Milkman Novels & Stories

I only had a year to find my answers, no distractions was a good way to start. "Venus, honey, are you ready?" My mom called me from the kitchen, as I opened my bedroom door. "Yes, mom be right there." I called back. Walking towards the kitchen, I was singing Famous Last Words out loud. "I am not afraid to keep on living, I am not afraid to walk this world alone, honey if you stay I'll be forgiven, Nothing you can say can stop me going home. Can you see my eyes are shining bright? Cause I'm out here on the other side of a jet black hotel mirror and I'm so weak..."

he inquired Mama Sarah's opinion. She reclined on her chair, “tell him thank you, and also inform him my support cannot be bought” she replied the man, his face turned gloomy, and he shot Mama Sarah a glare, “you should be grateful that someone of my great personality portfolio came to visit this slum, just to get your support, we have given you enough face, don't let us be decisive with this matter” he warned Mama Sarah. Mama Sarah wasn't moved by the threat at all, she relaxed on the chair, and flexed her bones “what is your name?” he asked the man, who readily provided his name “I am Mr. Stones” he introduced himself.

It was adding another charm to his inevitable personality, that was screaming, I’m the boss here. Then my eyes travelled down to his jawline and as I said earlier, it was sharp. As the red-coloured lighting of the club hit on his face it made him the most fatal man walking alive on the earth. His eyes were still on the man who was making me jump out of my skin and I noted how that man must be shrieking inside in front of that more than six feet tall giant. “You better leave.” His voice was dangerously thick but sweet deep like honey that would melt any girl’s heart. Not mine though. I was born differently. I was immune to the charms of any man who wanted to get in my pants.

It swallowed her whole and she looked more of a small child than a woman. The glass door, now cracked opened and I looked up to see an old man coming out with a gun in his hand. “Come inside, Mila.” He looked at me hard and I got the sense that he knew who I was. He opened his mouth as if about to say something to me but before he could Mila turned to me and said, “I am fine now, you can go.”

The man said as he put out his hand to Micha. “Yes, sir.” Micha said. “please just Micha and Sophia.” “Well, come this way.” The man said, and he started to talk to Micha, who smiled at the older man. “Sir, you have to sell the animals to my wife more than me. I grew up on a cattle ranch out in the Midwest. She is the one who grew up on one out here. She is the one who knows all there is to know about the animals out here that thrive. She is the boss of our farm.” Micha said.

My gaze was fixed on the scrawny man, his short dyed black hair to blonde threatening my breakfast. He took out his notepad and jotted down what I had just said. "There isn't anything to write. We are done here. Get out!" "So you are saying you have amnesia? Then why are you always cold, harsh and brutal when you don't even remember your past? Why are you always intimidating? Why are you on demand on every police checklist, them desperately wanting you to join their force? How is it possible..." I pressed the cigarette butt that had been burning between my fingers on the ashtray and stood up as the man continued bombarding me with all the questions he could think of. Gawd! Where did I stash

—Sobhi Rizk, Truck Driver Sobhi Rizk sat in the dark house, his pale, frightening face like a shadow of the past, floating on an old wooden chair he wore. In one hand, he held a lit cigarette; in the other, a glass of liquor, grasping the faint glow of the flame, the drops glistening like silent tears. He whispered, his voice barely a whisper, almost fading away:

The warehouse smelled of rust, mold, and damp wood. Dust floated in thin shafts of light breaking through cracked windows, motes dancing like ghosts over forgotten crates. Rico sat hunched in the corner, his back against the cold wall, his knees drawn close. His lips were dry, his stomach twisted with hunger, and every swallow felt like sand scraping his throat. He had been in this place too long—long enough for silence to become deafening, long enough for his body to remind him of what it meant to be human.

None did. A man who mended lamps took a chair halfway to the edge and spoke two names as if they were secret passwords he had finally decided to share with everyone. He said where he had left the bread that last morning and where the bread had gone hard and why he had kept that hardness as proof the city owed him a softness. A girl from the laundry said nothing, only set down a cloth with a name stitched in small thread. Minta read from her lists—wages paid with stew on months when money took the ferry and forgot to come back.

“That’s the thing, isn’t it? You never see it coming. You think you’re just trading labor for cash. Muscle for money. But she… she wasn’t buying a deck. She was buying you. And you let her. Hell, you fucking sold yourself.” He stops at the window, looking out at the anonymous, dark windows of other apartments. His reflection is pale and vague in the glass. “That drive-in woman… I get that. We all have one. Some ghost that taught us what wanting feels like. Some older woman who looked at you and saw a possibility you didn’t even know you were. She lives in your head, rent-free, a blueprint for every itch you can’t scratch.” He turns from the window, his eyes landing on the journal.