The Bird
….The woman I picked up at the Parents Without Partners singles dance at the Victoria Park pavilion last night is sleeping in my bedroom, and I am sleeping in the spare one. From across the hall, I can hear her snoring. She should have her adenoids out or something. It sounds like someone trying to smoke wet grass through a hookah filled with WD50 motor oil and rocks.
There is this other annoying sound too. It’s a faint scraping sound, a scratching noise. It’s coming from inside the soffit on this side of the house. Last Friday, when a different woman that I had met at an over-thirty singles dance at the Knights of Columbus center was sleeping in my bed and I was sleeping over here because I can’t stand being crowded and she kept pushing over into me like a heat seeking missile, I had thought it was a squirrel. But it is not a squirrel. It is a bird; and it is almost dead now…..
by Christopher K. Miller
Chris avoids developing banking software as much as possible by day, is a restaurateur (i.e. egg flipper and dishwasher) nights and weekends, and writes for love always, with a special fondness for the short story and the essay.
In the 80's he sold so many computer geek articles to a popular C-64 enthusiast's magazine called Transactor that it was offered to him when its senior editor quit. Then, for twenty years he constrained his literary efforts to writing op-ed articles and working as a technical writer (which he says is a marvellous exercise in clarity and making the eye-gougingly mundane almost bearable). Ten years ago his letter in response to a personal ad was selected above fifty others, and Chris is still living with the contest administrator. Two years ago he began creative writing again and likes to experiment with many genres, forms and styles.
For his vent, rant and experiments visit http://www.fairwriting.com/blog.php