Tag Archives: fiction

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“Black Velvet and Soccer Cleats”

Back in 1999, if you had told Kayla Hughes that one day she’d be the proud owner of a white Tesla Model Y with soccer balls rolling around in the back and three teenage boys arguing over Spotify playlists, she’d have thrown her clove cigarette at your head.

It was fall semester at the University of Oklahoma, and Kayla—then Kayla Montgomery—was the kind of girl who turned heads in every hallway for all the wrong reasons. Corsets over black fishnet shirts, platform boots with worn laces, spiderweb chokers, and makeup so dark she looked like she’d stepped off a Bauhaus album cover. Her hair was dyed raven black with streaks of crimson, and her nails were filed to short points, painted matte obsidian. The other girls on her dorm floor wore Abercrombie. She wore thrifted lace and old Ministry shirts she’d carefully cut into tank tops.

Every Thursday through Sunday, she and her friends piled into someone’s beat-up Civic and drove to underground clubs in Norman or sometimes up to Oklahoma City, where there was a slightly bigger scene. They weren’t just into goth; they were connoisseurs of the industrial realm—Nine Inch Nails, Skinny Puppy, Front 242, and of course, Marilyn Manson, whose post-Columbine controversies only made his music feel more vital and taboo.

Kayla had been there when Manson’s “Mechanical Animals” tour rolled through Dallas in 1998. It was everything she dreamed: fire, chaos, pounding basslines, and outfits that screamed apocalypse chic. The crowd was defiant, hungry. They weren’t just watching—they were part of it. After the Columbine shooting in ’99, when the media tried to pin the violence on black trench coats and Manson lyrics, she remembered the chill it put through her scene. Venues shut down. School counselors gave her sidelong glances. Her mom started praying for her.

But Kayla didn’t care. She knew it wasn’t about violence. It was about expression, about rebellion, about finding a space when you felt like you didn’t fit into sororities or Baptist youth groups or the relentless sunshine of suburban Oklahoma. Music was her sanctuary, and the sweaty, strobe-lit raves at old warehouses outside Norman were her cathedral. There were glowsticks, gas masks, mesh shirts, and girls dancing barefoot on broken tile floors. She remembered the way the beat of VNV Nation or The Prodigy could lift her off the ground.

It was at one of those raves where she met Ethan Hughes.

He was standing off to the side in a navy hoodie and jeans, sipping a warm beer and looking entirely out of place. She’d noticed his clean-shaven face, his wireframe glasses, his nervous hands fidgeting with his watch. He looked like he belonged in a computer science lab—not a warehouse with pulsating strobes and kids on ecstasy doing the robot.

“Lost?” she asked, smirking.

He looked her up and down, from the neon blue cyber falls in her hair to the black vinyl skirt and New Rocks on her feet.

“Maybe,” he said. “But the music’s not bad.”

They talked until 3 a.m. about everything—how he was majoring in electrical engineering, how she was in nursing school, how she could rebuild a carburetor but couldn’t stomach dissecting frogs. He was awkward and kind, fascinated by her world. She thought he was hilarious, even if he had no idea who KMFDM was.

Two years later, they got married in a courthouse, her black lace dress clashing with his khaki suit, and they drove to Eureka Springs for a three-day honeymoon in a bed and breakfast that had “ghost tours.” She loved that he didn’t try to change her, that he listened to The Cure with her in the car even though he preferred classic rock. He thought her Goth look was “really cute, actually,” but gently teased her about the six shades of black lipstick she kept in a makeup bag that looked like it had seen war.

After graduation, Kayla got her LPN license and took a night shift at a local rehab hospital in Norman. It was grueling but quiet in the right ways. She liked the stillness of 2 a.m., when most of the patients slept, and the world seemed to pause. She wore scrub tops with skull patterns, combat boots with non-slip soles, and snuck her earbuds in to listen to old NIN albums during rounds.

When Ethan got a job offer in Oklahoma City working for a company that specialized in smart grid technology, they bought a modest house in the suburbs and traded rave nights for Netflix. Then came the twins—Liam and Jonah—followed by a “surprise baby,” Micah, two years later.

