"Harvest"
A contractor for a remote employee surveillance company who is tasked with anonymously phoning remote workers to confirm they are actual humans rather than automated scripts imitating work to harvest paychecks has the paranoid underpinnings of his employer's business model turned back on himself when he is ordered to verify his own humanity by reporting to the main office in the Pecuniary District of Plagapolis. Wracked with physical ailments and extreme anxiety borne of nine sedentary months sequestered in his apartment, the contractor travels through a city he barely recognizes in hopes of saving his job without losing his life along the way.
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Available online and forthcoming in a print anthology from Reimagined AI, a literary project in partnership with San Diego Writers, Ink and Northwestern University's Kaplan Humanities Institute, April 2025.
"Johnny Eisen Makes Good"
A former journalist and compulsive gambler gets an invitation he can't refuse while milling around Bryant Park -- the chance to watch, and wager on, a content creation competition between Johnny Eisen, his former mentor, and FactotumGPT, a bespoke large language model designed to draw eyeballs. As the fierce competition rages through the night, Eisen plays the part of John Henry Irons in a Web 3.0 adaptation of the classic ballad and its examination of man vs. machine and what is left when the work we define ourselves with is automated away from us.
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First appeared in The 2024 Northwind Treasury (Top Ten Honorable Mention in Fiction for Raw Earth Ink's Northwind Writing Award), November 2024
"Plagapolis"
A Brooklyn office worker begins to detoriate under the stress of self-isolation in the early months of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic. His descent towards oblivion is accelerated when his cat begins organizing anti-lockdown protests that eventually reach his besieged one-bedroom apartment, threatening his health, sanity, and ability to make one final order off Amazon.
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First appeared in High Shelf XXV, December 2020
"Run, Hide, Fight"
Professor Schicksal, and adjunct professor at a New York City college, barricades himself and his students in his classroom when a mass shooting erupts in the humanities building. As the gunshots draw nearer and the hopes of making a clean escape wane, Schicksal and his students must come to grips with their circumstances and decide how they will spend what are likely to be many of their final moments.
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First appeared in Millennial Pulp Vol. 1, November 2020
"Points of Reference"
A fractured narrative in the form of the annotated bibliography for an unknown project explores relationships, addiction, and mental illness through the framework of academic texts on philosophy and history, primers on African languages and remote viewing, and an unproduced screenplay.
First appeared in Antithesis Vol. 28: Binary, October 2018
"Hollywood, MN"
A homeless teenager who grew up sleeping rough with his father, a locally famous panhandler in the Midway neighborhood of Saint Paul, MN, tells the story of his troubled friendship with the son of a local liquor store owner. The fantastical narrative he weaves seeks to obfuscate his dire circumstances, but as the story moves on the tension between his personal fable and the harsh realities of a childhood defined by poverty and his father's alcoholism becomes increasingly untenable.
First appeared on "The Other Stories" literary podcast, April 2018
"The Dim"
A young man freshly returned from the Iraq war is held up at gunpoint by Cousin Billy, a distant relative who has made a life off the grid and outside of the law in the North Woods, while hiking. For lack of better options, he joins Billy on a journey deeper into the forest as they explore the origins of violence and the scars it can leave behind.
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First appeared in The 17th Annual Writer's Digest Short Short Story Competition Collection (23rd Place Winner), July 2017
"Baby Teeth"
Mike, a teenage runaway freshly escaped from rehab, has taken up residence with Frank, an embittered Navy veteran involved in the downing of Iran Airflight 655, in the parking garage of the Mall of America, where they live and work. Mike struggles to maintain a sense of teenage normalcy while bristling under what little structure the liquor-soaked misanthrope he's been bunking with tries to maintain. As Mike seeks to avoid becoming homeless a second time, the moving parts of Camp Snoopy grind onward, bringing the two inexorably towards a moment they've both been dreading -- the day they come face-to-face with the mortal consequences of their actions.
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First appeared in Songs of My Selfie: An Anthology of Millennial Stories (Quarter-life Crisis Contest First Prize Winner), April 2016
"I Want to Stay Like This Forever"
Captain Tony, a homeless youth, joins the teens of Lodi, Wisconsin on their nightly pilgramages to Gibraltar Rock, a nearby cliff they black out and fall off of nightly, but remain unharmed thanks to the interventions of Billie Christmas. Tony befriends Larry, a local, and the two become rivals for Billie Christmas's affections. However, Billie, whose brother was the victim in an unsolved murder years ago, has other things on her mind. As the anniversary of her brother's death grows closer, nobody thought to consider how it may affect her ability to keep the kids of the town safe -- although perhaps they should have.
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First appeared in Marco Polo Arts Mag, October 2012
