The StoryVault |
 The StoryVault is a central database of stories and non-fiction essays written by author Caleb J. Ross.The StoryVault will be updated with new fiction and essays as first publishing rights expire. To make sure you don’t miss a single story, subscribe to the StoryVault RSS feed.To start reading right away, use your mobile phone or tablet to scan the QR code to the left. You will be taken directly to the StoryVault site. Step 2: read.
Or, if you don’t have a mobile phone or tablet handy, just click on this StoryVault link to read right from your computer screen. |
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Story List
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Denis Johnson Almost Drank My PeeDark Sky Magazine blog, September 2011 These strangers, I suddenly understand, can be personal cults, rife with tithed elaborations. But a stranger can lead you too: Denis Johnson almost drank my pee, but whose to say he didn’t almost drink yours? |
Click-ClackWarmed and Bound: a Velvet Anthology, Velvet Press, July2011
Some say the train’s click-clack echoed his mother’s escape, that the looming engine overtook and ultimately replaced the sound of her footsteps, leaving Ernie, with only the train’s passing heat for warmth and its lumbering weight to serve as the heartbeat he had nestled for the past nine months. Kind words from Spinetingler: “This vignette is a song masquerading as short story. It achieves this with a brilliance as flawless as any modern masterpiece of music.” |
Even Strippers Bleed RedUndie Press, June 2011I can safely assume that I am the only person to have sat alone in a Hooters restaurant reading Lisa Zunshine’s Why We Read Fiction, an exploration of how the human brain has trouble distinguishing the world of fiction from the world of reality. |
Evenson’s Tongue> Kill Author, April 2011Rhanke wraps his warped teeth under his mug’s lip, takes in a short sip, and returns the cup to the table, puzzling it into the same wet ring from which he lifted it. “Who do you think did it?” he asks. |
“untitled” (part of the Life in 100 Words or Less project)Life in 100 Words or Less, February 2011Once a man at a trade show called attention to a pepper speck mussing my gum line. His teeth have blinded hundreds. |
“untitled” (part of the Pushcorpse project)No Colony, February 2011
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The Author Who Gets Free Drinks: a (Hopefully) True StoryCannoli Pie Magazine, July 2010This is the already true part: in June of 2008 I stood on a beach in San Diego wearing a full suit, paying more attention to my watch than to the ocean in front of me. For a boy from Kansas City, where the largest body of water might be a wort vessel at the Boulevard Brewery, this transposed priority says a lot. I had a flight, and as always, the airline schedule superseded any perceived relaxation. And it’s especially hard to relax when, with my suit beachwear I looked the part of a misplaced predator. Bikinied women covered themselves as I strolled the boardwalk. |
Our GuyWord Riot, Sept 2007, Orange Alert Podcast (read aloud), 2 April 2010If we tell ourselves the culprit sits right there, in front of us all, then we’re free to ignore our backs. In this place of kindreds the last body part you want to have to protect is one you have a hard enough time seeing sober. |
As a Machine and Parts (novella excerpt, chapters 1 & 2)Lobster Cult, February 2010Eric tosses night-glow emergency phone number magnets at a 1970’s retro avocado-green fridge, hard enough to rattle the rebuilt compressor. “Rebuilt” used loosely; he brags weekly of having fixed the botched part, defending his neophyte mechanic’s talents by blaming subsequent failures on untouched pieces. |
Born Again MichaelEternal Night: a Vampire Anthology, Living Dead Press, January 2010
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Legs UnwillingRotten Leaves, January 2010Max’s father was probably the frat boy who fucked me on a dare. I remember his loose jaw, the way it flapped, guided by so much alcohol. Max has the same way about him. They share eyes, too, always spinning and barely open. After, he hi-fived his roommates, and I went back to the bar, unsatisfied. But the glow had already been planted. |
Sarah Palin, 12, Strikes for WorkersOprah Read This > Oprah, Read ThisShe wears ironed cotton now when addressing her followers, and pressed jeans, skirts when the weather allows, but not today; she has a meeting in Cheboygan. Clothes, shifts in weight, her diet, hairstyle, the pauses between breaths; these are the syllables to her narrative. |
RefillThe Green Muse, V.1 Ed.4, Aug 2006, Troubadour 21, Dec 2009 (reprinted)
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EmoticonPela Via’s blog (at the end of the interview), December 2009His neutral expression reminds her of a blinking cursor | | | ||| | | awaiting input, a spaceholder for impending | | ||| | | | emotion. His full cheeks the (parenthetical wrap) around colon : eyes and a bored, backslash \ mouth. She tries to coax nuances from him, massaging his earlobe, letting her fingers navigate the subtle ripples of his stomach. He might as well be dead. She imagines this for a moment, her face falling to her own version of a blinking | | | | |||| | | | cursor. |
Norman Rockwell NostalgiaFull of Crow, October 2009Mrs. Bellin’s husband strips away his amiable social veneer at night to accessorize his wife with welts and purple flesh, like an eggplant leather exterior. “Hitting me only where nobody can see the marks,” Mrs. Bellin says. Tiny Brian’s father returns some nights, when his mother leaves for bar therapy among fellow domestic targets, to make sure his boy knows how to be a man. Taking a few smacks is a manly thing to do. His father surveys the refrigerator, leaves, promises to one day come back for good. |
It SparksSideshow Fables, issue 1, Summer 2009
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Charactered PiecesVain Magazine, issue 7, Summer 2009
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A Trench is No Place For GodNefarious Muse, March 2008, Cause & Effect, Winter 2009, issue 7 (reprinted)