The black nail polish got packed away. So did the corsets, the industrial mix CDs, the incense burners. But not all of it.

Now, in the summer of 2025, Kayla Hughes stands in the garage of her beige two-story house in Edmond, Oklahoma, rummaging through a plastic storage bin labeled “COLLEGE STUFF.” She pulls out a faded “Antichrist Superstar” shirt, the sleeves threadbare, the logo cracked. She holds it up to her chest and laughs.

“You gonna wear that to Micah’s soccer practice?” Ethan calls from the kitchen.

She grins. “Thinking about it.”

He walks in, still in his slacks and dress shirt, now loosened at the collar, sipping a LaCroix. His hair’s thinning now, but the glasses are the same. “You know I liked that look, right?”

“You told me I looked like a Hot Topic vampire.”

“I said adorable Hot Topic vampire.”

She rolls her eyes but leans in for a kiss. There’s a comfort in the way he still smiles at her like they’re 22, lost in a crowd of glowsticks and static beats.

Their boys, all tall and shaggy-haired, burst in moments later, arguing about who gets to ride shotgun. Jonah has a soccer ball tucked under one arm. Liam has an energy drink tucked under the other. Micah’s already trying to sync his phone to the Tesla’s Bluetooth.

On the way to the park, Kayla lets them play whatever rap-trap hybrid is popular that week. But when they hop out and start warming up, she scrolls through her phone and slips in her earbuds.

She still has a playlist—labeled Midnight Cathedral—and the opening strains of “Terrible Lie” by Nine Inch Nails pour into her ears like holy water. She remembers being eighteen, stomping through fallen leaves on campus, trying to ignore sorority girls laughing behind her. She remembers the sting of being different, but also the fire it gave her.

Now she’s forty-four. A nurse. A mom. A Tesla owner. And she’s still her.

She watches her sons chasing the ball under the Oklahoma sun, her black nail polish glinting faintly where it’s chipped. She smiles.

The world changed. She changed. But somewhere deep beneath the khaki shorts and PTA meetings, a part of her still burns in neon and static.

And when no one’s looking, she dances in the kitchen to old VNV Nation tracks, just to remind herself—once, she ruled the night.

Short Story: Common Ground

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Title: “Common Ground”

In the fall of 2002, the rust-colored leaves blew in spirals across the brick pathways of Hensley College, a small liberal arts school tucked into a sleepy town in the Midwest. The campus still bore the subtle signs of post-9/11 tension—flags fluttered in windows, dorm rooms bristled with debates, and everyone, it seemed, had an opinion about what it meant to be American.

Ethan Walker was a sophomore, clean-cut with a Marine Corps dad, raised in a conservative Texas household where God, country, and discipline were as foundational as breakfast. He wore polos tucked into jeans, listened to country music, and had just joined the College Republicans.

Malik Thompson, also a sophomore, was from Chicago. His parents were community organizers, his bookshelf brimming with Chomsky, Baldwin, and Howard Zinn. Malik played guitar in the campus jazz band and had helped organize the peace vigil the previous semester, where students read poems and lit candles for Iraqi civilians.

They first met in “American Political Thought,” a course designed, perhaps cruelly, to place conflicting ideologies in a single, 12-person discussion circle. The first few weeks were testy—Malik dismissed Ethan’s defense of U.S. foreign policy as “blind nationalism,” and Ethan called Malik’s antiwar stance “unrealistic idealism.”

Then, one snowy afternoon in October, Professor Langford assigned a joint presentation: “What is Patriotism?” The professor, a Korean War vet with a knack for mischief, paired them intentionally.

Ethan dreaded it. Malik almost dropped the class. But they met—reluctantly—at the coffee shop near campus. They sat on opposite sides of a wooden table, arms crossed, steaming mugs untouched.

“So what is patriotism to you?” Malik asked.

Ethan stared into his cup. “It’s… sacrifice. It’s showing up when your country needs you.”

