Published fiction by Franz Jørgen Neumann
First published in Stonecoast Review “Again?” I ignore Ellie and choose a pair of thick wool socks from my favorite vendor’s cart. Two pairs, since we’re taking the subway. “They’re supposed to suffer a little,” she says. “Can we not?” I say. “Anniversary and all?” We take the C line, car 5. Car 4 has the guy who does things with his feces, which would only give Ellie the upper hand. In contrast,…
First published in Doric Literary Out on the deck of the express ferry, Elias wills the woman in the billowy blue windbreaker to return inside so he can drop the backpack that is at his feet into the sea. Under the stones in the pack lie the belongings of a Spaniard found dead in a park near Elias’s home. Keep reading →
First published in Oyster River Pages While on our drive to meet Sara’s folks in Port Angeles, the three of us stop at a lodge so my son can use the bathroom. I lead Daniel through the lobby to the single stall in the men’s room where I lay down a seat liner and lift him onto the toilet. Keep reading →
First published in Summerset Review Troubled by the ferry’s pitch and heave, Hillary lies awake in her dormitory capsule surrounded by a hive of snoring women. She doubts that her father Chris ever turned in. His nose is probably smudging a window as he watches the night’s waves, loving every moment. Keep reading →
First published in Brink First the rain, tapping and animating the hazel trees, the bellflowers, the chamomile and chokeberry, the yarrow, the lilac, the raspberry and self-heal. We call them by name so the rain can’t reduce the greenery to common branches, bowed stalks, glossy leaves. Our children, watching the wagtails dart across the lawn, ask whether the birds and the bugs are miserable and…
First published in Hawaiʻi Pacific Review My parents naming me Royalty wasn’t enough. My praised voice and songwriting, and all the gigs—not enough. I needed to gild myself with an origin story to break through. I needed Touch Ferguson, music executive, to discover me. Keep reading →
First published in Craft “My stepdaughter is a horse.” The school psychologist waits for me to say more, then resumes her review of the pedagogical strategies she and Lilja’s teachers have employed. She speaks at a clip that makes me wonder if her impending maternity leave begins the minute this meeting ends. Keep reading →
First published in The Table Review The man walking up the gravel drive looks to be in his fifties, sixties when nearer. Anton slides the bucket of cherries from the ladder’s top step. “You must be Tom,” he says, displaying a stained palm to turn away the one Tom offers. “Let’s go up to the house.” Keep reading →
First published in Two Thirds North Clara leaves me for Bruce, an art history professor who invites her abroad for a semester of extra-curricular activities. Bruce suffers a stroke in Mexico City while showing Clara How Doth the Little Crocodile , a public bronze by Leonora Carrington. Back home, Clara devotes herself to Bruce’s care and does the most nurse-like thing imaginable. She marries him.…
First published in The Masters Review Jakub enters the nightwatchman’s cottage after his first evening patrol and hears a woman laughing behind his bedroom door. Keep reading →
First published in Redivider Martin is smitten the first time he sees the woman with the sexy nose. Neither pixie nor Roman, Jenny’s nose is longer than most, with comely nostrils. Keep reading →
First published in Bull A hurricane is turning Florida’s peninsula into an exclamation mark. Thousands of miles away, Derek and the rest of the flight crew are left in a not uncommon limbo. Luggage slumps on decoupled wagons beside the empty plane while the waiting passengers spill their discontent to neighboring gates and eye the flight crew in the semi-open lounge. Keep reading →
First published in Vita & the Woolf Dyson finds Cherish the dog walker to be pure spirit and bounce, a dependable five-foot wonder to his wife’s exhausting six. With Lorraine away on her retreat, Cherish’s presence in the apartment feels illicit, even though she’s only giving the dog her usual post-walk Friday bath. Keep reading →
First published in Event “He was on a package tour with a stop at the Rhine Falls,” the solicitor says over the phone, long-distance. “He slipped.” Sarah takes in the news of her father’s death. She hasn’t thought about him in years and is surprised to learn that he was still alive. Prescott—a stuffy name. No, Preston. No, Prescott. She was only an infant when he abandoned them, and hardly older…
First published in Maryland Literary Review .I met Christine on my flight back from Berlin while helping her restrain an unruly passenger. In her crisp flight attendant uniform and golden cravat, Christine possessed a serene, goddess-like quality as she wound yards of Lufthansa-blue tape around the passenger and his seat, the ribbon of color spiraling swiftly around his belly and chest, sparing…
First published in Chaotic Merge Marlee’s father shoves a slice of carrot cake into his mouth, his teeth plowing through icing. She offers a napkin for his frosted mustache before he reaches for the next slice. “Watch your cholesterol,” she says. Her father died five years ago from a heart attack. In her dreams, he sits in restaurants like this one, or at banquets or celebrations—a personal…
First published in Yolk Derek didn’t come in last night. Kate knows where her husband is, though. Under the kelp-green sod, awash in blue light. She double knots the laces of her running shoes and heads out, reaching the hills and the gathering running group at daybreak. Most of the others have arrived by car. She exchanges hugs with several women she knows, their skin cool against hers. No one…
