Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Airing My Shorts
    Airing My Shorts
    Airing My Shorts
    Ebook92 pages1 hour

    Airing My Shorts

    By David Serafino

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Ten stories and five poems by David Serafino. "Three of a Kind" includes stories with serious themes. "Auto-bio Trilogy" is the author's memoirs as a young adult. "Two Dark" is violent fiction. "Two Light" is light humor. And then there's the poems, written in verse and reflecting the writer's experiences and passions.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDavid Serafino
    Release dateJul 15, 2020
    ISBN9781005312893
    Airing My Shorts
    Author

    David Serafino

    David Serafino was born in 1947 and grew up in Niagara Falls Ontario but has lived almost all of his adult life in the historic town of Port Dalhousie, now a suburb of St. Catharines Ontario. He began writing while a young adult, contributing to local publications and attempting a first yet-to-be published auto-biographical novel. In 1997 he began publishing Dalhousie Peer Magazine which ran for 14 years and 150 monthly issues. He is a published author by virtue of having a short story adjudicated for inclusion in a Canadian literary journal in 2009. In 1997 he co-authored and printed a history book of Port Dalhousie titled “A Nickel a Ride” In 2020 he produced, published and co-authored a more detailed and complete history of Port Dalhousie titled “Port Dalhousie: An Intimate History. Serafino has also written a series of five plays based on the War of 1812 and two children’s plays, some of which were performed locally and in New York State. He has also published two novels and a book of short stories & poems as eBooks. He is an amateur musician who uploads self-produced music videos of original songs to YouTube. Together, with his wife Lana, they have built an off-grid, solar-powered retreat in Central Ontario where they spend much of their summer. Since retirement in 2010 they have spent part of their winters in Latin America.

    Read more from David Serafino

    Related to Airing My Shorts

    Related ebooks

    General Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Two Poems by Phillip B. Williams

      Dec 15, 2017

      The masters are yet dead. Wanting to be human,I tried to rewrite The Waste Land. The canon’s reachcasts ruinous light. The masters’ pens breachthis page where, above, my own hand spectates. Babylonrisen, exorcism in reverse, whose nature upended now?

      6 min read

    • Article

      On Death Row, There's No Such Thing As Closure

      Aug 2, 2019

      It is August of the year 2000, and I am cold. I know the sun is shining outside, but there are no windows in the courtroom. The lighting is subdued, darker in the back where spectators sit and lighter in the front where tragedies play out—like a the

      5 min read

    • Article

      Habibi

      Jun 5, 2023

      Habibi
      11 min read

    • Article

      My Adventures in Hell

      Jul 25, 2019

      On one particular drive, I interrupted my father and told him, apropos of nothing other than to see how he would react, that I didn’t think Hell was real. The post My Adventures in Hell appeared first on The Millions.

      8 min read

    • Article

      Pozdnyshev’s Address

      Jun 8, 2021

      THE MURDER I COMMITTED—it wasn’t simply the strike of a dagger, at night, on the fifth of October, in a brightly lit living room. The murder I committed is a phenomenon of duration, akin more to slow poisoning than a flashing blade. I dare to hope th

      9 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      May 1, 2022

      If I call myself unlovable, I am, practically; if I say itenough times: unlovable. Then, like practical magic, I’m hollow as old garlic; I’m distance-skinned.I’m a long, mean package, a terror-dyke, a nag, a squinting, slut-spun hag—it’s easy, really

      5 min read

    • Article

      Letter From The Pestilence

      Mar 18, 2020

      Ironically, there’s something democratic in our common situation, the way in which we’re all feeling the same fear, the same uncertainty, the same panic, worry, anger, and anxiety. A solidarity, finally. The post Letter from the Pestilence appeared f

      5 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Tim Lane

      Dec 8, 2021

      We stopped at the Topaz Internment Camp, where my wife’s family was held during World War II, near the tiny town of Delta, Utah. We found the apocalyptic remnants of one of our country’s great shames. The post A Year in Reading: Tim Lane appeared fi

      7 min read

    • Article

      Haunts

      Jul 26, 2022

      Haunts
      7 min read

    • Article

      Rim Of A Mirror

      Apr 6, 2021

      Rim Of A Mirror
      3 min read

    • Article

      Nothing To Fear

      Jan 26, 2021

      Nothing To Fear
      8 min read

    • Article

      Learning To Walk

      Oct 28, 2019

      Learning To Walk
      5 min read

    • Article

      Where Is Black Life Lived?

      Jul 21, 2020

      Where Is Black Life Lived?
      6 min read

    • Article

      Longer on Moon

      Sep 22, 2022

      Longer on Moon
      19 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems by Rohan Chhetri

      Sep 8, 2020

      All summer the half voice lurked behind me & I played deaf for days for to live To not write about it to use my body Part the river’s flesh to operate Machinery is human too to love & for once stay awake through it all. Now it comes like the deer sle

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Inventions of Witches

      Oct 30, 2017

      The Inventions of Witches
      7 min read

    • Article

      Where Night Stops

      Jan 15, 2018

      Where Night Stops
      6 min read

    • Article

      A Life Not Forgotten

      Feb 2, 2023

      A Life Not Forgotten
      6 min read

    • Article

      Dark Tales

      Dec 2, 2021

      Dark Tales
      6 min read

    • Article

      Four Of A Kind

      May 3, 2023

      Four Of A Kind
      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Airing My Shorts

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Airing My Shorts - David Serafino

      AIRING MY SHORTS

      Copyright © 2013 David J. Serafino

      All Rights Reserved

      ISBN 9781005312893

      This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No-Derivs 2.0 Generic (CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0) Unported license. To see a copy of this license visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/ or send a letter to:

      Creative Commons

      171 Second Street, Suite 300

      San Francisco California 95105

      USA

      Dalpeer Productions

      Three Of A Kind

      A LONG WAY FROM LIMBO

      Previously published in Ten Stories High 10th Anniversary anthology of Canadian Author’s Association (Niagara) Literary Journal (2009)

      I might have understood hell better if someone had first painted me a better picture of heaven. The specious image presented by Father Mercredi and Sister George was so obscure as to be irrelevant, eternal bliss as loathsome as eternal damnation.

