LAURA J MORRIS
author/storyteller
Laura J Morris is a writer, based just outside of New York. When she’s not traveling the globe, cooking for a crowd, dancing in her living room in the dark or clicking away on the computer, she’s most likely curled up on the sofa, asleep. Her works of fiction have been published in several anthologies, including Hobart, Cobalt and Slippery Elm Review.
RECENT
Burning Horses
Published in 2024 Hotch Potch Literary
"We drive in silence for miles. Long stretches of carless road. I imagine we’ve died and now exist in some other dimension. A life in limbo, suspended in the monotony of each other’s company."
FULL STORY BELOW
RECENT
RECENT
BURNING HORSES
We drive past a barn, charred wood still smoking. Black soot-licked walls sunken like a rotten gourd. The roof is open to the sky, its beams in reverse prayer.
“Terrible thing,” he says. “All the horses were trapped inside.” He takes his time, driving in slow motion, tourist to a roadside attraction.
“That’s awful,” I say. I hate him for sharing. I imagine the horses screaming as they dance on each foot trying to escape the flames. Their huge hearts exploding in their burning chests.
Ashes, ashes. They all fell-
down.
I look out the other window and watch the kaleidoscope of autumnal green, brown, and orange reflect on the glass. He whistles a tune. His way of soothing me, I suppose.
We drive in silence for miles. Long stretches of carless road. I imagine we’ve died and now exist in some other dimension. A life in limbo, suspended in the monotony of each other’s company.
The dead air hangs around us, motionless as an insult.
“Can you check how far to Forks Road after we turn off 48?” he says breaking the spell, the tip of his beard bobs up and down as he talks. “I wanna make sure we didn’t miss it.” He doesn’t like to use the navigation on the car. A wasted feature, he says. It makes people weak, he says. Like technology is for quitters.
I pull out the map from the visor. It’s marked with a small yellow sticker and handwritten letters that say Oct trip. I open it and try to decipher the algebra of lines and numbers that speckle the page. I think of math class and rulers and interpolating Y’s over X’s. Of Mr. Murphy standing with his back to the class, his wrinkled tweed jacket covered in chalk, his bitten nails dragging on the blackboard, our faces pinched inward like prunes wincing at each tiny screech. I think about John Grey, who never did wince, not once, his long slender arms ready with his pencil. I still fantasize what our young naked bodies intertwined in satiated bliss would have felt like. Ah…
I close the map.
“You’re good,” I say.
The sun hangs low in the sky, ripe fruit ready to drop. Its light hits my face, refracted off the tray of quarters he’s stashed for tolls. He’s sensible that way. I turn and look at his sideways face, his bent nose and thin lips. I wonder if the years have soured us beyond repair. I resent all the little things. His maps, his abundance of white t-shirts, his fastidious teeth cleaning, the stash of quarters…
It’s then that the panic sets in, like a familiar itch. It starts at my feet and crawls up my body to the follicles dug into the shallow skin on my head. The itch turns into a burn. This is new. I can’t move as a flame ignites and rises up my body, curling the edges of my paperlike skin—rendered ash, disintegrating, useless. I gasp for breath as my chest expands bigger and bigger, like it’s going to explode. I want to scream, Stop the car! Let me out! But my voice is stifled in snorts and rasping neighs.
He reaches for my thigh. Like a sixth sense. Years of practice. Years of time spent.
“Hey,” he says, “Y’ok?” His voice is so tender it breaks my heart.
“The poor horses,” I say, “They never stood a chance.”
FLASH FICTION
RETURN TO SENDER
Published in Sky Island Journal 2022
"He couldn’t remember what his parents looked like after that. Except from pictures. Over time their memories faded and all he could conjure up were the white sacks. Sometimes he’d imagine them sitting in the living room, like Halloween ghosts, holes poked in their sacks for eyes."
FULL STORY BELOW
RECENT
RECENT
RETURN TO SENDER
Macon walked with a limp. His left leg was shorter than the right and bowed under the weight of the US Mail satchel that he’d carried across his chest for twenty years. His doctor recommended a heel to level him out, but Macon insisted he was fine. Life had dealt him a crooked leg and that was that.
Macon liked routine. He ate pizza every day in the local trattoria. It was once a falafel restaurant. Before that, Thai. And before that a breakfast place that served buttermilk pancakes that were fluffy as clouds. He missed those pancakes. They used the old Aunt Jemima syrup. Not the all-natural stuff that was popular with the newcomers in town, but the sugary kind that tasted sweet like buttery maple and childhood. “If it ain’t broke,” his mother would say.
