There needs to be more crazy shit like this on Urbis. As a collaborative work, I'm curious about how that was done. Brainstorming and then alternating paragraphs? Sentences? One came up with the idea and the other penned it? The opening is baffling, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I like how the voice stays aggressively consitent and yet is always a bit smarter than itself (Neat trick, if you understand what I mean), the only tired part being the eyelid bit where you're treading in a ...

It is such a wise choice to give us setting nicely enmeshed in action, considering that so many stories begin with lists: lists of weather features, of surrounding landscape, lists of buildings, lists of room contents. Your introduction drops us into the action as it gets going and we get the setting details as we go. Nice job. In fact, as far as the integration of setting and action goes, "as a particularly stubborn bramble won a skirmish with his shirtsleeve; a victory signaled by a loud ri...

I like "my joints made of whetstone and gravel". Ouch. In fact, lots of your stylistic touches are vivid and (I think) original, like "Something had to be done or we were all crow’s fodder." Crow's fodder! Good name for a band! & "eyes that could have burned palaces to white ash" or "One last chime would fly these gates apart." Something makes me uncomfortable, though, because I have a compliment to pay but it could be taken as an insult if what I'm talking about was not intentional. The end,...

I loved this, even though I don't entirely understand it. I'm not clear on how/why his having a CANCER card would turn off the slag at the bar, as opposed to something preventable. Why would "firing squad" get him laid? Only for its conversational value? This might sound strange, but not understanding was part of my attraction to the story. Especially with speculative fiction, I MUCH prefer it when a writer does not feel obligated to establish all the rules and conditions of the world of the ...

I'm often hesitant about pointing out the most minor technical problems because I often look back later and see that others have already done it, but as this seems to have come up in the queu recently, it does have problems that alter the sense, and I'm not sure how seriously you mean it when you said that you don't want to change the words, so here they are: * BREECH. I think you mean "breach", as in break. "Breech" is not a verb in Modern English. * LOSES. This might just be a typo, when yo...

I'm confused by one thing that sorta interferes with my overall enjoyment: "It is the same man who..." What is? What man? God? Jesus? Jesus comes after Leviticus. I know that poetry allows for this sort of figurative ambiguity, but it left me scratching my head. I loved the title, and I loved the last line, "The Earth is just a crumb/ remaining from the last destruction." That's excellent. And I like the contrast between the sweet well-meaning granny and the ugliness rendered in the verse, bu...

Hooray! Another fictional treatment on Urbis of the much-neglected topic of snake-handling! Getting a "review request" was new to me, and it said I got this request due to my stats, but it's hard to believe that it has nothing to do with the fact that I also did a snake-handling story on here ("Signs and Wonders"). It's good to know that writers are still inspired by Flannery O'Connor. I clocked that with the title and (maybe?) the name of the crazy little girl of the Ledford clan, June Star....

You are very good at mixing dialogue in with exposition. You don't fall into the "he said"/"she said" or the even worse problem of consulting the thesaurus for different ways to tag dialogue. The way you render speech blended with action and setting is smooth and convincing, giving the reader a sense of place and community. There is, however, one wee bump along the way, toward the beginning: We need to see a little more when Kevin shows up. As it is, the tears are a surprise. Of course it's f...

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...

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...