, sagebrush, and an uncaring wind under a blistering sun. At the end of the third day, with the sun dropping in a pink, cloudless sky, he loped over a low rise and found the young man.He studied the ground. Then he pushed up his brown sweat stained Stetson, exposing a stark white forehead beneath a receding hairline...

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“The Taking” by Jack Kimball

Serial #1: The Taking (This is the first of a serial written for this prompt, not published.)____“William, wake up.” Carol was jostling me. I hadn’t slept long; the room was still dark, shadows just before dawn. “What?” The alarm showed 5:12 AM. “Someone’s in the house. The living room.” Carol pulled me in tight with both hands. I could tell she felt scared. Really scared. I didn’t wait. The bedside table on my side held a small ...

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“Diary's Past” by Jack Kimball

The city has no respect for time. The train pulls Jason headlong on electric sparked tracks; careless workers in black boots make repair, so he’s late when he makes it to Washington Heights. A palpable cold heat sweeps through him at a turn-style exit. On the street, he pushes on, pulling up his collar in the drizzling day. He soon finds the gray castle-like institution, Forbes Home, an oddity in the city, lying on a stark hill overlooking the Hudson River. The late 1800's stone, parapets, arched entrance. This all fits....

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“Virgil’s Aeneas and the Founding of Rome” by Jack Kimball

“Is it fate, or us, ending the world?” The admiral asked the question, but to him the answer would not come from the doctor, but the bright star to the west where the sun had just set. The night sky opened as a stage, and there, Venus, a false star, beckoned. The admiral listened. What did his god mother ask of him now? And would he listen?The doctor dismissed the admiral’s question, to him an enquiry to a deaf heaven. To ask a star, even the brightest, where their fate was headed, seemed the logic of a child from w...

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“Shipwreck” by Jack Kimball

Tuesday, January 23rd, 190610:06 AMIf Joe was told the sea was not vengeful, did not take pleasure in, did not revel in, the murder of helpless souls, he wouldn’t believe it; for the sea at that moment was a howling rage, purposely dragging him from the rocks at Pachena Point, plunging him beneath the surging tide. He once again came to the surface, coughing, eschewing seawater, his bare feet scrambling on the slimed green ledge beneath the swell, fighting to gain a foothold.<...

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“Fish Story” by Jack Kimball

In the pink sagebrush dawn, a herd of better than thirty brown-hided antelope stare at me from a hundred yards. I slow when my jeep makes the turn and they dart off as one, like an earth-bound flock of brown and white starlings locked in formation. They're soon lost on the featureless plain. Speeding back up, the four wheel drive rumbles down a mud road, crosses snow still left from winter in patched places, powers through, and then after miles of prairie flat, comes to the trailhead on the western slope of the range. I unload m...

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“St. Regis Showdown” by Jack Kimball

After boarding the Boeing 737, I take my window seat in first class and try not to be noticed. Pretending to fidget with the tray table, I hide behind my EarPods (Taylor Swift in a resounding beat, ‘…and even though you want to, please try to never grow up,’ goes on and on). Now undisturbed in my shell, I check out the other passengers: a well-dressed man across the aisle in a cowboy hat drinking some kind of brown liquor on ice; sitting in the two seats in front of him is a middle-aged cashmere clad couple, both re...

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“Mr. Big Modernizes "The Tiger, the Brahmin, and the Jackal"” by Jack Kimball

Warning: Light violence and profanity.‘Mr. Big’ is a covert investigation procedure used by undercover police to elicit confessions from suspects in cold cases (usually murder)._______People think the worst of me, but I’ve got my reasons. And sure, the girl got me back to the world, but she should’a known you don’t go after a con. Once upon a time, in a land long ago, a tiger was caught in a cage. He paced and paced and thought long and hard on how he could get out. One ...

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“Gabriel's Horn” by Jack Kimball

The old man knocked tobacco out of his long-stem pipe. “I would like you to solve the mystery of happiness,” he said, pointing his white eyebrows at me.The only thing I hoped to solve was finding my way out through the labyrinth of corridors in my uncle’s estate. Hell, I barely graduated from State three months ago. And the only thing my Creative Writing major did was land me a waiter gig at The Ram’s Head Steakhouse in town. Solve the mystery of happiness? I knew Uncle Clarence was some industry titan—but really?...

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“Cats!” by Jack Kimball

“I know you think I’m crazy, but I’ve found myself.”He’d gone over and was in real trouble; I mean Jack Nicholson Shining trouble. And when he said crazy I heard a whisper in my ear—you are NOT a trained psychologist. Yes, beyond my capability to help, way beyond.Yet, I grew up with my kid brother; I took care of him all the way through high school. Our dad worked at the mill double time, and Mom passed when we were both kids. So it was up to me, Dad said, when he wasn’t around, which ...

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“Tragedy” by Jack Kimball

The Abbey Theater is alive. It is the season of ‘deeper thoughts and emotions’, the season of Yeats and Lady Gregory, the season of plays. And there on stage, with deeper thoughts and emotions, in welcomed applause, stands Sir Edward Forester, the playwright, the director, and the reason for the full house.The stage is set as a gentleman’s study, a library, a table, a grand fireplace, two souls. The one, old Sir Edward is a man aged in a most beneficial way, gray bearded, distinguished. He’s joined by his nephe...

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“Henkin’s Mellified Honey” by Jack Kimball

According to Wikipedia, for at least 2,700 years honey has been used by humans to treat a variety of ailments through topical application. The contents of the mellification process however would turn the honey into ‘sort of a confection reputedly capable of healing broken limbs and other ailments. This confection would then be sold in street markets as a hard to find item with a hefty price’. “Do you think he’s ready?” The only care remaining in Ann Henkins was for her son, John Jr., who everyone called Li...

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“A Meadow” by Jack Kimball

Tom stared unmoved through the cottonwood trees behind his ranch; his Sony fifty-five inch high definition TV monitor tumbled end over end, cartwheeling like a glass spewing boulder down the steep North Dakota gully, finally settling on the banks of the frozen Red. “I’ve had enough Martha,” he said out loud, fingering his blue turquoise bola, speaking to beyond the river; to the family plot, the snow-covered meadow where three generations of Scotts were buried.With a steady drip, the techno world had finally spilled over...

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“A Table for Two at a Cafe” by Jack Kimball

Should we order wine?Sure.Don’t be that way.What way? Order wine if you want.I will then.Go for it.…“Waiter. Please bring me a wine menu.””Yes madam.”…See. You can do it.Now you’re just being difficult. Stop it.Or what?Or I’ll leave.Leave then. … What happened to us?Life. Life happened.Life happened? That’s it? A cliché?...

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18 Stories

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“The Words Change” by Jack Kimball

“Hope on the Mescalero” by Jack Kimball

“The Taking” by Jack Kimball

“Diary's Past” by Jack Kimball

“Virgil’s Aeneas and the Founding of Rome” by Jack Kimball

“Shipwreck” by Jack Kimball

“Fish Story” by Jack Kimball

“St. Regis Showdown” by Jack Kimball

“Mr. Big Modernizes "The Tiger, the Brahmin, and the Jackal"” by Jack Kimball

“Gabriel's Horn” by Jack Kimball

“Cats!” by Jack Kimball

“Tragedy” by Jack Kimball

“Henkin’s Mellified Honey” by Jack Kimball

“A Meadow” by Jack Kimball

“A Table for Two at a Cafe” by Jack Kimball

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