The Barrett Retrospective

This blog represents my own footprint on the web, and everything contained herein is my own, illustrious opinion.

Category: Fiction & Writing

  • Requiem For Brian

    Requiem For Brian

    John shook the bars of his cell. “Let me go! Liberarme!” A door opened at the end of the hall. A man in dirty clothes stepped out. He had a gun hanging from his belt. “Silencio!” the man said. He tapped his gun and closed the door. John thought he saw his brother, Brian, in…

  • The Mask We Seek

    The Mask We Seek

    John dug into the ground with his bare hands. “My people buried the mask deep, John. Here.” Niru handed John a shovel. John looked up at the hot Pacific sun and wiped his brow. They dug. “I had a job once digging holes while everyone around me got rich.” John said. “Now it’s my turn.”…

  • What’s Up Doc?

    What’s Up Doc?

    My assignment for this class was to experiment with story structure while maintaining escalating tension. The plot had to involve a visit to the doctor. So, I sat at my desk and let my mind soar. This story is the result. On my 45th birthday, I flew on an airplane to 8,000 feet, opened the…

  • Jade

    Jade

    Jade Bonner wanted a new video game, her favorite science documentary, and water. She awoke, memory churning, to see her alarm clock blinking. She dressed quickly and went to the kitchen. Filthy water dripped from the faucet. Municipal Water & Sewer had been outside all morning. Jade opened her refrigerator but the old appliance was…

  • Getting Up For Work

    The alarm sounds. Hit the snooze button once, twice, three times just to be safe. You’ll need those extra winks to do well on your first day on the job. Grab your phone and check your email, twitter, and Facebook. But don’t be late for work! You need to pay for those high tech gadgets…

  • Caught at the Bar

    In February of 2016, I was taking a creative writing course where we attempted to create characters. One assignment was to take two characters from our favorite book, movie, or TV show, and put them in a scene with a completely new and different setting. I chose two characters from a mid 1960s TV show…

  • Rollercoaster Down

    Clack! Clack! Clack! The car moved slowly upwards. At the top of the arc, the car seemed to stop. Clack! She stared into the endless void of blue. Her eyes tried to lock on to any detail but there was none. It seemed as if she was stuck in time. She looked down at the…

  • Bus Stop

    As I listened to the conversation, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. A young woman was talking to an older woman. “I just can’t do it,” the younger woman said. “No matter how much you explain, I will never understand.” Her frustration was obvious, but I had trouble hearing them over the noise of…

  • For The Sake of The Children

    Jack bent the window blinds and peered outside. A tall woman in a business suit stood outside the front door of the house. She carried a large envelope. It was late afternoon. The sun hung behind her and cast her silhouette against the window. The suburban street was quite. The houses all in a row…

  • Never End

    I wrote this poem(?) in my early teenage years before high school. These thoughts helped me through many difficult times throughout my entire life. In 1992, I took that old, tattered piece of notebook paper I had held onto for so many years and transcribed it in to a word processing document. That document, along…