Following the success of the Mondays Are Murder series, Akashic introduces Thursdaze (because the weekend won’t come fast enough), modeled after our highly addictive Akashic Drug Chronicles Series—which has produced volumes on marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and speed. Stories in Thursdaze, as in the printed anthologies, encapsulate the writer’s fictional experience with marijuana, speed, heroin, cocaine, or any other drug, real or imagined, controlled or prescribed, illegal or soon-to-be legalized. Like Mondays Are Murder, stories in this series must adhere to a 750-word limit. There is an emphasis placed on stories that stylistically emulate the drug of choice, allowing readers to indulge risk-free. Thursdaze is your fiction fix to help you power through to the weekend.
The plain was measureless. Aside from offering the occasional visual cue in the form of a tarweed shrub or boulder, it held no real sense of distance or direction. Further, though Jared felt movement—the rhythmic plodding of his horse sent soft vibrations up through the saddle horn—there seemed a lack of forward inertia. The earth acted as if on a great axle that was slowly spinning in counterbalance to the horse’s hooves. As hooves punched into parched earth, dust gathered around the mount’s hindquarters, and from a distance it appeared as if the animal trod upon a low-flying cloud: the world’s first wingless Pegasus—in flight, yet bound by oppressive heat to the ranks of the lower atmosphere . . .
There was a reason I only smoked weed occasionally after college—and it wasn’t just due to that one Hash Bash where I smoked too much and momentarily passed out . . .
Inkspot Hurricane’s eyes light up when I walk in. We go way back—I used to play music to his poetry on the folk scene. He was a slight man with a big voice, called Inkspot after the singing group, good name for a poet. I don’t recall how Hurricane came about . . .
Unconsciously, I drove toward the ever-expanding bakery with its extra-filled jelly donuts and rum–drenched chocolate cakes smothered in white, flaky coconut frosting . . .
“Brad Delp fucking killed himself, man!” Lairmo was frantic. “The voice of a fucking angel! Gone!” Lairmo popped the lid and dipped his head into a can of varnish for a big morning wake-up huff. His mouth puckered, eyes squinted shut. Calmed, he sat in his white overalls, shaking his head. “You know how many people his songs have made happy . . . ?”