Nicholas Castine

“My Father the Fish” by Nicholas Castine

Submitted to Contest #115

We’re all addicts. Take a man’s television and on any given Sunday he’ll fill your ears with a booze filled racist tirade. Take away a teenager’s phone and you’ll see the same animal. Take a poor man’s last sip of soup or last morsel of hamburger that he scrounged from a McDonald’s dumpster and you’ll find yourself bleeding in an alleyway, teeth marks freckling your arms. Take away a little boy’s XBox and you’ll hear the primal howl of a distressed primate bellowing from his room. Take away an athlete’s legs or a musician’s hands and see how...

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“A Certain Shade of Green” by Nicholas Castine

Saturday, 15 July, 1944 Dear Westy, Tonight at seven o’clock there was a knock at the door. Almira and I were listening to the radio in the living room as we always did while mother prepared dinner for the family. It was another long day of school for the both of us. I hadn’t imagined that Almira’s warnings of the difficulty the new school brought were anything but the fantasies of a lonely girl, but they were all true. Or perhaps I had become just as lonely as she. Perhaps mother was just as lonely when she was our age.  After a...

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“The Three Inches Beneath Him” by Nicholas Castine

Submitted to Contest #112

The first one landed with a splat face down in the drying mud. It had rained the night before, a downpour, but the skies weren’t satisfied with the damage done. The second one landed not far from the first, face up, witnessing the cloud of men falling to their deaths for a moment before he died himself. I took cover underneath the church entryway. People rushed from the sidewalks to the stores, some of them being crushed underneath falling bodies. “Why are they all men,” a boy who had taken cover next to me asked.  “Hell is finall...

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“Black, Violet, Green, then Yellow” by Nicholas Castine

Submitted to Contest #111

Ten years of sleep will make you cold. The liquid nitrogen sees to that. It cools your bones, muscles, and mind. It was clear to her that there was a connection between heat and memory. She lay on the aluminum table trying to understand the questions the doctors asked her, but she was too cold, her memories hadn’t yet thawed.  “Mrs. Trudell, do you remember anything from your time before?” a doctor asked, his face still blurry to her.  “It’s Miss Trudell,” she responded, struggling to push the words through her dry throat.&nb...

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“Monochromatic” by Nicholas Castine

Submitted to Contest #110

I asked him why we couldn't shoot doe and he told me it's because they were mothers. Without them the fawns would starve or be easily plucked off their teetering legs by coyotes or bears or wander into roads to be smashed by cars. They don’t got antlers but they know how to hide, he said. My brother elbowed me a stiff one as if to tell me to not bother the old man with my stupid questions. As if I should have learned this from morning cartoons or from our uncle with the spongy nose.  Out there there’s no one to look after you if it a...

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