Malik raised an eyebrow. “Even if your country is wrong?”

Ethan hesitated. “Even then, yeah. You stay, and you try to fix it. You don’t just throw it away.”

Malik tapped his fingers. “To me, it’s holding your country accountable. Loving it enough to demand better.”

That should’ve ended it. But instead, they stayed. They talked for two hours. Then again two days later. They argued—but something shifted. Ethan began to understand the roots of Malik’s mistrust, the way his father was stopped by police on the South Side for nothing. Malik began to see that Ethan’s loyalty wasn’t blind—it came from watching his brother enlist and cry before deploying to Kandahar.

By the time of their presentation, they’d found a kind of middle ground: patriotism wasn’t a monolith. It was protest and service, critique and sacrifice. It was the tension between loving what is and believing in what could be.

They aced the assignment. But more than that, they kept talking—outside of class, at open mics, over beers in creaky dorm lounges. When protests against the Iraq War broke out on campus that spring, Malik marched with a sign quoting Langston Hughes. Ethan didn’t march—but he helped organize a forum where veterans could speak about their experiences, something Malik deeply respected.

They never agreed on everything. Probably never would. But in a time when the country was fracturing, Ethan and Malik became something rare: friends who listened. Who debated without hatred. Who knew that sometimes, the real battle wasn’t left versus right—but cynicism versus connection.

Years later, when they met again at a college reunion, they laughed about their first few arguments. Ethan brought his daughter. Malik brought a signed copy of his book on civic dialogue. They hugged. And they kept talking.

Short Story: A College Age Man with Autism and His College Age Friend with Schizophrenia

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Title: “Maple Hall Roommates”

In the fall of 2003, Maple Hall at Andover College—a tiny liberal arts school nestled in the rolling hills of southern Indiana—buzzed with the awkward optimism of a new semester. Amid thrift-store couches and posters of Radiohead and The Strokes, students wandered between classes, clutching battered notebooks and dreaming in philosophy quotes and indie film dialogue.

Room 214 of Maple Hall had just been assigned two new residents: Owen Clarke and Mason Hill.

Owen was a computer science major with a love of vintage video games and a strict preference for routines. He had autism, and while socializing drained him quickly, he could talk for hours about Metroid or the elegance of code. He’d chosen Andover for its small class sizes and the quiet corners of its library.

Mason was studying studio art, though he rarely went to class. Diagnosed with schizophrenia the previous year, he sometimes drifted in and out of clarity. He heard things—whispers, sometimes songs—and painted to keep the noise manageable. His world ran on symbols, like the moths he believed carried secrets or the number seven he trusted too much.

When they first met, Owen noticed Mason’s unfiltered way of speaking and the scattered paint supplies across the dorm. Mason noticed how Owen always placed his toothbrush exactly parallel to the sink. They were, as their RA gently suggested, “an experimental pairing.”

For the first few weeks, they mostly coexisted in silence. Mason painted late into the night, headphones on, humming Elliott Smith under his breath. Owen coded quietly, keeping his side of the room meticulous and the lights dim. Their lives were parallel lines—close, but not quite intersecting.

The friendship began on a Wednesday in late September.

Mason had been having a hard morning. He hadn’t taken his meds, unsure whether they were making things worse. The voices were loud that day—telling him he was a fraud, that the buildings were watching him. He curled up on his bed, trying not to cry, but the noise wouldn’t stop.

Owen, unsure what to do but recognizing distress, slid a Game Boy Advance across the room toward Mason.

“It’s Kirby’s Nightmare in Dream Land,” he said quietly. “It helps me when I’m… overstimulated.”

Mason blinked at him, then slowly picked it up. He started playing. The music was bright. The controls were simple. The voices quieted.

After that, something shifted.

Mason began attending Owen’s weekly coffee shop trips—only on Thursdays at 3 p.m., as per Owen’s schedule. Owen, in turn, started asking about Mason’s paintings, especially the ones with intricate color patterns that reminded him of code. They’d sit by the window in the campus café, Mason sketching in his worn notebook, Owen sipping hot chocolate and sometimes, tentatively, sharing things—like how sarcasm confused him or why he wore headphones in the dining hall.

