Yesteryear Fiction

The Beard of Von Horowictz
By John Ogden


“Blitz!” Screams the baker, but the candlemaker doesn’t hear her, doesn’t understand the words that flow from her babbering mouth like so much chopped salad. Babies in their cribs at night carve labyrinths of dark smudge and greasepaint into the sloping ceilings of their minds, explode new buildings meant to be toppled in the growth that comes with each shallow, ocean-surf breath. In the night, they dream of the beard of Von Horowictz, gentle eyes following the list and sway of his graying tips like succored flies. The old man doesn’t speak; his mouth is a mask of leather and crime, stitched through and sealed as much by age as tears. When he looks into their eyes, he sees into the slipstream of fate and time, weaves destinies for each and each alone with the greasepaint labyrinth stirrings of his own babbering mind.


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John Ogden was conceived of a government form and a passing mailbox. He lives somewhere out in the woods of a rural land more akin to the fantasy realms of literature than real life, and his favorite dirt bikes will always be the broken ones.