Barry's Short Fiction
By barryj1
This is a colection short stories written over the past twenty years. Many of the plots take place in the same fictional community of Brandenberg,situated in Southeastern Massachusetts.
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- 1955 reads
The Abode of Infinite Compassion
Marty Humphrey doesn't finish things. A European backpacking adventure was cut short, when he became morbidly homesick on the flight across the Atlantic, and now he's dropped out of college.
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- 8 comments
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- 3477 reads
107 Degrees Fahrenheit
A young boy spends a magical weekend with his sister, a former collegiate track star crippled in a freak accident.
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- 4 comments
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- 2003 reads
A Chinese Bar Mitzvah
Mr. Chen’s shiatsu has a level-three heart murmur. The widower lives on a fixed income. Ada Goldfarb’s son, Robert, is a veterinarian. Maybe they can work things out.
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- 6 comments
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- 2516 reads
A Pee and a Poop at Midnight
Calvin's Shih Tzu, Teddy, can't hold his water and suffers from irritable bowel syndrome. This weekend, Calvin is dragging the dysfunctional beast to a barbecue at his future in-laws.
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- 11 comments
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- 4284 reads
A Trip to Tanglewood
Marie Augustin, a nurses aide, is blindsided when an elderly client asks the Haitian woman to accompany him on a trip to hear the Boston Symphony Orchestra perform in Tanglewood.
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- 1 comment
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- 1336 reads
A Waltz Yes, a Heart No
Every heart has a distinctive cadence and it’s not three-four.
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- 11 comments
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- 3032 reads
A Work in Progress
Tawana Saunders is writing the great American novel. Problem is, six months into the project, she’s only got a rough draft plus three lousy paragraphs.
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- 8 comments
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- 2680 reads
An Indecent Proposal
Ralph Tucker is dating a woman who wears Orvis, genuine hornback crocodile belts. As the romance deepens, he’s going to need a second job.
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- 7 comments
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- 2375 reads
An Indecent Proposal Part II
Ralph Tucker is dating a woman who wears Orvis, genuine hornback crocodile belts. If the romance blossoms, he’s going to need a second job.
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- 1506 reads
Bawdybodies.com
Every woman Ernie Summers ever dated had a fatal flaw, which is why he is taking an indefinite sabbatical from the opposite sex. Well, maybe not.
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- 5 comments
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- 1625 reads
Call of the Beguiled
Cheryl doesn’t do well in social situations. The fourteen year old's best friend is Nicolena, a four-foot, South American tree boa and her parents are getting divorced. What else could go wrong?
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- 4 comments
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- 2164 reads
Circus Maximus
Buddy Hazelton, chairman of the Brandenburg College philosophy department, quit his job to join the Waverly Brothers Traveling Circus.
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- 16 comments
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- 3750 reads
Cupid ain't Stupid
Lenny just slept with a woman, who can't make change or hold down an entry-level job. So why is he going back for more?
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- 6 comments
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- 3056 reads
Damaged Goods
The widow, Lyuba Russova, is damaged goods, but then so are most of the other Russian immigrants at the Meadow Lanes subsidized housing complex.
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- 12 comments
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- 3446 reads
Just Like Dostoyevsky
Sylvia Mandelstam tells people what a wonderful time she had at the Russian literary symposium in Moscow. Unfortunately, the trip was an unmitigated fiasco not unlike her personal life.
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- 1023 reads
Two Pockets
According to Hasidic tradition, everyone must have two pockets. In the right pocket are to be the words: ‘For my sake was the world created,’ and in the left: ‘I am dust and ashes.’
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- 1 comment
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- 1367 reads
The Cross-eyed Gypsy
A straight-laced ex-nun must decide what to do with a stolen Sony Trinitron TV. The arrival of a Russian Jew in the apartment complex resolves the matter of the ’hot’ TV while ...
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- 3 comments
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- 1869 reads
No Bear, No Forest
Everything fourteen year old Lester McSweeney knows about life he learned from reading Louis L'Amour cowboy stories.
