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A blue finch sang merrily from atop a gargoyle leering from the roof of the long, squat, black warehouse. The silver Special Agent Zebra Express, a tricked-up Thunder Mountain Custom Cycles 240 Blackhawk, rumbled outside Bandit’s sprawling lair in Wilmington. I sat patiently waiting for the tall iron gates to part, occasionally executing zesty throttle

Ill-humoured, Danny awoke. Not to a cold dawn dodging the misty drizzle and ghost-lighting the tent's shabby interior, nor yet an obdurate lump of Grampian rock digging into his shoulder through a leaky air mattress.No, Danny awoke from a dream. He'd had a Highland wildcat by the tail; its body squeezed under one arm and

As he stood in line waiting for his order to be taken, Jack couldn’t help feeling frustrated about the day. Just an hour ago, his boss was getting on his ass about some mundane chore he had not completed. His wife had called him halfway through the day bitchin about money. His ride to work

The Dutch sure know how to live, Tinker decided, tipping his chair back against the half-panelled wall. A litre of fresh draught Heineken in one hand and a glowing cone-spliff in the other was proof positive. His latest ride, shining through the coffee house window on a street barred to cars, confirmed it. One of

My plan was to take off from the Boston area on Wed morning and head down to PA to the Delaware Water Gap National Park for some sightseeing. From there, I was going to shoot down through Delaware and Maryland and then into VA to check out the Chesapeake Bay Bridge/Tunnel. After that, no definite

After finishing my second beer, in the smoke filled bar, it was time to move on, unless something good was happening. I held myself to a strict code, two beers and time to roll. I had the circuit down pat. It would eventually take me to the ocean were I would end up at the Sand Bar, a quiet local hangout

Paradise Springs was a dying town. I'd never been anywhere near the place, but I'd seen enough little shit-holes just like it to know the drill. It was Mayberry by way of the Twilight Zone, the kind of place where good people worked hard and died young and the bad ones grew fat and lived

Illustration by Chris KallasPart 1 Evan sat at his bedroom window and stared at the night sky. It had been a strange day for him indeed. He thought about what happened and smiled. Today was a turning point. A day when he summoned all of his courage and made a decision on his own, against

It was a South Texas spring, and the roadside along Highway 59 was a sunlit sea of bluebonnets, brightly-accented with dandelions and glaring red wildphox. The colors ran together in a psychedelic mosaic as they whizzed past Ringo on his Shovelhead. The old Harley was loaded down like a pack mule, with bedroll and bags

Lefty felt the vibration of his old Pan's engine tingling in the small of his back. “Man I'm getting old,” he thought to himself heading out on a lonely desert highway. “The bike's running good,” again thinking to himself. He had experienced some electrical problems recently. The electrical system was almost fifty years old. He

Illustration By George FlemingTinker was up at sparrows fart; the persistent dawn chorus of “we want worms” could normally be ignored, but this weekend was the Hawg Wallow. That wasn’t really the name, but the first year was a washout that left Harleys mired to their hubs, and it stuck. He wasn’t a pretty sight

They call it a “mid-life crisis”. I’m not a big fan of that term, but I guess it describes the situation as well as anything. It’s the conflict a man encounters when he reaches that point in his life where he arrives at a crossroads; continuing to provide for his family in a manner to

H. L. Harding, known to his friends and enemies alike as “Hardluck” for obvious reasons, walked through the sagging front door of The Rathole Bar and Grill and deposited his wiry frame on a dangerously tilting bar stool. He turned to the only other patron of the erstwhile prosperous establishment. Eddie, the bartender, sat a

The sun was a spoiled lemon drowning itself at the soiled surface of the sea. The waves swept forward and flowed back, with hushed sounds like giggling girls playing with a stranger’s shadow. I wiped the sweat on my forehead, fixing my hat to avoid the twisted rays of the dying lemon-sun. A strange taste

“Cheeky bugger!” Tinker growled, fighting to control the wobble occasioned by a close encounter of the fast kind. A taillight rapidly diminished into the night, but Tinker had already dropped a cog and given pursuit. He’d been on the way back from ‘Rockers’ Reunion’ in Reading, humming the old songs, dawdling along the M4 at

The stars zipped past me as I lay still in the desert sand. It was 1954 and I tried to make sense of where I was and where I was heading. The moon laughed and then turned his black & white face to gawk at the comets chasing me. This was the most bizarre night

Bandit,What “Flash Fiction Department” you ask? Ultra short stories. Well, I thought it would offer your short-attention- span readers something they can handle in a pinch. Especially if you add a hot young lady photo to go with it. I can write you a series of these highly digestible Chinese-food stories. Whatya think? Here it

Click to see morefrom Lucky Devil Photos by RFRFour hours on the road and I finally reached Snake Valley. I haven’t had anything to eat all afternoon and I ignored the ‘AllYouCanEat’ sign at the local diner heading straight for Lukes Cavern. It’s the seediest bar in town and had all that folks like me

For So Many YearsI Was Lost SomewhereIn Between The Grease And GearsNot Sure Which End Was UpThe Whole Time Pushing My LuckThe First To ComeAnd The Last To LeaveI Crowned Myself TheLife Of The Never Ending PartyWhile Others Used SpoonsTo Get Their FixI Used A Snow Shovel‚To Nab My KicksChasing DeathAnd Gaining On It FastTo