#fiction - Shakespeare, Dickens, and The Bible

SHAKESPEARE, DICKENS, AND THE BIBLE
SELECTION FROM ASSORTED STORIES
COMING SOON FROM MORAN PRESS
​*WARNING FOR GRAPHIC VIOLENCE

I always knew I would do it. It was destined. From the moment I laid down on her couch I knew what would happen.

The state committed me because of my many problems. I was sent for four long, excruciating months, to stay at The Animal Farm Psychiatric Treatment Center. Maybe it was four years, I don't remember.

The male nurse led me down a long gray hallway and told me about the woman shrink I was going to meet. When the nurse opened the door to her office I was in for a shock. Or maybe the shocks came later. I don't remember.

I do remember her sitting beautiful behind her cheap wooden desk. Her long black hair flowed over her shoulders, down onto the swell of her breasts. Her dark brown eyes beamed, as did her face, all a glow in self-health. She looked up at me, our eyes meeting and I fell in love before she said a word.

"Hello," she said. “My name is Katherine. You may call me Kate."

"Call me Burt," I said.          

"Burt?" she asked.

"Sure." 

After we had our names straight she told me to sit on the couch, so I did. It was a plain black couch, nothing special to look at. The ceiling was far more interesting. I traced over the cracks in my mind to make shapes that didn't mean anything. Then she started asking me questions, private type questions that I didn't intend to answer. So I didn't.

It took about six weeks for something to happen. At first I sat on her black, plain couch watching her body, waiting for the sessions to be over. I was eager to get back to my drugs. She had to dig for every response from me.

During one session she told me that I was the most interesting patient she had ever counseled. I wasn't sure how to take that. I guess it could have been a compliment, but I took it as an insult. I asked her what she meant, but she didn't answer, she just smiled.  

Her smile drove me crazy and she knew it. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever known. I wasted away most of my sessions memorizing her face. 

In one session she wore a tight mini-skirt with a matching tight black blouse, with black stockings and high heeled shoes. She was the picture of my fantasy, the one I had described to her in many previous sessions.

She sat close without touching me. I felt a terrible tingling sensation in my groin that begged to be heard. I tried to get up, but she held me down with her painted fingernails, gently digging them into my chest. She caressed my chest with thin, delicate hands.  

"Just stay still." 

That was all she said. Her voice seemed out of place, lost in space somehow. The session ended and within days I was released. 

READ THE REST IN AN UPCOMING ANTHOLOGY - PUBLISHED SOON BY MORAN PRESS (A MINI-COLLECTION OF SHORT FICTION). 
​

CHECK OUT THE BOOKS AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE. BECOME A PATRON OF MORAN PRESS AND GET A STACK OF BOOKS FOR $25

Patron of Moran Press

$25.00

Become a Patron of Moran Press.

Support small business and receive a stack of Arthouse Paperbacks in the mail. 

Your name will be listed as a Patron of Moran Press on the website (if desired)
​
If you have questions or want to donate an amount greater than $25 - email MoranPressGroup@gmail.com

Shop

On Sale

On Sale

Book of Birds

$15.00 $10.00

***Hollywood Book Festival Award Winner General Fiction - Runner Up (2017)***

In post-war Canada during the late 1940s, Elly McGuinty and her younger sister, Dot, are newly orphaned. The girls are sent to live with their grandparents in a small prairie town. Still grieving the loss of her parents, Elly chafes at the responsibility of helping care for Dot and struggles to find a place for herself in her new life. When a travelling circus comes to town, Elly’s desire for new experiences leads her, Dot, and new friend Stammer - a shy boy mocked for his halting voice - down a path where lives are altered forever.

Shop

On Sale

On Sale

Server

$15.00 $5.00

“If the lady at table twenty-four asks me for another side of ranch dressing, I’m going to stab her in the neck with a fork ...”

Scott Holden lives two lives. In one, he waits tables, enduring an unending siege of abuse from customers, co-workers, and bosses. Invisible to them, he also feels like there’s a target on his back.

In the other, Scott is a writer during furloughs from his working-class nightmare. But the line between his work identity and his artistic one is blurring under the strain. 

Is his life filling his fiction with violent daydreams or is his writing fueling the real-life desperation and darkness in his soul?

Shop

On Sale

On Sale

Love and Quarters

$15.00 $10.00

Gabriel Ricard’s 2nd poetry book is about coming to terms with the good, the bad, and the reliably hideous. The world is a badly run 1890s-style asylum, but at least there’s a lot of good stuff on TV. Love and Quarters goes deep into love, depression, high adventures in the great outdoors, and whatever the hell else may happen while in transit.

Shop