Macon’s folks died when he was twelve, when carbon monoxide detectors weren’t code, and faulty gas leaks were deadly enough to make a kid an orphan. He was at camp that summer. He came home to sirens and two bodies being loaded into a van, zipped up in white sacks. He couldn’t remember what his parents looked like after that. Except from pictures. Over time their memories faded and all he could conjure up were the white sacks. Sometimes he’d imagine them sitting in the living room, like Halloween ghosts, holes poked in their sacks for eyes. They’d ask him about school, girls and the latest on the baseball trades. And then they’d talk late into the night. He missed them, but that’s just what happens in life. At least, that’s what happened in his life.
As an adult, Macon pretty much kept to himself. He was pleasant enough and said hello when greeted, but not outgoing or overly social. He took pride in his job and was never late. He was the perfect candidate for the US Postal Service, according to his superior. Reliable like an old German clock. Delivering mail, six days a week, without fail. And he made people feel good about their lives.
So, that day in September, when he stood in the middle of the train tracks, outside of town, where the northern rail cuts a wedge through the Ohio farmland, people had no answers.
Old Burt was the one to spot Macon planted between the rails, his bowed leg steady under his mail satchel, as the 4:13 raced his way.
“Hey! The train! Get outta the way!” Old Burt hollered. Macon looked up and waved but didn’t move. A big smile stretched across his face, like a postcard greeting.
“The train was just too fast,” says Old Burt, who tells the story again and again when primed with good whiskey. “But here’s the damndest thing. They couldn’t find a trace of him anywhere. Just his bag—without a scratch on it.”
Old Burt would stare into space, unable to grapple with the magnitude of possibilities.
“It’s like he vanished into thin air.”
He’d then motion to the bartender for another drink and mumble to himself. “The damndest thing.”
FICTION
SPATCH-COCK'D
Published in 2024 COBALT
"I see the way he looks at me, that young guy at the office. He stares from behind the grey partition, his wall of Jericho. The one that hides his desk, his computer, the photo of him and her— his full lipped magazine bride with plump breasts that stand up braless."
FULL STORY BELOW
SPATCH-COCK'D
​
I stuff the chicken. One hand up and under its skin. My fingers pushing the soft buttery mixture between its skin and flesh, massaging, rolling, caressing its rawness with my butter-y lemon-y fingers, plumping it. Readying it. 400 degrees. Like that. Roasted. Crispy skin in my mouth.
Crackle. Crunch. And yum!
Why can’t I eat like this all the time? Because I’m getting fat. Like the Pillsbury dough boy. Poke your finger in my belly and I’ll giggle—but I’m not as cute. I’m a middle aged, expanding middle, middle child, living right down the middle. Please! Somebody turn this bus around. This doomed ride. Turn it around and head back to hope ‘n youth ‘n small waistlines. Christ, who put a rock on my gas pedal? Is anyone driving this bus? This one-way ticket to the abyss, the open mouth of the dragon, the dark years. Count Down! 3, 2, 1…
Hormones. And not the kind that wound me tight when I was young and ripe like a melon, but the kind that boils up, out of my skin, hot flesh, bubbling over, unforgiving, my ovaries screaming for attention. We’re still here, lady, let’s go for a ride. Slide it into gear and ahhh!
Gone are the days that we (me, him, anyone) couldn’t wait to get home, so we screwed against a fence behind a bar, or in a closet at a party. Gone are the keys slipped into my pocket—room 436? Gone are the VIP passes from lead singers or bassists or both. Playing songs just for me. Desire pulsing through throats, fingers, tight jeans. Beating, throbbing. So much blood filling me up, turning me over and over, my body climaxing in a tight dress. I can still taste the sweat on my fingers. Mine, his, anyone’s. Youth exploding in my hands and heart. Crescendo-ed. Gone.
Or are they?
I see the way he looks at me, that young guy at the office. He stares from behind the grey partition, his wall of Jericho. The one that hides his desk, his computer, the photo of him and her-- his full lipped magazine bride with plump breasts that stand up braless. But I have experience. A history. And I see him watching, his flirt skipping over the cubicles to mine, daring, ready for the ballgame.
Hey batter, batt er
B
A
T
T er
SWING !
So what if? What if I’m right and he and I stay late sometime and laugh over a drink, tension building. Should I (he thinks). Should we (I think)? Then, yes, yes, YES. We do. Right on the photo copier. Like in the movies.
Chicken’s done.
My husband says, “Smells good.”
We set the table. Put out napkins, the good silverware and uncork some wine. It’s Sunday. I put the bird on a platter and place it on the table. I stand over it with a dull knife, the one we forget to sharpen. We always forget things. That’s just the way it is. I cut and tear into the flesh, sawing my way through bones and meat, spilling innocence all over the platter.
“Leg or breast,” I say.
