Snake Oil

By Alexandra Lyons Watt

Alexandra Lyons Watt's collection of short, short stories explores what can happen between people: young love gone sour; a discouraged pairing; a best friend's confession. Her lyrical, incisive prose about the wilds of Texas will leave you shocked and amazed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alexandra Lyons Watt
• Release date: Oct 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311474209

Alexandra Lyons Watt

Alexandra Watt was born in Los Angeles, California, and she surmises that’s the closest she’ll ever get to Hollywood success. She was raised in Houston, Texas, attending the same school for 14 formative years. Her first grade teacher once told her mother that Alexandra “had better be an author, because otherwise she is hopeless,” in reference to her unkempt cubby. Alexandra loved to read and write, especially murder mysteries that probably weren’t all that age appropriate. She is still learning boundaries. She chose to go to college at the University of Georgia (Go Dawgs) where she majored in magazine journalism and minored in sociology. Her work has appeared in Stillpoint literary magazine, ThoughtCatalog.com, and various music review websites. She has a blog called “Hippocritical,” in which she forces her opinion about pop culture upon people, whether they like it or not. Alexandra is now a social media coordinator at a digital marketing firm in Texas. She is perpetually working on fifteen things at one time, yet somehow manages to watch Arrested Development every night.

Book preview

Snake Oil.

Alexandra Lyons Watt

Copyright © 2014 by Alexandra Lyons Watt

All rights reserved

Cover image: © Lili Jamail

http://www.lilijamail.com/

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For you and yours.

Contents.

One Too.

Just West of Beaumont.

He, Like Me.

Eden Everlasted.

One Too.

They liked to drive. His car was large, a black beast that dwarfed him. His ribs, under thin skin, she could see his heart beat when he got excited. They drove through his neighborhood, with the pristine gold Christmas lights wrapped around tree trunks; past the strip malls and chain restaurants; on to the loop that encircled the entire city. It took forty-five minutes to drive the whole thing, less if he was speeding.


One day during lunch period they didn’t stop driving. Without words, they found themselves in a town one hundred miles away. There were dirt streets, slatted buildings outfitted with signs that boasted their world famous pralines, bluebonnets dotting scrap metal yards. The most prominent attraction was a miniature pony sanctuary run by nuns. Heads whirring with the stale pot they smoked, they could not stop laughing at the tiny animals – all little hooves, little noses, all trunk and no legs to hold them up. Freaks of nature, they thought. Horses were supposed to be hulking, dominant -- working animals! Beasts of burden! She thought of the Budweiser commercial and turned to tell him about