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- 2 comments
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- 1288 reads
Emergence
Nadia Rasmussen, the reference librarian at Brandenberg Public Library, just discovered that true love can be found at the Hoxie Feed and Grange just as easily as at the cheesy dating bars.
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- 2 comments
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- 1551 reads
The Divined Comedy
Ava Frick reads Kierkegaard and drops the I Ching. The other day she got five broken lines __ __ and one solid ____. Not a good omen!
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- 2 comments
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- 1627 reads
The Loveliest Girl
Among the Old Orchard Beach cognoscenti, Cassie Moffat was considered town slut. Whether her lurid reputation was justified or not wasn't really open for debate.
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- 6 comments
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- 2284 reads
No More Piano Lessons
Muriel Beagle was an awful piano teacher. An abomination! Thirty minutes - that's all she allotted per lesson, and most days she started late or was interrupted by
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- 2 comments
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- 1653 reads
Nothing as Whole as a Broken Heart
Jerome Spellman, the simple schizophrenic in Grace's eleventh grade class, acts like an extra in a B-rated horror flick - Night of the Living Dead.
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- 2 comments
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- 1354 reads
Simple Hearts
Foul-mouthed Marna Copparelli, who waitresses at Guido's Pizza, wouldn't know a semicolon from a large intestine. Luther Buttafuoco writes books that get reviewed in the New York Times literary
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- 5 comments
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- 2215 reads
What would Junie B. Jones do?
"Mr. Jacobson sniffs little girls' bicycle seats," eight year old Benjamin Carter announced cavalierly as though the topic made for polite dinner conversation.
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- 4 comments
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- 2743 reads
Still Virgin
A year out of high school, Clarissa, who couldn't even score a date for the senior prom, is into tantric sex, Pablo Neruda and orgasms bordering on divine rapture. And she's still a virgin!
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- 1070 reads
Mustard Fields
Maddie Timberland just finished reading A.E. Coppard’s The Field of Mustard. The single mother's personal circumstances mirror the plot but only up to a certain fixed point.
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- 1494 reads
Thyroids, a Love Story
Can two young lovers with thyroid conditions - one in traditional therapy, the other holistic - find happiness together?
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- 2 comments
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- 1455 reads
Tulipwood
Kendra Ryder just gave fifteen year old Frankie Dexter a slab of fresh-cut tulipwood along with the advice, "When you’re feeling bad, just scuff the wood with 120-grit sandpaper."
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- 2 comments
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- 1191 reads
The Prize
Alexis Hamilton’s love life closely mirrors the comedy of errors in the E.M. Forster classic, A Room with a View. But where the fictional heroine, Lucy, elopes to Italy with her lover,...
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- 6 comments
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- 2382 reads
The Unfinished Face
Dora’s face, an aesthetic work in progress, exuded an unfinished blankness, as though God had become distracted and wandered away from the wet canvas before completing a meager handful of details.
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- 3 comments
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- 1264 reads
Legal Procedures
Married six times, Phoebe’s Aunt Janet is advising her niece on affairs of the heart. Good Luck Phoebe!
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- 4 comments
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- 1513 reads
The Reticent Storyteller
Parker Salisbury is dating a girl with the social graces of a cigar store Indian. So why is he giving Lilly an engagement ring later this evening?
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- 6 comments
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- 2135 reads
Six Catholics and an Atheist
In an increasingly hedonistic universe, Kirsten Hazelton clings to her Catholic faith.
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- 4 comments
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- 1758 reads
Supermarket Sadhu
Seventeen year-old Fanny Jackson, who works aisle three at the ShopRite market, wants to become a twenty-first century mystic – a supermarket Sadhu.
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- 2 comments
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- 1606 reads
Kissing Cousins
Phillip’s infuriatingly cute Cousin Katy treats him like a cross between a cuddly lapdog and a younger sibling.
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- 3 comments
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- 1866 reads
Sextillions of Infidels
Hazel and Jorani are stranded in the boondocks of Maine with a broken-down car and ton of teenage angst.
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- 3 comments
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- 1986 reads
Small Favors
Marcie Callahan’s parents run around the house in their underwear. They belch and fart and do all sorts of gross and disgusting things. Which is why Marcie is ready for a change.
