Michael Brown's Page

The coyote was only a kid, nineteen years old and inexperienced, and when the group ran out of water on the Devil’s Highway, he left twenty-six people behind and headed up north. Mostly workers from coffee plantations, they were seeking some measure of security for families waiting behind with nothing. Just over half of the group died trudging north after their lost guide under the scorching sun.
When the authorities located remains, some of them, inured to the sight of desiccated border… Continue

“So you already know you’re going to hell when you die, no matter how you live the rest of your life?”
“That’s about it,” he said, “I get the fame, fortune, success, and first dibs on all the girls with big boobs now, and Satan gets my soul later, and it’s guaranteed.”
“You can't make a deal with the devil, Sam," she said, "and expect to come out on top."
“It works for me,” he said, “I can have everything I want in this life, you know, I could even have you if I wanted, and you wouldn’t be able… Continue

Sandy worried over the dominoes all morning; setting them on end close together in snaking queues, and when all 91 were in sequential order, she would tap the double-zero lead and experience a brief moment of satisfaction as each tipped the following over until the double-twelve fell, and all the black wooden… Continue

Winter in Denver brought change. It callused his vision. No longer could he write warmheartedly and with expansiveness. On his return to Chiapas, he saw every brown smiling face as hiding some shifty plan never to be carried out. His brief sojourn had given him cold insight. In a magnifying makeup mirror, in the hotel, while rubbing his face, and deciding not to shave, he had looked into his own eyes for a long, long time.


Shameless Self-Promotion: My Last Si… Continue