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Globe ValveFull of Crow, MiCrow supplement, Summer 2009Within a single heartbeat, a body goes from one of the Earth’s residents to just one of its craggy imperfections. |
The Word Will Die TooCherry Bleeds, March/April 2009I don’t need something as complicated as god in my life. Give me a bible and I’d pawn it for a blanket. Though no one would be stupid enough to let go of a blanket. |
Reviews: Caroline Meyer’s Hidden Cigarette Butt, Joel Reynolds’s Dried Bar of Soap1000th Monkey, Issue 2, Spring 2009
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E!MorphosisColored Chalk, Issue 6, February 2009
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The Camel of MoroccoPear Noir!, Issue 1, January 2009
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Formaldehyde (an excerpt from STRANGER WILL)Red Fez, December 2008He removes stains for a living, those left by dead bodies. When a heart stops, his wife gets cable for another month. |
Vertigo UnbalancedGold Dust Magazine, Issue 14, Autumn 2008, reprinted in Solid Gold, September 2009
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Eyelid (an excerpt from STRANGER WILL)Colored Chalk, Issue 5, November 2008
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The CampLiterary House Review, Second Annual Edition, 2008
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Snake Girl at Scab3:AM Magazine, October 2008Sometimes I go out on the weekends without my wedding ring. I’m not hunting for other women, but conversation tends to be so much simpler if they assume I am. Other times, I think, I forgo the ring as an invitation for misery. |
Exhibit One – A Letter from Alex FumarColored Chalk, Issue 2, June 2008
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The Barber Who Calls Himself FergusonBust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens, Issue 7, January 2008
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Car DodgingNo Record Press, January 2008How the bald man with the needle in his median cubital vein said he found God felt like what a rape would be if afterwards the woman zipped up her pants, fastened her belt and said, “thank you, I’ve been so busy lately.” |
Dry DotPresent Magazine, December 2007Photographs leaked of the old man’s wounds. Durzenkya turned public outcry and protest into support by claiming that the bruises were “welts where ideas have lashed this man.” |
5″ x 6″ in a Sturdy FrameVestal Review, Issue 27, Oct 2006
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Petty InjuriesDogmatika,June 2006Fault and blame can be forgotten after three steep flights of stairs. Pregnant-lady-take-the-elevator kind of steep. I-said-elevator, holy-shit-she’s-falling kind of steep. A-faked-relief-when-the-child-is-born, but-born-special kind of steep. |
With my wallet, Ginger could buy a rosary with buds the size of anal beads and wrap her wrists in prayer until the formed pedals swell with her own grease. She could build weak phrases out of arrested breath. When the thread snaps and all the bloated flowers smear against the asphalt under her escaping wheel, she could ask forgiveness in whispers between the beats of her stained spokes.
History: Michael has crammed the life of a 40 year old into his 8 year frame. His mother lactated ketamine, drowned his cornflakes in bourbon, and where other mothers christened kindergarten lunchbox napkins with “I Love You’s”, Michael’s sent reminders to life cigarettes from the 7-11 on his way home from school.
He’s been out of anti-depressants for two weeks. He’s been out of various other things for longer periods of time—rubber bands, staples, relationships—and it’s never bothered him much, but “being out of anti-depressants,” he says, “tends to depress a person.”
“Who taught you to be ashamed of us? I want to know.
If pressed Lori might remember her mother’s eye color, but distance has dulled the hue. Blood doesn’t translate well through telephone lines.
The medical tent stank of baked flesh and the wasted effort of sterility; bleach puddled dirt into mud while ammonia sat in open buckets just feet away, its fumes warping the air. The suction of each chemical step—heal, sink, toe, heal, sink, toe—failed to drown the ambient moans of the dying. Lowell stepped past an unconscious man, his sweat and blood boiling to the surface of his skin in the trapped heat under the canvas tent. Outside too, the sun tortured survivors.
Her father embraces fresh cigarettes with a longing romance Caroline yearns to share. She will learn the ways of capture. Until then, she studies her father’s spent filters for the transcripts of love.
When Samantha Gregory woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, she found herself buried beneath her own artifacts.
He’s navigating a labyrinth of sound; his hands aren’t thick enough over his ears to keep the blame from his head. He asks what they want. Finish our prayers, they say.
Sick, that’s the term I’m told to use, like it’s supposed to work on me, grating away at preconceptions. Because being sick implies a cure. Simply being fucked up implies a lost cause. The jargon changes. Social Anxiety Disorder some days. Cardiac neurosis. Even agoraphobia. My files say that I have an idea of perfection coupled with a crippling fear of attaining it.
Tiny William guts his jeans, skins them down to the lint. His father surveys the emptied contents, warns the boy of lying to his father, and demands that he empty his mouth as well. Tiny William opens and offers upon his tongue a tiny ball of salivated beige tape.
It is the routine, I believe, of the packing, then the leaving to somewhere new, then the returning home refreshed that matters most to mom. The vacation itself is just something that happens between fresh starts.
You think it’s true, that bugs eat anything with protein? Guess they could feast on my sheets at home. Oh yeah, I’ll need your help with those, too.
The Eye’s hair grows long and tangled. He avoids mirrors, still water, and recent photographs, not out of fear for what they might reveal, but because he believes that nothing trivializes progress more than a reflection.
The first morning we met—I remember the rain, soft the way I like it—was a series she later attributed as a fourteen-frame sunrise.