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- 1 comment
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- 1087 reads
Ghandi's Goat
Mrs. Chowdhary named her youngest daughter after Saint Theresa, the Little Flower of Jesus. Unfortunately, Terry has more in common with Attila the Hun than her nineteenth century namesake.
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- 9 comments
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- 2491 reads
Fun with Dick and Jane
Dick wants fun. He has no dog. He has no cat. No Spot. No Puff. But he has a plan. See Dick board the plane. See Dick fly away. Far, far away. Hello happiness! Goodbye Jane
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- 6 comments
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- 2682 reads
Plato's Parable of the Chainsaw
Miranda Rasmussen tends her deceased mother's rock garden and reads Greek philosophy. Now the thirty year-old blonde has a new toy, a fourteen-inch Poulan chainsaw.
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- 8 comments
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- 3393 reads
The Way Station
Clarice Copparelli intends to seduce Jason Devlin. The seventeen-year-old boy just doesn’t know when or how or where it will occur or the likely circumstances. Soon, he hopes.
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- 5 comments
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- 2146 reads
Failure to Launch
Fred Linden is fixing his daughter, Alison, up on a blind date with the man of his dreams.
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- 9 comments
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- 3022 reads
The Herb Gatherer's Disciple
Laurel Evers wants to visit the buccolic boondocks of Maine as it was a hundred years ago.
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- 20 comments
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- 5546 reads
Narcissus and Goldberg
Beatrice Goldberg doesn't much like Hispanics, biker broads, Franciscan monks, skinheads, or salt-of-the-earth blue collar types.
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- 10 comments
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- 2574 reads
The Hypothetical Hitman
A bad man is shot in the head, stuffed in the trunk of a car and left for dead. It's a hypothetical story.
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- 7 comments
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- 1948 reads
Heathcliff
Pearl Singleton, the blonde forest ranger at the Pemberton Wildlife Sanctuary, is a latter-day Heathcliff.
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- 13 comments
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- 3334 reads
Flyshit on Toilet Paper
Samantha Malinowski has musical dreams and a slavishly devoted boyfriend.
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- 11 comments
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- 2923 reads
The Janitor's Helper
A new floor, a new life.
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- 4 comments
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- 1648 reads
The Invisible Hand
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner...
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- 5 comments
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- 1813 reads
Slatternly Sluts and Bodacious Bimbos
Helen Garfunkel, an unemployed reference librarian, is contemplating a romantic tryst with a hotdog pushcart vendor.
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- 14 comments
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- 6031 reads
Leaky Pipes
Bartholomew Schroeder, a retired plumber, can sweat pipes and fix broken toilets, but can he mend a teenager's broken spirit?
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- 6 comments
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- 1928 reads
The Fire Flower and the Bee
Bear wants thumbs just like his archenemy, Man, but Heveki, the benevolent God, has something else in mind.
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- 9 comments
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- 2972 reads
The Kidnapped Bride
Maddie Etheridge's train wreck of a marriage cost forty thousand dollars and only lasted thirteen months!
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- 11 comments
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- 2842 reads
Nagel's Bagels
Curtis Stedman, the part-time dishwasher at Nagel’s Bagels, is profoundly gifted, which makes him one smart cookie!
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- 7 comments
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- 1976 reads
Hieronymus Bosch's American Landscape
Bethany Glaspell approached the first-ever meeting with her great uncle much as a cat burglar might plan his next heist, telling no one , neither friend nor family, her intentions.
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- 12 comments
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- 4162 reads
The Lesbian Thespian
For the lonely widower and lesbian actress it’s a textbook case of Jungian synchronicity.
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- 10 comments
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- 4371 reads
I & Thou
Since going on birth control in middle school, Celeste has been on a bit of a lascivious tear, but all that sexual carnage is coming to an abrupt halt when she meets the Hassidic Jew.
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- 6 comments
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- 3115 reads
Guide for the Perplexed
Ernie Levinson wants to marry Shifrah Fienberg. Problem is, they have never been out on a date much less slept together.
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- 5 comments
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- 2236 reads