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Fred Smith

Cracked (excerpts from a short story)


I'm working on a short story called "Cracked" about a woman who decends into madness when she suspects her husband is having an affair. She's jaded, vulgur and slowly realizing the dangerous truth that she has nothing to lose. As narrators go, she's about as unreliable as it gets. Still, I think you might like her. Hell, you may even want her to get away with it.

Here's a quick sampling of her inner monologue...

On Self Esteem

There was a mirror on the wall. I gave it a glance and wished it had photoshop.

She and the bastard had done it in this shower. I knew the way a forensic officer knows he's at a murder scene that's been covered up. If I held a blacklight to the tub, I'd find traces of the cunt's pussy juice.

Let those South Tampa bitches stare. They need someone like me to squawk about after their personal trainers cum on their backs.

On her coworkers:

She was born with a silver spoon in her mouth and a gold dildo up her ass.

Yvette's cleavage in the boardroom had the effect of a 90 inch TV in a library. Unnecessary and tacky, but no man alive could resist a glance. He writes like a tenured professor who's proud of his wine collection. The guy speaks five languages, but he can't litigate in any of them.

He was a standard issue lawyer. Good school. Better father. He looked the part of the wolf. But underneath his Armani suit, he had a little dick and smaller balls. The sap wasn't smart enough to see his career would peak with him picking out escorts for the partners. She's one of those ball-breaking senoritas who turns her husband's cock into a Santeria prop the minute his first direct deposit check clears.

Guys like him make great security guards because they've been ignored their whole life. Deep down, they wish someone gave enough of a shit to bully them. Instead, they have to settle for wrangling victims. I bet if I search his phone I'd find a history of s&m videos with guys who look just like him getting railed in the ass by a cheerleader with a strap on. On Marriage: My husband always got the last word of an argument. It was like the bastard had a Hollywood screenwriter feeding him lines from an in-ear prompter. Our house's decor hadn't evolved from the brochure ready McMansion style we'd purchased four years ago. I guess that's mostly my fault. On Meeting People in Strange Places

We live in time when technology has made it easy to have a perfectly sinful affair. And here I am, talking to strangers in bars.

His name was Winston, but I didn't bother to ask until after he ordered the second round.

Winston's apartment smelled of sex and class. It was the kind of place that would have made Elmore Leonard reach for his pen.

The place was cold, damp, and reeked of menstruation and piss. Just about what I had expected a jail cell would be when I used to day dream in high school.

I couldn't make Kasha. She had one of those faces whose ethnicity was hard to pin down. Dark, but not black. Yellow, but not Chinese. It was as if all the bad guys of World War II had jerked a seed into a mortar cannon and launched the round at America.


A Crack in the Room Tone

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Stories for a noisy world 
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