Mitchell Waldman's Blog: New Writing/Reviews - Posts Tagged "holocaust"

http://www.bewilderingstories.com/iss...

Read my new story "Auschwitz Dreams" at Bewildering Stories.

Thanks.

Thanks to Eric Evans and The Bond Street Review for publishing my poems "Hello?" and "Father" this week in their Summer 2021 issue.
The link to download the issue: https://07beb0ba-6587-4c54-9285-12721...

Brothers, Fathers, and Other Strangers, the new story collection from Mitchell Waldman is now available on Amazon!

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/195...

The book includes a series of stories about the members of a melded family headed by two parents who married after the death of one’s spouse and the other’s bitter divorce from her husband. These stories include examinations of the relationships in the family of stepbrothers from small children to adulthood, and their relationships with their stepparents and their natural parents, as well as the relationship of two adult blood brothers who haven’t seen each other in years, but are reunited at the death bed of their estranged father.

Also included is a series of stories about Hitler. These stories investigate Adolf in his garden, question what might have happened if he had emigated to the States before..., or if, after...he were confronted after escaping his bunker to a South American jungle. And what would happen if a man (a Jewish dentist, no less) started seeing images and hearing voices addressed to him as if he were the very reincarnation of the monster himself?

And there are stories about people in work environments, the people you work with. In a series of stories about work and its effects on individuals, you may begin to wonder if really know your fellow workers like you thought you did. What are their secret stories, what effect does the corporate atmosphere have on them and their personal lives both in their working days and when their working days are suddenly ended?

You'll also find stories regarding how a moment suspended in time can change one’s life forever. And stories of people living lives of desperation and those desperately seeking better lives, looking for answers for what has happened to get them where they are.

In all there are 40 stories and flash fiction pieces in this collection, many of which have been published in literary magazines, such as Short Story Town,The MacGuffin, Down in the Dirt, Five Fishes Journal, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Random Sample, The Waterhouse Review, The Piker Press, Crack the Spine, Milk Sugar, Kairos Literary Magazine, Corvus Review, Ginosko Literary Journal, Greensilk Journal, Fictive Dream, Litsnack, Spelk, Literally Stories, The Flash Fiction Press, The Fear of Monkeys, Crack the Spine, Baby Lawn Literature, Euonia Review, Writing Raw, The Legendary, Fiction on the Web, Furtive Dalliance, and Scarlet Leaf Review.

Thanks to Phil Slattery and The Chamber Magazine for publishing my short story "The Monster Inside," https://thechambermagazine.com/.../th... which is also included in my new story collection, BROTHERS, FATHERS, AND OTHER STRANGERS.

Beginning of the story "The Monster Inside":

Sidney Hellman doesn't remember who he was the last time around, if there was a last time. But how can he? None of us do.

Still, there are clues.

For instance, he starts seeing things. Images of events from another life. Terrible images.

He'll be riding the elevated train to his office in the city, reading the paper, the windows of the old apartment buildings -- some with the blurred faces and lives of their occupants -- whizzing by, and this image will flash in his head for a second or two: piles of gaunt, decaying bodies with flies swarming around them and a voice going with it, saying "Excellent work, Field Marshal, excellent work.” He doesn't see the face. Only hears the voice. And sees the brawny, pasty-faced Nazi soldier snapping his boots together and thrusting his arm forward, to the sky, in the standard Nazi salute, "Danke, Mein Fuhrer."

Or throngs cheering, clapping, waving Nazi flags, as a deep guttural German voice speaks on and on, louder and louder. The funny thing is, he doesn't understand the language, doesn't even know what the words mean.

These flashes come at odd moments, totally without warning. Dozing in his chair, watching television, he'll be brought terrifyingly back to wakefulness by a fat German face and voice, "Mein Fuhrer!," or taking a walk with his dog, Arnold, down the street, it will sound like voices talking to him, or he'll see the black smoking chimney stacks, even smell the sickly sweet smell of its output for a moment, only a second. Then, silence again, the odor gone, the visions vanished, as he's back following Arnold, who sniffs a tree, paws the grass, searches for a place to do his business, the sun in orangish glow setting on the horizon, a sudden breeze cooling the sweat that has started trickling down his face, and the cars on the boulevard swish by in anonymity.

What is happening to me?, Sidney wonders, wiping the perspiration off his forehead. Is this a nervous breakdown? What did I do to deserve this?

He's a Jew, a Jewish dentist. He's had some problems (but who hasn't!), some problems with his finances lately, namely the IRS, threatening to freeze his bank account for back taxes which he doesn’t think he owes, but hasn’t done anything about. And he has two grown sons who won’t even talk to him. Except when they need money. A lot of stress on him, a lot of pressure lately. He tends to like the scotch a little too much, and sometimes the horses. But, he's fairly happy, has a fairly good life, a good marriage, a good business. He's never committed a crime, has been an honest guy for the most part, would never screw someone over just for the hell of it, not like some of the other guys he knows. He's a dentist, for God's sakes, how much harm can he do? Break a tooth? Screw up a root canal? (Okay, guilty!) He devotes his life to helping other people.

So what is this all about? Is he cracking up? Where are these strange images and sounds coming from? And why now, out of the blue, after forty-nine years of life? Or are they waking nightmares from old remembrances, stories told by his relatives of those awful days when so many of his relatives, ancestors perished in that darkest of dark wars? But why, he wonders, why does he seem to get these images in this particular way, from this particular viewpoint?
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