duhleenkwint's profile

duhleenkwint avatar
AGE: 84
LOC: Oklahoma City, OK
GEN: Male
LAST LOGIN: October 09

Howdy, y’all.  I’m an Okie whose High School English teaching credentials have long expired, as I’ve discovered the more flexible world of teaching ESL.  I’m a grad-school dropout, having had my thesis committee disintegrate amongst petty but dramatic departmental politics.  

I’ve been writing odd little short stories for a long time now, mostly only circulating dogeared copies among friends and friends of friends, as they’re a little too pulp for the “high lit” journals, and a little to cerebral for the pulps, not to mention a touch too long.  

Like I mentioned, my stories tend to be a bit lengthy compared to most on here, and I’m grateful for those of you who’ve been patient enough to give them a read.  Thanks!

Oh, after all t…

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Item Stats
Reviewer Stats
Items
Version 1
6 Reviews   1 Comment
Fire: finger-sized ghosts of it, appearing blue in the night, one at a time. Here. Then there, at the top of the bush's silhouette. Now, at the bottom. Again in the middle, over to the side. The tight blue flame would open like a hand into a full bloom of orange, crumple into nothing in the black, then appear again blue somewhere else, erupt as a writhing orange again, then vanish. All that would be left were tiny scattered pinpricks of a smoldering red in the darkness. These would survive o...
Ratings & Rankings
Short Story / Signs and Wonders
Version 1
6 Reviews   3 Comments
And these signs shall follow them that believe…. So many variae lectionarum, so many qualifiers, so many subtle diversities of meaning spread out behind words like signs, words like believe, she thought as she contemplated her pale wrists. So thin. So weak. Thin compared to most of the other women, weak compared to nothing. Just weak. Human. The black lace, so little there on the cuff as to be mistaken for an uneven seam, the black lace resting slight like inky tissue dissolving against the ...
Ratings & Rankings
Short Story / That's All!
Version 1
6 Reviews   2 Comments
With a snorty snuzzle and half a start, Betty woke up and blinked until 10:30 changed from a hazy pink to a grisly crisp red on her digital clock. The kids would be gone; Ted too. She pinched from the nightstand a blood-brown prescription bottle, barely in reach, by the peeling corner of its typed and taped label. She shook two capsules into her cupped hand – not one, not three, but two at the same time, with unconscious skill. Sharply splaying her palm flat, she sent the pair of pills into ...
Ratings & Rankings
Version 1
6 Reviews   2 Comments
Weeping somewhere down the hall, the footsteps and jangling keys of a guard somewhere else, and whispered late night bunk talk, Holmesburg Prison, Philadelphia, 1958: “My great uncle’s job. He helped work the sound equipment for a radio show. That’s how. How he learned all that.” “Radio? Wouldn’t he be workin’ indoors doin’ that? You make him sound like Daniel Boone or something. How’d he know all those turnin’-piss-into-water things?” “Ali, you know that ain’t exactly how it works, and they ...
Ratings & Rankings
Short Story / THE SCREAMING MIRROR
Version 1
7 Reviews   2 Comments
Glenda enjoyed her breasts more as a ghost. They had always seemed a little unwieldy, weighty, even when harnessed by the most technologically advanced bras. But now, freed from the burden of corporeality, they stayed centered and voluptuously assertive, softly symmetric with curves of classical feminine perfection. She liked her face better, too. Being translucent before the bedroom mirror was a pleasure to her eyes, which had once been a hard and glinty steel blue but in the afterlife beca...
Ratings & Rankings
Reviews
Action Adventure / Homecoming
Locked
Short Story / Nice Things
I was already predisposed to like this story because of the reader guidelines about sentence length. Obviously you've been told you write run-ons by reviewers who bristle at long sentences and think that if they run on for a while then they are run-ons. I empathize, believe me. The introduction of the father is an effective surprise. We get what we think is a woman alone, deep in drudgery, but then his participation in the scene, such as it is, fills our heads with a world full of details com...
100.0% Review Quality (2 Votes)
Flash Fiction / The Hangover
I admire anyone who can do flash fiction even half this well because I'm NOT good at brevity. The wisest choice you made, in my opinion was when you switched to present tense. The reader can't quite tell if it's to intensify the sense of immediacy or if it's fantasy. The way you made it so that it somehow both fantasy and fact was fascinating. I'm not sure if it would still be "flash fiction" if you were able to bring out a little bit more the bizarre psychological nuances of his being arouse...
Sci Fi & Fantasy / Journeyman
Locked