      There was little reflection of heaven in our small northern town. Hell, on the other hand, was portrayed in vivid horror. One only had to walk past the coke ovens where my father worked to see it--a room as big as an airplane hanger glowing like a sea of fire, flames leaping to the ceiling and fouling the air with soot. Breathing that filth would have killed him in time if the accident hadn’t.

      Purgatory was a concept that seemed to make sense--a place to get clean again, like the home they sent mom to. Limbo was a lie. Why would God banish an innocent soul to the infinite void? I was only six at the time, not yet guilty of sin or worthy of heaven. If I died saving my parents from their death, would Limbo be my only reward? If I caused their death and died with them, would Limbo be my punishment? Everything was supposed to change by the time I turned seven and took the sacrament of communion--but it was too late. By then, Hell had become Father Mercredi’s lie and I wasn’t afraid of fire anyway.

      The cells on death row are cold and silent. No-one talks for very long. We speak of our sins and the sins of others and wonder what happens after lethal injection.

      Sister George would have had me expelled if the decision was hers alone. She would grab me by my collar and drag me from the playground to the Mother Superior’s office for any infraction, perceived or real. After so many incidents, I gave up defending myself, feigning acceptance of my fate like some runaway slave re-captured and broken.

      Once a week, Father Mercredi came to visit and scare us with his stories of hell, described in detail so real it seemed he’d seen it. Some thought him the devil. I thought him a good teller of tales. In confession, I told my own stories, making up sins that could easily be forgiven and omitting others. The three Our Father’s and the two Hail Mary’s went unsaid. I did not believe in contrition.

      At the beginning of winter, after our first set of exams was completed, he would stand silently in the halls, looking for young boys to recruit as servers at mass. It was not something I felt suited to and, for once, Sister George agreed with me; however, the list she provided of those with good grades included my name.

      Father Mercredi had breath like my father’s. Even at morning mass he demanded his cup be filled to the brim with the sweet sacramental wine the parish provided. At evening mass he climbed the steps to the altar in slow careful movements so as not to betray his situation to the half dozen old men and women scattered about the pews.

      One such evening, after the service was over and the sanctuary emptied, I accidentally knocked over a candle, spilling hot wax onto the expensive linen. The priest scolded me harshly with an outburst of anger so violent it shook the chandeliers. We stood for a moment staring, shocked and bewildered. As the wax cooled, so did our tempers.

      His eyes softened with damp sorrow. Like a timid boy attempting to pet a vicious dog, he reached out with a trembling hand and rested it gently atop my head. As I was seduced into his trust, he lifted the other hand and caressed my face. The man then knelt beside me on the altar step and pulled my body close to his. It was the first time since my mother left that I felt the warmth of another human and it both soothed and revolted me. His tears mingled with mine, wet my face and made us both feel awkward. We would never mention that incident again.

      I’d often thought of killing Sister George, indulging in the rehearsal played out in my head during those dull moments waiting for others to finish their assignments. The gratifying fantasy made the pain less whenever she brought the leather strap down forcefully onto my bare palm. The faces of my class-mates would stare in awe. I’ve seen that look since in the faces of those who now come to visit the condemned. Do they believe in hell?

      My father said hell was here on earth and he drank to forget it--and to escape the dementia of my mother. The consuming nature of fire intrigued me. Where did things go-- Limbo perhaps? The bare basement where I played, amidst timber scraps of a failed family room, was my prison and my paradise. I could hear him raving above toward unconsciousness and then all would go silent. A single candle lit the space. Sitting cross legged in my sphere of light, the peripheral darkness kept the world away. But fire was my friend. I welcomed it as an ally, adding more and more candles to my circle, dripping hot wax and fixing each to the floor of my ungodly den. The devil’s magic was played out in emulation with a handful of sawdust swept from the floor and sprinkled like demon dust over the flames. Again and again I rolled the ball of fire. A paintbrush soaking in a can of solvent lay within easy reach. Symbols painted in lines of burning gasoline spread across the concrete. The effect was startling.

      I barely escaped the inferno which sent my father to somewhere beyond. This was probably my biggest sin. A few years later, after many attempts, my mother succeeded in joining him.

      The days at the orphanage were many. Father Mercredi arranged it. The experience hardened me like hot steel plunged into cold water. Nothing could penetrate my tempered shell. The brothers and sisters with their black robes and dour complexions haunted the corridors and classrooms like phantoms. I felt no pain from the strap, now administered without compassion by powerful men. Calluses formed, covering my hands like leather gloves.

      The nuns, daytime visitors, arrived after breakfast to teach class. It was the priests who were responsible for our lessons which carried on into dark hours. Some made futile attempts to be friendly, others, clumsy overtures at some confused relationship. Eventually, they all chose to leave me alone. Only Father Mercredi persisted.

      In the cells on death-row all men hope for

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1