You Know My Name

“RRM juxtaposes the mundane and the horrific, creating conflict and tension effortlessly.”
–Tom Adams

30 stories and novelettes by Ralph Robert Moore.

When you're trapped by a blizzard in a deserted fort in the far north, what happens next when bugs with large eyes start climbing up the walls, and across the ceiling? If a young woman tells you she's a witch, should you really let her go inside your backyard chicken coop? What is digging tunnels under your grass, all of them headed towards your house? If a pack of dogs each have six legs, should you be concerned when they start following you? If after falling into the ocean out in the middle of nowhere you're rescued by a ship captained by a man who constantly wears a hood over his head, should you be worried?

Your wife invites a co-worker she may be cheating on you with, and each slice you make into the turkey breast reveals more and more small bones within the white meat. The woman you met at a bar can only flirt with you by passing you notes, because her tongue has been cut out. A distinguished plastic surgeon has had so many facelifts on his own face his face starts to slide on the underlying bones. The men's room you step into has no toilets, just wide pipes with open tops sticking up in the air. The monkey you and your wife coax down from your roof really likes chocolate ice cream.

Why don't more people take out life insurance policies on high school children, since so many of them are likely to die fairly soon from car crashes or suicide? Is it difficult living with a woman who doesn't have a head? Why is the window-washer outside your office window exposing his genitals to you? What lives in the crevices formed by earthquakes? Can you be friends with a neighbor who's had his human teeth replaced with canine teeth?

You're having breakfast at the local diner when everyone in town starts lifting up into the sky. You and your family are stuck in traffic in Las Vegas when a man on the sidewalk starts taunting you. Your only chance to stop being homeless is to agree to be dropped by helicopter in the middle of a large field, and use the sponsor's lawnmower to mow a path to the sidewalk within so many minutes. You're studying to get your real estate license, but the red-haired boy in your backyard keeps trying to lure your challenged son outside. You're confident you can settle a dispute between your boyfriend, a respected chef, and a children's birthday party clown.

What do you do when your new job, out in the middle of nowhere, taking groups on tour, is interrupted by a lion? If the ground starts falling away from you and your girlfriend and her little sister, the dead down in the bottom of the ever-expanding trench following you, what's the best strategy? When your rowboat is attacked by fish, is the best decision to swim to the shore? What are the consequences when a wide sheet of glass starts sailing in the air down a busy city street? When a cat's head appears in your backyard, is it wise to follow its suggestions?

You want to stop all these endless relocations, but if you do, you know what will be waiting for you when you walk through the glass door with your bag of burgers and fries out into the McDonald's parking lot. Your life is such a mess you don't even notice the people hiding behind furniture in your home. The only way to not again spend time in jail is agreeing to be locked in a cage in an abandoned zoo. You made one assumption and it was wrong, then another assumption and that was also wrong, and now, naked, you're being chased by a chainsaw. Sometimes, a person just drowns—or doesn't.