Scott Skinner

“Looks can kill” by Scott Skinner

The sun rose over the Piglet Mountains to the East of town, obnoxious like a child rising too early and asking for too much. It warmed the boulders on low heat, bringing the cold-blooded animals out from their hiding spots. A lizard dared then stopped. The sun rays penetrated the cracks of its skin as it held still; its body bowed from tip to top. A kangaroo rat with its head poking out from a nearby cactus wrinkled its nose, making its translucent whiskers bounce like guitar strings. The lizard darted to a higher spot on the boulder, which ...

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“Tertiary colors” by Scott Skinner

My pops was the kind of man who duct-taped the toe cap of his boots to get them to last an extra month or two. He's been in the dirt for years now. I envy those who know who they are and aren't searching to prove it. I live in that in-between, like a piece of gum wedged between your lip pocket and the front of your teeth. I don’t know if I’m about to get chomped on, swallowed up, or spit out.  My pops liked to tell a story about a turtle born without a shell that spent most of its life looking for a suitable slot. It tried an empty Kl...

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“The Wound” by Scott Skinner

Submitted to Contest #187

His dirty fingernails made flakes of the raw skin surrounding the puss-filled crater above his ankle. Like a bitch in heat dragging her backside across the yard, he scratched the itch. His fingers became wet with a viscous mixture of blood and puss. He was sure that the antibiotics to cure his staph infection hadn't worked; the bowl-shaped depression was becoming larger, and the swelling of his chaffed skin around the wound would soon burst like a volcanic fissure and consume more of his leg. Don't lose sight of the long game by reveling in ...

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“Grocery Shopping” by Scott Skinner

Submitted to Contest #181

It had rained the night before, but the strong winds on this fall day still managed to blow the soggy yellow and red maple leaves past the sliding doors and onto the speckled off-white floor of the Safeway. The leaves collected in awkward groups, like middle schoolers at their first dance, and didn't move. They were glued onto the linoleum floor, pressed into its otherwise slick surface by rain boots and shopping cart wheels. Perhaps, in the cold of the wind, after they were ripped from their thin branches when they realized the great gust w...

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“On the shoulder” by Scott Skinner

Brandon wished he'd stop drinking more than he fantasized about sleeping with Janelle until he saw her in a sparkly dress at the holiday party. He wanted to be trapped in a snow globe with her, and his eyes followed her greeting each coworker in the room as if she were a shooting star burning across the clear night sky. Her shoulders were tanned and perfectly shaped. He lusted over their roundness and how they seemed to glisten when the light hit them. They were like the tops of cupcakes and just as sweet, he was sure. He was standing with h...

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“Good Ol' Days” by Scott Skinner

The waitress asked if he was okay. She was only a few years older than the boys but seemed much more mature since she was no longer in college like them. She wore a sleeveless black polo with a silver name tag. Her name was Mandy. She knew their type; she was one of them not too long ago: obnoxious, rude, day drunk. Joey was slumped in the chair, sleeping, his chin to his chest, his hands clasped atop his lap. He was baby-faced, with tanned skin that appeared youthful and smooth. Drool leaked from his dangling lower lip, wetting his ASU tank...

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“Wages of Sin” by Scott Skinner

Submitted to Contest #160

I guess it all started with the whistle of the kettle. Actually, the sound was more like a scream. I was on my stomach, my unshaven cheek pressed against the coffee-stained carpet. With one eye closed, I looked under my bed for the fourth time in three days for one of my little helpers. It was only another step in my compulsive behavior; I’d already turned the pockets of all my clothes inside out, searched my bathroom’s sticky linoleum floor like a sniffer dog, and ripped my dresser drawers from their slides. The sound of the kettle, the ima...

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“If You Love Me” by Scott Skinner

Submitted to Contest #157

Speeding towards the sunset, listening to gangster rap, the volume all the way up, as the wind pours in and swirls cellophane wrappers from used cigars around the car; one whips me on the cheek before whooshing out the window- a kiss from the packaging of my vice. I put the Swisher Sweet back to my mouth and inhale. Ash vanishes in the violence of the tornado inside my car, and the flame on the tip of my blunt burns a brighter orange. The sunset is violet red, fading to black with each static thump of bass from my blown speakers as I hurl my...

