It’s not especially shocking to find a teenaged narrator playing strip poker with his elderly babysitter in Paul Beckman’s latest flash fiction collection, Kiss Kiss. In fact, that kid is probably better off than the boy who finds his brothers waiting to kill the uncle who had been unfaithful to his wife for too long. In these page-length stories, you never know who will run into an old friend who needs help to grow a new pair of eyebrows and who will be captured by a motorcycle gang. There is an aging man who watches himself fall to pieces one body part at a time and there is also a young married couple who enjoy eavesdropping on gangsters making small talk in the next room. One character does try to catch a flight out of town but finds himself detained and water boarded by agents from the TSA. Fortunately for him, the whole thing is being broadcast for a television game show. There is little doubt that the baby sitter is watching the whole thing on her set back home, rooting for him to win the big prize. After finishing this 143-page collection, you might find yourself in the cheering section as well.
Kiss Kiss is available in paperback from Truth Serum Press: https://bequempublishing.com/authors/authors-a-b/paul-beckman/
Craig Fishbane is the author of On the Proper Role of Desire. His work has also appeared in New World Writing, the Manhattanville Review, Gravel, the New York Quarterly and The Nervous Breakdown. He can be reached at his website: https://craigfishbane.wordpress.com/