Vincent Guillemin

“Full Texan Breakfast” by Vincent Guillemin

[Follows " Microcosm", "Hebrews 13: 1-2 ", " The son never shines on closed doors" , "July 4th", "The Getaway", "Orpheus' path", " Clowns" , "Strange Fruit" and " C.R.P"]Gina flopped into the chair tears splatting down in her plate. The black eye was not really black but rather a dark version of purple getting brighter as it spread on her cheekbone. Hernando’s signet ring has left a long scratch running from her temple, cutting through the eyelid and denting the bridge of her lovely freckled nose. With tears mingling with the sign of the str...

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“C.R.P ( Critical Race Philosophy)” by Vincent Guillemin

Submitted to Contest #100

[Follows " Microcosm", "Hebrews 13: 1-2 ", " The son never shines on closed doors" , "July 4th", "The Getaway", "Orpheus' path", " Clowns" and "Strange Fruit"]"Dios, Ernie, you look like shit"She saw him shuffling across the road holding a hand over his eyes to shield them from the sun. She felt his searing pain as the sun ruthlessly stabbed at his brain compounded a splitting headache. She looks at him now bending over the counter, burying his face in his hands as it would make it all go away, his sorrow, his pain, the crippling feeling of ...

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“Strange fruit” by Vincent Guillemin

Submitted to Contest #100

[Follows " Microcosm", "Hebrews 13: 1-2 ", " The son never shines on closed doors" , "July 4th", "The Getaway", "Orpheus' path" and " Clowns"]« What’s he doing here? »This was when Aaron realised things were about to go south.And yet, on that day, he was woken up by a pale ray of sun finding its way between the partly drawn curtains. The window was ajar and the cool air of the morning already prickled his skin in thousands of bumps. He liked, and still does, the feel of tangled sheets on his bare body, the way the fabric stroked ever so...

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“Clowns” by Vincent Guillemin

Submitted to Contest #99

[Follows " Microcosm", "Hebrews 13: 1-2 ", " The son never shines on closed doors" , "July 4th", "The Getaway" and "Orpheus' path"]Ernie is depressed. The square of light invading into the darkness of his living-room from the edge of the drawn blinds looks threatening. He is angry with himself for falling asleep. As his stomach heaved up and down, the quart balanced on his flat belly careened and flopped down silently on the carpeting. The gulps of the emptying bottle failed to wake him up and there is now yet another stain on the creamy, tu...

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“Orpheus'path” by Vincent Guillemin

[Follows " Microcosm", "Hebrews 13: 1-2 ", " The son never shines on closed doors" , "July 4th" and "The Getaway"]The night has already given way to dawn as the sun peeps with a ray above the hill towering over the Lank's farm. Lou swats a fly away and grumbles. Only when the warmth and the shine flood his face, does he squint an eye open. On his lap, the shotgun has already been cooked hot and even its wooden stock burns him a little as he lays it against his chair. He looks at the immensity of his estate, cotton fields as far as the eye ca...

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“The getaway” by Vincent Guillemin

Submitted to Contest #99

[Follows " Microcosm", "Hebrews 13: 1-2 ", " The son never shines on closed doors" and "July 4th"]Ernie watches the stranger walk away and gloats over Lou's bewildered look. He smirks and takes a sip out of a bottle still wrapped in a brown bag. « That'll learn him". He feels a slight burning in his throat as the syrupy beverage makes its way slowly down. On reaching its stomach, a soft warmth, right in ...

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“July 4th” by Vincent Guillemin

[Follows " Microcosm", "Hebrews 13: 1-2 " and " The son never shines on closed doors" ]Time stands still. Anita looks at Lou limping back to his house as if the stranger thrashed him on the spot. Weaponless but lethal. The old man disappears from view, and the carless, unbustling street goes back to quietness. The shop window shuts her out from the whistling breeze blowing crackling red dirt against it. She stands there behind the counter, with the buzzing of the fridge and a stray fly burning its wings Icarus-like agains...

