Shockingly Literate

This one I’m not quite happy with, but I couldn’t bring myself to edit it any further.  ”Teardrop” became my first story to appear in print in the 2007 edition of Bartleby.  It won the award for short fiction that year, so now I can pretentiously refer to myself as “award winning author, Jeremy Hentschel.”  This story is about a little girl growing up in the sticks, and it’s dedicated to my mother.

Teardrop

I hated Christmas time. Some kids got presents on Christmas. Momma and Daddy told me I was a bad little girl, and I didn’t deserve no presents. Every year I woke up hoping Santa came, and every year I saw nothing under that tree. After a while I didn’t even bother to check no more.

The only presents I ever got were for my birthday, but they weren’t from Momma or Daddy neither. My grandma and grandpa sent me a birthday card every year, and inside it there was always a five dollar bill. Daddy always took it out before he gave me the card, but I didn’t care. The cards were always beautiful, and I kept them all in a shoe box under the bed. The best part was what my grandma and grandpa wrote inside each card. Every time I went over to their house they made sure I practiced my reading so I could read what they sent me. My favorite one came on my eighth birthday, April 10^th, 1969 – the last year I ever saw them. It went like this:

“Happy Birthday Rose! Every year you get prettier. We hope we even recognize you next time you visit! Love, Grandma and Grandpa.”

Read more…

This is a story I wrote for a fiction workshop in Fall 2008.  I felt that I was putting too much emphasis on plot in my writing while letting other aspects of it suffer, so I wrote this shorter piece about boxing with a focus on intense description. Let me know what you think:

Thanatos

Later, under sweaty sheets in a dim bedroom, a woman would ask me what it was like to kill a man. Not taking my eyes from the ceiling, I’d tell her it felt no different than breathing. But that’s later.

Adrenaline – the body’s natural defense mechanism. Afterburner fuel. When your mind perceives a life or death event, it sets off the red alert for your body. Your adrenal gland fires into action, pumping your brain, your blood, with the stuff. Juicing you up for what’s to come.

Fight or flight.
Read more…