I’m finishing a short story collection called Open Windows: of Worlds and Men. It’s deep and true and, at times, even beautiful.

Right now, it’s sitting on an editor’s desk with an amazing publisher. I can’t say who just yet, but as soon as I get the green light, this Substack is where I’ll let everyone know.

In the meantime, I’ll be sharing updates, early excerpts, and behind-the-scenes reflections here first.

Supporters also get access to my other work—essays, stories, memories, and more.

If “Homecoming” hit you, or if you just want to see where this all goes, subscribe below so I can reach out directly. You’ll be the first to know when the book officially finds its home.

—C.B.

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P.S.—here’s a little bonus flash fiction just for you:

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Jerry sat and stared unblinkingly at the overhead sun bulb in his little room. His white puffy body poured over the sides of the reclining chair, which doubled as his bed, like folded mayonnaise. His breathing was labored, though he hadn’t so much as stood in hours.

“Angela, what time will lunch be here?” he asked the room.

A voice answered in an imitation of humanity that still sounded cold and artificial around the edges.

“The courier is still fifteen minutes away, Jerry. Would you like me to send another pulse to the driver?”

The men and women employed to deliver all the things wore headsets that alerted them to new pickups and dropoffs, as well as customer reviews and complaints by way of pulses—small subcutaneous jolts that were more annoying than painful. It sounded like a hellish vocation to Jerry, much worse than being an unboxer.

“Absolutely,” he said, “send one every five minutes until they get here.”

Jerry shambled to his feet without a shred of grace in a series of groans and pa…

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“Keep it moving… keep it moving,” droned the little creature—a gelatinous thing that looked like a pair of eyeballs plopped atop a mound of congealed hand sanitizer. Eyes that were thankfully disinterested enough not to recognize me. It waved flashlights with bright, pointed cone lids at the steadily flowing river of beings that poured into the final corridor of the transport station.

Above the entrance to the corridor was a metal arch with cut-out curved letters that said simply:

THE GARDEN TRANSPORT STATION

“How many times have you been through?” a sing-song voice asked from beside me. I looked over to find a pair of wide, friendly eyes suspended in translucent purple-tinged goo only inches from my own.

“Through?” I said.

“The gateways—life,” she said. I got the feeling that she was, in fact, a she—though here, there weren’t any lady parts or man parts to speak of. Here was transient. “I’ve been through seven times,” she said without blinking. Seven tim…

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I held an aged ten dollar bill between us. He looked nervously at the grocery store, teeming with shoppers. This was supposed to be good for him—independence—agency.

“Why do we need money for milk?” he asked with the haughty air of a grade-school philosopher.

“Because everything costs something, son,” I said.

“Everything?” he said.

“Everything.”

“We could just take the milk,” he said.

“Like stealing?”

“If that’s what you want to call it,” he said.

“It’s not what I call it, it’s what the dictionary calls it,” I said. I took a steadying breath, as that’s what I’d been told good fathers do. “Then you’d pay for it with time instead of money—time spent in jail. Get the milk?” I urged the greasy bill closer. He looked out the window.

“We could change that law,” he said.

“Then everyone would have to pay for the milk. Safety. Society. Stability. Milk,” I said. He seemed to be thinking about it. I lowered my outstretched hand, feeling tired and like a failure in more ways than one.

“We could burn it all …

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She had a laugh like an old brokedown car—the staccato of an engine that wouldn’t start. It made me want to take the plastic knife off my paper plate and push it into my eardrums. Instead, I stared at her teeth and smiled.

“We just got a new car,” she said to anyone that would listen, in between big smacks of gum. “Stevie picked it up for my birthday. Ain’t that right Stevie?”

From over by the smoking grill, in a cluster of three men talking about sports scores and performance reports, Steve raised a plastic-cupped salute.

My wife appeared like a wisp and squeezed my shoulder, not without affection. I tried to make my smile more believable.

“It’s way too fancy for me,” the woman with the machine gun laugh said. She let out another three-round burst. I gripped the arms of my chair until the hard white plastic bit into my fingertips. “Brand new. Off the lot. All the bells and whistles,” she offered when I failed to urge her for any details.

“Well, that sounds lovely,” my wife said in a voice…

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Two old fellas sat at the park. The sun was bright, and the air was crisp, but they complained anyhow—as old men are prone to do—about the weather.

“That’s one hell of a sweater, George,” said the smaller one from under a bushy mustache.

George’s bulging frame was squeezed into an absolute circus of a Christmas sweater that—in Clyde’s opinion—no self-respecting man would have worn.

“The old lady got it for me,” George said, looking over at Ethel, who was chatting with another woman some distance away. “I’d take it off, but you know how she gets if I don’t wear the stuff she buys me.”

His tone was a veneer—a mock annoyance sitting overtop a chasm of deep and enduring love like a manhole cover. George had been with Ethel since he was a kid, and their love was still like something out of a storybook.

George smiled. George was always smiling. Clyde looked at Ethel—who gave a little wink and a wave to George. After all these years, he still pined for her like a puppy chasing its owner, and she …

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