First published in Straylight When I arrived at his estate on the morning of our interview, he was, in my mind, still a hulking immortal. I located an intercom in a hedge beside the front gate, pressed the button, then wiped the grit of corrosion from my fingers. Beyond the gate, full heads of dandelion grew from long fissures in the asphalt, waiting for wind. No one answered. I wandered around…
First published in Potomac Review Penny pats the trail marker on the other side of the stream. “Only a mile to the cave,” she calls to the kids. “No laggards!” Tom doesn’t turn around, the turbid water threshed by the rain, the stepping stones slick. Through his earbuds he can hear the kids behind him: their shoes sloshing through the lochs of muck, the quick wince of a twig against a rain jacket,…
First published in Hobart “Dr. Skow isn’t coming,” Maya says. Ronny’s hands are clasped on the ugly chrome pull-up bar screwed not quite level into the bathroom’s doorjamb. He lowers himself, legs bent at the knees, a faint puddle of shadow beneath him. Ronny calls these exercises paying the toll keeper: ten pull-ups every time he passes a threshold. Keep reading →
First published in Apple Valley Review Dr. Skow, punctual as ever. Cass turns from the window, licks her fingers, and snuffs out the incense stick. She runs the fan, plumps the sofa’s pillows, then glances again at the street below, imagining Diana pulling up behind the doctor instead of being late, again. Diana insists she understands Cass’s embarrassment at being stood up for their at-home…
First published in Waxwing When I was fifteen, I was abducted and driven into the mountains to the site of an abandoned school overlooking a valley of jungle. I was issued a pair of binoculars with one working barrel and a battery-powered two-way radio, and told that my mother and father would be sliced open if I failed in my duty to spot and report any aircraft that flew over the mountains and…
First published in The Stand Dahlia and Pepper, newly married—her third go, his second—clatter north to San Luis Obispo by train. Their carriage moves inexorably forward while beside them on the highway a glut of future fun is mired in gridlock: motorhomes dragging compact cars, SUVs with camping gear haphazardly bungeed to their roofs, trucks fuming with off-road bikes slumped in their beds.…
First published in Bridge Eight Cynthia Scoffs maintains a list of people she’s met who also have verbs for last names, including: Terrance Beat Jill Bent May Blanche—extra points for the modal auxiliary verb Oscar Cumming Cynthia plays with the idea of establishing a club for her fellow sufferers. She imagines secret handshakes, a club song, and T-shirts with clever illustrations depicting their…
First published in Baltimore Review Ms. Mann, the newest driver in our school carpool, but a stranger to me, picked me up in her roulette green VW Karmann Ghia one pre-dawn November Monday. As I approached the car, the passenger door opened and a lanky boy with long hair and a studded bracelet stepped out and pivoted his seat so I could wedge myself in back between the Tennis sisters, Cynthia and…
First published in The MacGuffin In the summer of 1929 I was part of a crew hired to paint the Heritage Arms, a two-story apartment building with smooth gray walls perforated by sharply carved windows set high up from the street. The foreman called the building a seraglio; the other painters said it was rumored to be a nudist colony and that its private courtyard was a verdant oasis—or a…
First published in Hawaiʻi Pacific Review The drives to Clayfield used to take only a few hours, back when Beth and Mira visited their husbands once a month. Now, nearly at the end of Dennis and Dylan’s eight-year sentences, neither woman lives in the same town anymore, and they must rise early in order to manage the trip to Clayfield in a day. Keep reading →
First published in Great Ape Uneventful 13-hour drive to drop zone for Digital Detox Experience. Participants Z (male, 31) and W (male, 26) blindfolded en route. Z and W each provided with standard issue summer-season kit… Keep reading →
First published in Santa Fe Literary Review Like dozens of girls who came of age in the early 1980s, Sasha was smitten by Christopher Cross. His voice on songs like “Sailing”—sincere and gold as early autumn—was a call she imagined her adult life would answer. Keep reading →
First published in The Saturday Evening Post As she does every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, Jade floats up the rotting stairs with my lunch order. Keep reading →
First published in Montana Mouthful The week after I turned eleven I was placed in the care of my aunt while my parents drove to New Mexico for a funeral. My aunt, a poetry translator who lived in an apartment above a neighbor’s garage, decided to take me to a book fair in San Francisco rather than deal with the domesticity of shuttling me to and from school and music lessons for the few days my…
First published in Louisiana Literature Picture Madison Ness in the ferry’s bar chatting with passengers, her head ale-foggy and happy despite having lost her backpacking partner last night in Aberdeen. Keep reading →
First published in Chiron Review Outside Staunton, Virginia, birthplace of Woodrow Wilson, with his son Sam asleep beside him in the car, Duke turns on the radio and hears the news. His scrotum aches, his hands tremble, he feels weightless—all these things, all at once. He switches off the radio, then turns it on again to be certain he’s heard correctly. The President, four months into his third…
First published in The Sextant Review Our usual summer stay at my grandparents’ place was cut short over some squabble about Nixon and The War. We left that night, Father’s Ford breaking down a half hour from home the following day in an expensive show of noise and smoke that was not so much the finale to hours of travel as an announcement that the day still had room for surprises. Keep reading →