They developed rituals. Sunday movie nights with VHS tapes borrowed from the library. Mason would interpret the symbolism, and Owen would analyze the structure. They laughed at Donnie Darko and cried—both of them—at Good Will Hunting.

They didn’t always understand each other. Owen sometimes struggled when Mason spiraled into paranoia. Mason occasionally misunderstood Owen’s flat tone and mistook it for coldness. But they learned how to ask questions, how to give space, and when to lean in.

Once, Mason painted a picture of Owen—a tall figure standing in a forest of circuitry, holding a torch made of pixelated stars. He gave it to him without much explanation. Owen stared at it for a long time before saying, “This… feels true.”

By spring, they were no longer just roommates. They were friends.

Real ones.

Not despite their differences, but because of them.

Years later, when the world pulled them in different directions—Owen to a job in Chicago, Mason to an artist residency in Oregon—they kept in touch. The friendship held, like a quiet melody threaded through time.

And Maple Hall Room 214 remained a memory, vivid and strange and beautiful—like a painting made of code, or a game that teaches you how to heal.

Book Review: Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne

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Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, published in 1864, is a pioneering work of science fiction that masterfully blends adventure, science, and imagination. As one of the founding fathers of science fiction, Verne invites readers into a world where the boundaries of scientific possibility are pushed to their limits.

The story follows Professor Otto Lidenbrock, an eccentric and determined German scientist, who discovers a cryptic manuscript. With the help of his reluctant but loyal nephew, Axel, he deciphers the message left by a 16th-century Icelandic alchemist, revealing a secret passage to the center of the Earth. Together with their stoic Icelandic guide, Hans, they embark on a perilous journey into an extinct volcano in Iceland.

What follows is a fantastical adventure through subterranean worlds filled with vast caverns, underground seas, prehistoric creatures, and natural wonders that defy the imagination. Verne’s vivid descriptions and meticulous attention to scientific detail—balanced with artistic license—make the reader feel as though they, too, are descending into the Earth’s depths.

One of the strengths of the novel is the dynamic between the characters. Professor Lidenbrock’s relentless curiosity and Axel’s anxiety create tension, humor, and growth. Hans, quiet and dependable, serves as the stabilizing force in their expedition. Their personalities contrast sharply, highlighting both the courage and folly of human ambition.

From a scientific perspective, the novel reflects the 19th-century understanding of geology and paleontology, which today feels outdated yet charming. Verne was known for grounding his fiction in real science, and while some concepts now seem fantastical, his effort to incorporate contemporary knowledge was revolutionary for his time.

Thematically, Journey to the Center of the Earth explores the human desire to uncover the unknown, the spirit of exploration, and the tension between rationality and imagination. It celebrates curiosity but also warns of the hubris that can accompany it.

For modern readers, the book may feel slower in parts, especially during the heavily detailed descriptions and scientific discussions. However, the sense of wonder and the sheer inventiveness of Verne’s world more than compensate.

In conclusion, Journey to the Center of the Earth is not just an adventure story—it’s a testament to the enduring power of curiosity and imagination. While science has since disproven the possibility of such a journey, the novel remains a captivating exploration of what could be possible beyond the boundaries of our everyday world. For anyone who loves adventure, science fiction, or classic literature, Jules Verne’s work is a timeless treasure.

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Book Review: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas is a bold and breathtaking literary puzzle that defies conventional storytelling. First published in 2004, this genre-bending novel spans centuries and continents, weaving together six nested narratives that echo and reflect one another in ways both subtle and profound. It’s an ambitious work that challenges the reader not only to keep up but to consider the larger philosophical questions of time, identity, and the cyclical nature of human ambition and cruelty.

