C.B. Murphy  .:. Fiction

Watch for postings from new novel!

“Hello, everyone. My name is Mummar. Obviously, I look like a Muslim.” He looked around. “There might be others here, but none so obviously in the young male category which makes me important.” He chuckles. “I only mean important in that so many of you think the troubles of the world are the fault of my people, or people like me. Unemployed angry Muslim youth. No? Am I right? Yes, I am right, I can see it in your faces.” Read More »

“Here comes that Voodoo Lady,” said Trish, peeking over her cubicle wall. She glanced up from a mirror she held in her hand as she picked at the gap between her front teeth with a magenta fingernail.

“Here comes who?” asked Sondra, her world-weary tone deliberate. She had seen the article. Everyone had seen the article. A Voodoo Lady was coming to the office, to visit her specifically. She had to admit that was something.

“The Voodoo Lady,” Trish said, “the Katrina survivor. I showed you the photo.” She sucked her teeth and put away the pocket mirror. “I think it’s friggin’ scary.”

Sondra had skimmed the article, but had misplaced it by the time The Voodoo Lady was assigned to her. Before the headaches, she never used to lose things.

“I wonder if she’s going to be wearing her magical necklace,” Trish said. “You know, the one she wore in the photo?”
Sondra pretended to look for the article in a pile of papers under her desk but what she was really doing was hugging her thighs and bending her neck into an arch as a surge of pain hit. Some chiropractor had made a show of giving her the exercise “for free” after a series of useless spinal adjustments that her HMO wouldn’t begin to take seriously.

“How can someone with a necklace like that be asking for handouts?” Trish said. Read More »

As Holly got out of the car, I saw she was wearing her open-toed, sandal-like things with the mini-platforms. What was she thinking? Ever since she saw that miniseries about Patti Hearst getting kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army—which I had to admit was a very cool name—Holly got more serious about being an animal activist. She did not, however, leave fashion behind.As soon as she hit the muddy hill with those shoes, she wobbled as if she were on stilts. She fell backward, right on the little Goth cape she insisted on wearing.”Oh-my-god,” she shouted, as if we should all laugh.”Get up and shut up,” I said, sounding tougher than the usual me. Read More »

Ben stood on the patio in his bare feet, arms outstretched, waiting for the sun to warm the red stones. This was the ritual he performed religiously every day of the month since his father, Joe the Wolf, died. He wore what he called his Tarzan outfit: cut-off jeans like the kind he’d worn as a kid. Kay had made him agree to put on a shirt when he gardened in the front yard, and thinking of her, he glanced at the wall of picture windows above him, but the glare made it impossible to see if she were watching him. But she was there, he knew, drinking coffee and worrying about when he’d return to his normal life and stop acting strange. She’d stand at the window for a few more minutes, then join the commuters flowing out of the nearby houses—and he’d be alone with his plants. Read More »