Three Fictions
Parker Tettleton

Ways I Used To Celebrate

I join a message board, drink wine & meet a girl. We live together after I move away from Oxford for the second time. It's October, two years later, & I'm on a message board, drinking nightly & thinking about the girl I left. The suburb, the Chinese restaurants. The Shell station guy who agreed beer should be sold on Sundays. Every day. I get lost looking for clothes in the closet. The mirror above the kitchen sink reminds me of losing my virginity to the girl on my twenty-first birthday. We were in a condo. Her parent's bed. There is only one bed in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.


Everyone Wants Pieces of Me

I lie, I lied & cheated & stole & spent days spending other eyes, ears, o faces. Pen numbering. Two o'clock drinking until two o'clock. Then dreaming of drinking & snakes & elegant tall buildings & the sound a burp makes when it's silent. Everyone wants something. I used to make me believe.


Several Hours Before the Spring Semester

I had a dream. I was in a lake with two girls. A snake part of a wall (the lake was a pool in Louisiana) broke off & came toward me, girls laughing. I put my hand to concrete, fucking it. I turned & faced the snake. I woke up.

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