Wednesday, June 12, 2013

The Wife (Award Winning Flash Fiction)




They devoured each other in the bathroom. They kissed every inch of skin. They explored every curve, and corner, and cavity. They tasted each other. They exhausted their energy and spent every drop of love on one another. Then they crawled back to the blanket on the floor. She hated the bed, he knew it.
The morning was tired and getting ready for noon. They had time for one last nap. They fell asleep as one, tight. The day grew older and noon became afternoon.



The Long Honeymoon (A Short Story with Russian Accent) by F. Poj





This morning I woke up and I noticed I was dead. I mean, I've had some tough mornings before, but this was fucking ridiculous. Even before I opened my eyes I noticed I wasn't breathing, but that didn't bother me that much, what was really getting on my nerves were those flies coming in and out of my ears. Through the buzzing I could hear a commotion outside my door, something about a foul stench. My mother was already blaming my grandmother for clogging up the toilet again and my father kept yelling at her that the toilet was just fine, and that the smell was coming from somewhere else.

She started banging at my door and yelling at me: 'Misha, get up, you need to go get the plumber!'

'In a minute Mom, I'll be right out.'

I was sluggish, my energy was really low and it took me a while to move my dead limbs. I could finally sit at the edge of my bed when my mother opened the door.

'Misha, what wrong? The smell come from your room!'

'Mom, I don't feel very well this morning.'

'What Misha? You look so pale, I make you some tea. OK?'

'Mom, I don't want any tea, I think I'm dead.'

'Dead tired you mean? You came so late last night, I hear you come in. You drink too much?'

'No Mom, I'm dead, really dead. I'm not breathing.'

'What dead?! What is this? Since when?'

'Just now, I woke up and I was dead.'

'Today?! On your sister's wedding day? Stop joking around Mikhail, get up, I make you tea and you go get Pyotr the plumber.'

'I'm not fooling around mom. I am stiff as a 2x4.'

'You not serious. You don't want to be doctor, you don't want to marry Sophia, and now you wake up dead on your sister's wedding day' my Mom said. 'You embarrass me even today! I will have a talk with your father, we will fix this.'





Saturday, June 1, 2013

Award Winning super short story.

The Wife is now available at the Five Stop Story website as an Honorary Mention winner.
Read Five Stop Stories on your Kindle

Monday, May 27, 2013

Awards!

My very...very short story "The Wife" has received another award. It got an Honorary Mention at the Five Stop Story Spring Competition and will be published in their app in a few weeks. Back in March it was awarded a second place at the Darker Times Competition and it has already been published both in paperback and digitally in the Darker Times Collection, an anthology of dark tales and poems.
Here are the links to these cool sites full of short fiction by new writers:

 http://www.darkertimes.co.uk/
http://www.fivestopstory.com/index.html

Collection 1 Cover 200Read Five Stop Stories on your Kindle

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Trains and airports sketch log. NY/DC



I find it hard to concentrate on writing when I'm traveling. Trains, airports, airplanes...hard to focus surrounded by hundreds of people. I spend my time at these places sketching from art books or magazines. Sometimes, these sketches will even inspire me with ideas for short stories. Here is my sketch log from my last trip to NY and DC. I hope you enjoy it!

 











Monday, February 25, 2013

Crawl Space by F. Poj ©



"Crawl Space, Architectural Definition: a shallow, unfinished space with a dirt floor beneath the lowest level of a building.  Created especially for access to plumbing and wiring. This space is accessible by crawling, its clearance being less than human height."

It was just a job like many others; an old, abandoned public school near downtown Buffalo. Even only a couple of blocks away from City Hall, Buffalo could be a pretty desolate place in winter, almost a ghost town. The City was going to turn this old school into an office building and they needed updated floor plans.

'Everything,' said Laura on the e-mail. 'Plans of every floor, roofs, basements, attics, and crawl spaces.'

Frankie had been freelancing for Laura as a building surveyor for years now. After 9/11 many Architecture firms went down and Frankie had been laid off like thousands of young architects. He was fast and accurate with CAD though; so he scored this opportunity to do free lance building surveys for Laura. She charged handsome fees for these jobs, and paid her surveyors good money, and on time. Frankie enjoyed the freedom, the traveling, and the pay check. Flight to a city for three or four days, sketch and measure, flight back home to draw the whole thing on CAD, e-mail it, get paid.

As he got off the car, the frozen wind cut through his face. 'Nice fucking weather for a roof survey today,' he thought. He was getting older now and would often think that surveying was not the glamorous Architecture career he dreamed about during his senior year in college; but, the money was too good to reject in times like these. A job which could be done in two or three weeks provided comfortable income for a month and a half.

It was the fourth and, hopefully, last day on site. Frankie had to finish the roofs and then one last area at the basement. As he walked the long main corridor, to get to the back staircase, he had the feeling that there was someone else in this building, that he wasn't alone. But, this 250,000 sq. ft. abandoned public school had broken windows; the wind howled through the openings and, old hanging maps and charts fluttered with the draft. Not to mention cats, rats and birds. He eventually got used to all these noises and stopped paying attention to them. Besides, if there was someone else there, it wouldn't be the first time he found a homeless person living in a place like this. They would always stay away from him, hiding, out of fear of being "evicted".

To access the section of roof he needed to survey that morning, he had to walk out a window on the top floor. He then took two steps on the ledge and climbed an old exterior ladder. Once on top, he had to climb over a section of sloped copper roofing which was covered with ice. When he was about to grab the ridge, one of his pens fell off his jacket pocket and he slid down back to the ladder as he tried to catch it. His body was stopped by the old ladder, but he could see the pen falling into the abyss and finally hitting the ground four floors below in the inner courtyard. The whole thing lasted a few seconds, but he felt the sweat pour out throughout his body even in the cold.

He finally made it to the flat section up on top. The wind was strong, and ice was all over the roofing membrane, very tricky. After a few minutes, sketching became painful and difficult. He couldn't work well with the gloves on, so he took them off and the cold penetrated his fingers. Long dimensions were difficult to measure. It was becoming hard for him to see the laser mark across the distance with all the glare on the ice. 'You better get me a big fucking job down in Florida next month, Laura, or I'll kick that irresistible cute little ass of yours,' thought Frankie.