Hi all!

Announcing my newest short story: The Ark of Manhattan.

 

 

Check out the summary:

 

Nobody’s jealous of David’s life.

He’s worked the same dead-end job for years, riding the same grimy subway to the same shoe box they call an apartment, just to listen to his girlfriend yell at him about something he did wrong. He just wants something in his life to mean something.

One day walking home, he finds a book in front of his apartment door. While littering is common in their building, he’s more likely to find beer cans and razor blades than anything of value. It isn’t just any book, though. It’s a colorful, children’s picture book, depicting scenes from the bible.

Even though he’s not a religious person and has no plans to be, David sets off on a hunt to see who left it there to find out whether it was a strange, purposeful gift of destiny or a random happenstance. Meanwhile, he starts to develop a fixation with a particular scene on the last page, and the next logical step, at least to him, is to build a replica of Noah’s Ark in his eleventh story apartment in New York City.

Running into obstacles in his search for the original owner, he isn’t convinced he’ll find out who, but he has to try, while conflict arises when the crafting project turns both more random and larger than he anticipates. When his girlfriend finds out what it’s turning into, things only get more complicated.

 

 

You can find it here (free if you have Kindle Unlimited):

(and all other Amazon websites)

 

Here’s a sample portion of the story:

 

The Ark of Manhattan: A Short Story

(sample)

The subway always smelled lonely, like two-day old pizza and cheap cologne in lieu of a shower. David wished he could take a taxi to work, but that alone would eat up a large part of his paycheck. He hated sitting next to anyone else and preferred to walk up and down the car just to find that perfect spot with an empty seat on either side of him. Sometimes that meant standing.

After being on for ten minutes, the doors opened and a handful of people filed in. David tugged his bag closer to him between his legs on the floor. He once lost a book on the subway when someone reached in and grabbed it. It wasn’t even that exciting, just some crappy fiction book about angels and demons fighting each other. Not really his thing, but it had only cost him a quarter at a local book sale. Nobody else had wanted it because the cover was damaged, so he felt sorry for it.

The seats filled up fast. Nobody wanted to stand, and they went for the first place they could find, and of course, one of those spots had to be right next to David. He scooted his backpack to the middle and stood holding onto the handrail. He didn’t know if it was the New Yorker in him that wanted to avoid eye contact on the subway, but it seemed to work out for him so far.

A woman with curly, brunette hair got on and sat a few feet away from him. He gave her a passing glance and immediately looked elsewhere. She was the prettiest woman he’d ever seen on the subway. She had on an expression that seemed to broadcast how little she was open to small talk. Not that David would. He wouldn’t dream of doing that to Delilah.

He’d learned his lesson last year at a Christmas party. One of his female coworkers had come over and talked to him after the Secret Santa gift exchange. He’d picked Joshua’s name out of the hat, so David gave him a portable coffee mug because his old one had a crack in it. Even though the conversation with her had only lasted a minute or two, Delilah was furious. He didn’t remember talking about anything inappropriate, but he must have if Delilah had been that mad. She hadn’t talked to him the entire drive home. Or the next morning.

It was just as well, as the brunette woman got off on the very next stop. For a minute, it looked like the guy next to her was going to introduce himself as she stood up, but she turned the other way as soon as he opened his mouth. Maybe it had been the staring that did him in.

That very same guy exited the next stop along with David. In fact, David didn’t step off quickly enough, and that earned him a shove.

“Move it, asshole,” the guy said.

“Sorry,” David muttered and moved out of the way. The man had already disappeared in the sea of people by the time David stopped rubbing his shoulder.

It was raining. It seemed like it was always raining. Large drips ran down the back of his neck and disappeared under his shirt. It wasn’t that cold out, but it made him shiver. He couldn’t wait to get home so he could get dry.

The door to his building needed fixing. It was supposed to be self-locking, but really, anyone who knew how to turn the handle just right could open it at any time. Delilah had talked to the landlord three times about it, and he swore up and down he’d change it, but never did. She’d said next time it would be David’s turn to complain, and he wasn’t exactly looking forward to it. He’d probably end up apologizing in the end.

He tapped his shoes against the floorboards before walking onto the carpeted hallway. Everyone was supposed to do it to keep from tracking mud, but he was pretty sure he was the only one who did. With a shake of his head, a sheet of drips fell from his hair.

He stopped short of pressing the elevator button. A month ago, two people were trapped in the elevator for five hours while an emergency crew forcibly opened the doors. The elevator already had been in rough shape when Delilah first moved in and had only gotten worse since David joined her.

It was eleven stories of stairs, but David considered the climb far better than braving the elevator. He was in no mood to be stuck in that tiny box. He heard the trapped people had to be passed piss buckets after an hour. No thank you, he thought.

He opened the door from the stairwell and rounded the corner. The carpet leading up to his door was usually littered with pizza boxes and beer cans, but the area a few feet around his door was clear except for something flat and square.

(end of sample)

 

You can find it here (free if you have Kindle Unlimited):

(and all other Amazon websites)