The structure of Cloud Atlas is perhaps its most talked-about feature. Each of the six stories is told in a distinct voice, genre, and era, beginning in the 19th-century South Pacific with the journal of Adam Ewing, and ending in a post-apocalyptic future with the oral storytelling of Zachry, a tribesman on the Big Island. The stories then mirror back in reverse order, completing each unfinished narrative. This nesting technique showcases Mitchell’s remarkable ability to write convincingly in a variety of styles: from historical fiction and epistolary narrative to dystopian sci-fi and postmodern comedy.

What makes the novel more than a clever literary stunt is the way the stories resonate with one another. Characters, themes, and motifs—especially the moral struggle between oppression and resistance—echo through the centuries. A comet-shaped birthmark appears across generations, hinting at reincarnation or spiritual continuity. Themes of power, exploitation, freedom, and the endurance of the human soul thread these stories together, suggesting that history doesn’t just repeat—it rhymes.

Mitchell’s prose is dazzling without being showy. Each narrative is finely crafted, and he balances deep emotional engagement with intellectual rigor. The future dystopias, especially the chillingly plausible corporate hellscape of “An Orison of Sonmi~451,” are as memorable as the genteel satire of the modern-day “The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish.”

Still, Cloud Atlas isn’t without its challenges. Its layered structure and genre-hopping can feel disorienting at first, and some readers may find the philosophical underpinnings heavy-handed. But those willing to invest will be rewarded with a novel that is both an imaginative tour de force and a meditation on humanity’s capacity for both destruction and redemption.

Verdict:
Cloud Atlas is a masterwork of literary innovation and emotional resonance. David Mitchell proves that the novel form can still surprise, challenge, and deeply move us. It’s a dazzling testament to storytelling itself—how stories shape who we are and how we endure.

More Mobile, Losing Weight, Spring Storms, and New Books by Zach Foster

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Updates are in order. I can now transfer from my recliner to the bed to the wheelchair on a daily basis. I no longer have knee pain, but I do have some ankle pain. I have to stand up and sit down a few times over the span of several minutes before I can easily get rolling, especially if I have been laying down all night in bed.

In short, the knee pain that has been the bane of my existence for the past seven years is gone. Now I have to work on my ankle strength. To this end I’m starting an exercise routine I learned from a physical therapist to rebuild my ankles.

I haven’t weighed myself for a few months, but I think I’ve lost weight. I’m carrying less fat, especially around my stomach and thighs. My arms no longer jiggle. My shirts fit a lot better. The swelling in my crotch has gone down considerably. I know my apatite is smaller than it used to be.

One of the reasons for the fat loss in spite of the little physical activity, is for the strict diet I have. I limit when I eat and how much I eat. I still occasionally eat pizza, burgers, and friend fish. But I have cut back on portions. I large pizza can make at minimum two meals for me, more often three. I do like Long John Silver’s for their fish and corn balls. But it’s only a once-a-month tradition when my dad brings it home after he visits his doctor at the VA.

The weather is warming up and definitely feels like spring. We are having wildfires here in Oklahoma. Won’t be too long before we have thunderstorms and tornadoes every few days. The storms down here are really bad, especially the spring storms. Winter storms are more bearable even if they bring more ice than what I’m used to growing up in Nebraska. Whatever snow and ice we get in Oklahoma is gone within a couple of days. But 500 miles north in Nebraska, the snow can stay around all winter and it’s usually too cold for just rain turning to ice most of the times. Snowstorms dumping over a foot of snow are an annual occurrence back in Nebraska.

I recently uploaded an e-book to Amazon in addition to the Hillbilly Scholar one I already have. It’s called Blasting Mental Illness Myths by Zach Foster. It’s not up just yet as I loaded it only a few days ago.

This is the link to the Hillbilly Scholar e-book

https://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Hillbilly-Scholar-Zach-Foster-ebook/dp/B005ESFWNI/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3BR1YVX065QOH&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.uACjiqLKg7iYywHEerIRWw.oEkfijpANSjGwxPnP5W80vUEWYv8vkD3FHYTL6VTGsg&dib_tag=se&keywords=wisdom+of+a+hillbilly+scholar&qid=1742162715&sprefix=%2Caps%2C94&sr=8-1