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“Posted With Demons ” by Scott Skinner

Submitted to Contest #154

My new girl likes it when I call her a whore, and my brother tells me if these streets don’t kill us first, they’ll make us strong. He likes to iron money and wear 2XL tall T’s that drape long enough to cover his sagging jeans and conceal his tucked Glock 19, which he brings everywhere. The gun doesn’t have a serial number, and I’ve never seen him use it, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t or won’t. Rusty security bars cover our house's windows, and outside our front door is another door made of steel that’s so heavy and loud it makes the ...

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“Arballo Dr. B&E” by Scott Skinner

Submitted to Contest #152

We broke into her house through the kitchen window after James said, “I can see it now. There’s no one in there.” Inside, I learned that sounds are louder when you’re trespassing. I heard my blood moving; it raced all around my body and up into my head until my temples pounded to the beat of my rapid pulse; a hundred fists banging on taut drums. Thump. Thump. Thump.  My mind, a place I’ve never understood, was always getting into accidents. James lit up the mustard yellow kitchen with a light fob as my thoughts crashed into each other. ...

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“Bad TV” by Scott Skinner

Submitted to Contest #150

James took the bathroom art off the wall and put it on the counter. I watched as he used its glass front to cut his cocaine into three short lines. The powder appeared to levitate above the typography print that read, “Please don’t do coke in the bathroom.” James snorted a line using a rolled-up twenty, slurped the drip from the back of his throat, and spit the wet into the sink. He did that every time he did coke. Snort. Slurp. Spit.  I didn’t want to be there, but I couldn’t get out; James and Mandy Stuart pinned me to the back corner...

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“Shipwrecked” by Scott Skinner

Submitted to Contest #148

When the shabby elevator’s doors closed, Mike forgot how to be normal, and as he noticed the whine of the machine’s old parts, he saw his Tinder date grip her clutch closer to her body. It was not the look he had hoped to cultivate. He wanted to face her - he thought it would make things more comfortable - but he didn’t dare. Instead, he stood at her side like a New York bell hop until, through no action of his own, his arms swung back and forth automatically like a desktop drinking bird. Things were not working out for him, and even after h...

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“The person inside” by Scott Skinner

Submitted to Contest #146

You have twenty minutes. It would be twenty-three if you included the cooldown, but you don’t need to commit to that; just commit to twenty minutes. Yesterday you didn’t meditate morning or night, and you were disappointed. You promised yourself that you’d do better tomorrow, well, today’s tomorrow.  Swipe up on your iPhone and open the TM app. Don’t get distracted. You know the outcome of last night’s game. You can wait to see who the guest is on Smartless.  Have some boundaries. It’s too early to feed your addiction to your phone...

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“Curse of more” by Scott Skinner

Submitted to Contest #145

One.I’m glad you asked. It was Ashton Kutcher in the movie Spread. They were black combat boots, loosely laced. He wore them with cuffed jeans, a striped shirt, thin black suspenders, and a green flight jacket. The washed denim jeans had the perfect amount of colorful paint drops to blur the line between an actual artist’s clothes and high fashion clothing. There was a glossy black Mercedes G Wagon. He stepped out of it, and my life changed. I studied him. I believed that dressing like Ashton Kutcher in this movie would solve my problems. I ...

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“Chasing jollies” by Scott Skinner

Submitted to Contest #144

I’ll tell you why I don’t believe in marriage anymore. The craziest son of a bitch I’ve ever seen was at a wedding. He was the photographer. A one-time high-school wrestler-looking dude with squat legs and a military haircut. He moved scrappy, like a bank robber mixed with a guy taking MMA classes. He was a tornado of a human. He made the bride’s mom faint, broke the groom’s dad’s nose, gave teenagers ecstasy, and ran from the police. I’ve never seen anything like it before or since. We called him Riggs. The wedding was outside on ...

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