Snarl

By: John Boden

Narrated by: Stacy Carolan

Marlin Stains is a lonely man who is filled with words. Words that he longs to share with the world, but so far only shares with himself. He has over 300 notebooks brimming with them in his trailer room. A wood-paneled tomb of prose and syllable.

Marlin Stains killed his brother in the womb, buried his father when he was a young man and now, a bit older, he watches the same monster devour his mother. While grappling with this, he experiences a combination of exchanges and events that point him on a new trajectory with an outcome that is both expected and anything but.

Marlin Stains has learned plenty in his thirty-two years: Love never dies, it just hides for a while and gets punchy. Death is never afraid and never gives a damn. Life is a thing that stretches, sometimes so far that you forget about it until it snaps back and hurts you. A snarl is an angry sound or a tangled trap—Marlin is familiar with both.

©2025 John Boden (P)2025 Dead Sky Publishing