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“The son never shines on closed doors. *” by Vincent Guillemin

Submitted to Contest #98

[This follows “Microcosm” and "Hebrews 13:1-2”] The light breeze blowing the curtains apart cannot offer Aaron a much-needed shelter from the stifling heat of the night. He dares not moving his naked body, sticking to the unentangled sheet, for fear of breaking a sweat or disturbing Jack's peaceful sleep rhythmed by a regular and discreet breathing. The smell of melting asphalt is wafting up from the deserted street and further hinders his search for oxygen. The thickness of the air cannot prevent the distant sirens of a polic...

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“Hebrews 13: 1-2” by Vincent Guillemin

Submitted to Contest #97

[Note: This is linked to" Microcosm" # 15. ]The sound of crushed glass under his feet cuts Lou off of daydreaming. A single broken pane with jagged glass teeth around the frame and room enough for an arm to slide in and reach for the handle. But the window is shut. " Might be a trick. The fucker could still be inside". He feels a lump constricting his throat and his mind quickly races back to the image of the man shuffling his battered boots out of the city. When their eyes met, Lou felt as if shards of ice pried open the windows of his...

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“Microcosm” by Vincent Guillemin

Submitted to Contest #96

Sweat glistens on the man’s face as he walks past the green sign at the city limits. Resguardo is a one-street city in the middle of red dirt and strangely shaped rocks chiseling the horizons. The interstate running through it is bordered by a few shops, two-story buildings and a gas station with a waving steel cow boy seeing you to the city exit. On windy days, the smiling sign, riddled with bullet holes, creaks as non-stopping vehicle whooshes by its flimsy frame. From its vantage point, the cow boy cannot see the sunburnt and grimy f...

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“Take the dog with you while you're at it.” by Vincent Guillemin

Submitted to Contest #95

“I really don’t mind, it’s up to you honey”. He doesn’t even look at her, not even make the effort to stop reading, sheltered behind the fortress of his newspaper. The black and pristine coffee table stands between them looking impassable as if it were some sort of forbidding ocean isolating the two of them, continents apart. Her long knitting needles forms a cross on her lap, the unfinished work dangling limply and grazing the floor. She just sits here on the armchair, glowering at the prints, hoping for spontaneous...

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“Serendipity” by Vincent Guillemin

Submitted to Contest #56

« Jack, this is my wife Annabella» We could hear a pin drop. Vanessa, a.k.a Annabella, smiles tentatively, looking somewhere behind me, burying her discomfort deep inside the hedges. It takes me ages to snap out of shock and extend a slightly shaking hand. “Nice to meet you”. A drop of sweat plods slowly down Mark, a.k.a Jack,’s temple. His hand’s clammy as I shake it. Pinpricks prickle my fingers and palm where they are touching his. Electric , the same touch, the same feeling. “She works in the bank across the street from the ...

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“Sunday lunch” by Vincent Guillemin

Submitted to Contest #55

Trigger warnings: homophobia, racism, slurs   I’m a ghost. One minute , I was on my bike and the next thing you know, I’m out there, out of my body. No limbs, not really flying around, just here, moving about unimpeded. Just myself… if I may say so, a spirit. Ethereal, elusive, visiting.   “I’m hungry”. Mom sighs. She can see Grandpa in the reflection of the small window above the sink. The swishing water from the faucets mingles with the patter of the TV.I am running late again, she knows it.   “What’s that lil’ fag doing?” G...

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“From father to son.” by Vincent Guillemin

It hasn’t changed much. 20 years almost a quarter of a century. The name still echoes, everybody remembers, no one can forget. Mommy didn’t want me to go back. Home-schooled all the way. I’m parked at the drop off, I watch Tony walking away, his oversized schoolbag on his back, he was afraid he would forget something. Other kids spill out of yellow buses, all following the same sidewalk. The trees are still there, green, leafy, alive. Tony’s blonde head is receding in the distance, in the flow of students, converging to the portico, disappea...

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“Jeremy” by Vincent Guillemin

Submitted to Contest #54

Not very far from my house, there is a hilly street, sloping gently up and down, shaded by towering pines and bordered with apartment buildings built up in the 70’s, their façades bleached white by the sweltering summer sun, their folding awnings striped beige and brown, the remains of that decade’s peculiar taste. I used to drive through that street on my way to work. I sometimes walk it to the grocery store, pine needles creaking under my feet, cicadas muffling the sound of passing cars, sticky hot air in the summer, scathing cold win...

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