First published in Pigeon Review After waiting for a few potential buyers to enter the on-the-market home of Eric and Erica Sweet, Kirk and Leigh head up the balloon-lined walk hand-in-hand, casual-like. They mill about the house, a split-level ranch with overgrown pepper trees and a bubbling jacuzzi that fails to hide the backyard’s neglect. Asking price: 1.2 mill. Keep reading →
First published in Orange Blossom Review Until the trespassers appeared and forever altered Kathleen and Ed Beckman’s past and present lives, the couple had never considered divorce. If asked, Kathleen would have said her marriage was immutable. Ed, after thirty-four years of simmering satisfaction, hadn’t given an alternative a moment’s thought. Keep reading →
First published in Bull Roused by the cacophony of a weather alert on his phone, Rudy Gantt stared out the RV’s windshield and noted that the space between earth and sky had gone matte gray during his nap. He didn’t see a twister, only swipes of flat, cream-white cloud against the new darkness. Taking the wheel of the gently rocking RV, Rudy was glad he hadn’t yet chocked the wheels; it took only…
First published in The Lindenwood Review Young Marjorie Claremont, who until that evening had never caused anyone a moment’s trouble, keyed one-hundred and twenty-six and a half cars and pickups parked bumper to bumper down the hillside from the amphitheater. In the last car at the corner sat a man who had felt ill during the concert and, thinking he might be having a heart attack, had left in…
First published in Crab Creek Review ★ Pushcart Prize nominated Rudy leafs through the auction paperwork as Verner drives them—and the two vintage Corvettes in the trailer—to the cars’ buyer in Estonia. A rare find is a worn phrase in the business, but true in this case: the Corvettes are immaculate, with only single digit mileage. And there are two of them. Keep reading →
First published in Amsterdam Quarterly That Susan. She was right about catastrophe. And having planned so meticulously for its arrival, she’s not alarmed now that it’s here. She’s calm around the girls and around you and even when alone, like now. You watch her kneading dough, her lips singing a song you can’t hear through the window. Her hair is streaked with flour. She’ll still be lovely when…
First published in Love in the Time of Covid With his two daughters ordered home from college and reoccupying the house, Elias Sutherstrom spent endless hours exercising in his garage. The NordicTrack made him feel like a marionette; it had been Francine’s machine and even she hadn’t taken it with her after the divorce. Elias favored the treadmill and the stationary bike. In the first two months…
First published in Lunch Ticket For Martha Kaas, half the thrill of going bohemian was not letting her husband suspect that she had. She appeared to commute to work at seven every morning, but drove the opposite direction from her former life as a middle school math teacher. She parked in a garage in the garment district and spent the day exploring her creative side from within a rented loft space…
First published in Hedge Apple ATTN: All Academic departments An off-campus individual impersonated a professor on the first day of class. The impersonator engaged in awkward and inappropriate behavior, including drinking from a bottle that appeared to be an alcoholic beverage. There was a fair amount of confusion and concern until a neighboring instructor came into the classroom and confronted…
First published in Fiction International Ten years old. Weekend. My Brooke doesn’t so much walk through the house as bound, trot, stomp, leap. A caterwaul of joy. Come school day Monday the old moves return: the shuffle, the plod, the complaint. And at day’s end: the backpack drop, shoes choked off, jacket shed like skin, unmade bed revisited with new crumbs and old books. Keep reading →
First published in Tilted House It’s winter break, I should be home, but I prefer coming in to my office. We’re allowed to bring our dogs when students aren’t on campus, so with Dobbs here and the building otherwise empty, it’s like he and I are at home, anyway. But I’m not in my office just now. Dobbs is leashed and we’re walking down the stairwell that, if a stairwell can smell like art history,…
First published in The Avenue Journal Ah, but is there anything more liberating than nakedness, your honor? When I shed my clothes last summer, I didn’t become vulnerable, like some molting animal. I grew stronger and bolder without that false skin. Immediately, those I dislike gave me a wide berth, and those I still favor gave me all the camaraderie I could ask for, mostly. Honestly, I don’t even…
First published in Paris Lit Up See, Annie. The power of emotional transference. Keep reading →
First published in Pilgrimage The memory of the howling stayed with Harold through the endless winter and the spring floods. Now, with the planting completed in his brother’s fields, Harold left the shore of Lake Mjǫrs and entered the forest with two days’ provisions. By traveling light, he hoped to have enough time to discover what they’d heard howling in the woods last season, when they’d run…
First published in The Westchester Review Noah only notices the faded yellow Mercedes in front of him because the driver is dry shaving with a disposable razor. Walter—Noah learns the name later—is in his early seventies, with heavy shoulders and a head of rippling, gray-white hair that brings the word pomade to mind. The stubble on Walter’s cheeks, chin, and throat receives no such tenderness;…
First published in Blueline In college, Carmen charmed Ray with her stories of boating on the Rideau Canal. Of side trips on bicycles with her parents, of forest strolls and picnics on canal banks while waiting for the locks to open, of ice cream from stops at small towns with names Ray had never heard of. His own childhood memories were of extremes: the damp of San Francisco nine months of the…