Synkroniciti is happy to welcome back Houston writer Neil Ellis Orts with an atmospheric piece of flash fiction, “Ancient Grains,” which we nominated for the Best Microfiction Anthology. A man walks through an urban landscape near a bayou at night, feeling the uneasy juxtaposition of modern human industry, preoccupied with light, with the sounds and sensations of the old prairie upon which these tall buildings stand. “He would have liked to quiet his eyes but there was so much disturbing the darkness.” Then the lights go out. Neil paints an eerie scene, his modern everyman as uncomfortable and disoriented in nature as he is in post-modern civilization.
Read “Ancient Grains” in Synkroniciti’s “Haunting” issue, Vol. 6, No. 4, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Neil Ellis Orts writes in Houston and is often haunted by all the concrete everywhere and the swamp and prairie that was here before it all. This is reflected in pieces recently published in websites like Metaworker, The Dewdrop, and forthcoming in Willows Wept Review.
In person, he’s very silly but his writing keeps coming out very serious. He accepts this as some sort of balance in his life. He would love it if you ordered his novella, Cary and John, available wherever you like to order books. Meanwhile, he’s working on a full-length play, Jacob’s People.