Cameron Brio

Poems. Short Stories. Curated. Quiet.

Nothing

In the rain-slicked streets of 1980s Seattle, a law school dropout driving a taxi finds himself caught between the high-society elegance of the Opera House and a brutal domestic betrayal that costs him more than just his pride.

"...her movements practiced and swift, tucking it back into the medicine cabinet where it supposedly lived. It was the new one. The one we hadn't used in weeks.

"You took your diaphragm to visit Abby?"

My voice sounded like it belonged to someone else—thin, reedy,.."

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The Discord of 5th and Spring

A haunting, atmospheric piece of "semi-autobiographical" fiction. It captures a specific era of Seattle—the transition from the gritty, analog 80s to the sterile, high-tech 90s—and the universal ache of the "Salieri complex."

A tribute to the "semi-educated" and the dreamers lurking in the late-night diners of Seattle. The Discord of 5th and Spring is a story about the "hardware" of the soul trying to keep up with the software of the future. It’s for anyone who ever had the blueprints for a cathedral but spent their life driving the taxi that hauled the stone.

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The Invisible Thorns

A gritty, 1980s Seattle noir story. A taxi driver navigates the high-stakes "miracles" of the road and the quiet reckoning of a life lived as a gamble.

"Most people think I'm just a driver. They don't realize I see the 'divine gift' every night. I just don't know how to own it without turning it into a game." In the rain-slicked streets of 1980s Seattle, a law school dropout finds himself trapped in the role of his own life. Inspired by the high-voltage intensity of James Caan and fuelled by the adrenaline of a manufactured crisis, he navigates a world of "lost" key chains and dangerous lane changes."

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The Boondocks Buy-Back

A midnight run into the Boondocks, where the house doesn’t just win—it survives.

Yellow Cab driver with a monkey on his back picks up a long-haul fare from Seattle’s Skid Row and ends up at a tribal casino where the clocks don't tick and the house always sharpens its knives. In the 'Boondocks,' winning isn't about the chips on the table—it’s about making it back to the city limits in one piece. A visceral look at the 'Rush,' the social hierarchy of the gambling floor, and the high cost of a clean getaway.

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A Beautiful Fight

Set against the rain-slicked backdrop of 1980s Seattle, the story follows a law school dropout turned taxi driver who is caught between two worlds: the disciplined, philosophical teachings of his police-officer cousin and the chaotic, predatory reality of the city streets.

When a "luminous" afternoon at a North Gate pool party is shattered by an ambush, the narrator is forced to test his cousin’s core tenet: “Don’t feel, don’t think, and most importantly, don’t try to win.” It is a story about the "civilian gap," the "swarm move" of the Sun Tzu Crew, and the devastating realization that the most important part of a fight is the resilience found in its aftermath.

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The Ghost of Number 15

A cautionary tale on the thin line between luck and delusion.

"I was back at the Roulette table, playing a quiet, disciplined game almost by myself. The air was a thick cocktail of cheap cleaning products and expensive perfume. I sat watching what I call the "Peacocks." These players would swoop in, fanning hundreds—sometimes thousands—of dollars in multi-colored chips across the layout in a vibrant display. They cover almost everything, convinced they can trap luck by sheer volume. Then the ball drops, finding the single number left bare. Their plumage vanishes..."

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Incomplete Accuracy

A rich, atmospheric story that blends 1980s Seattle noir with legal philosophy and cinematic observation.

In 1985 Seattle, the line between a "white lie" and "incomplete accuracy" is as thin as a taxi’s faded paint. The narrator is a law school dropout who has traded his casebooks for a yellow cab and a front-row seat to the city's quietest dramas. Parked like a "yellow elephant" outside the Spring Hotel, he survives by perfecting the art of being invisible—until the ghosts of his legal past begin to pull him back in. Through a series of vivid recollections—from the manipulative "pantomime" of a terrifying public defender known as Guillotine to a hushed Northgate tavern that serves as a sanctuary—the story explores the theatricality of the American justice system...

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The Offramp Blues

In the neon-damp streets of 1985 Seattle, a cab driver discovers that the only way to see the music is to strip the reason away from everything.

He drove the night shift to find the order in the chaos, only to realize that every cage has a song of its own.

He calls his cab an 'exoneration box'—a vehicle for creating doubt, a sanctuary for the invisible. But after a split-second accident on a rainy Sand Point road, the driver of the night shift finds he can no longer hide behind his steering wheel. As the 'burning' sensation of a new, wordless composition takes hold of his hands, he finds himself caught in a high-stakes game of shadows with a predatory recruiter and a desperate trio of strangers...

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The Invisible Hand On The Wheel

Atmospheric and hauntingly philosophical, this is a story of failure, grace, and the small, magical moments of equity found in the glow of a massive cell phone and the silence of the Puget Sound.

Seattle, 1984. The city is on the brink of a boom, but for a third-year law school dropout, the world has narrowed to the view from the driver’s seat of a yellow cab. To the recruiters downtown, he is a mystery; to the lifers at the cab lot, he is an anomaly. Navigating the rain-slicked streets, he lives by the "Invisible Hand" of fate—a theory that seems to have pushed him exactly where he never intended to be. From the neon-lit desperation of a hotel disco to the high-stakes "personals" of the night shift, he is a man caught between the intellectual world he left behind and the raw ...

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Audacity and Denial

The mustard-yellow Chevy Impala without a divider serves as a confessional. Without the physical barrier, the scent of Aramis and the weight of the businessmen’s words are inescapable, forcing an intimacy that leads to the climactic confrontation.

In the heat of a record-breaking Seattle summer, a law school dropout turned cab driver finds himself navigating more than just the winding roads of the Arboretum. When two high-powered businessmen enter his mustard-yellow Chevy Impala, their arrogant dissection of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War triggers a dormant intellectual fire in the driver. What follows is a high-stakes verbal sparring match that challenges the ethics of corporate "deception" and the emptiness of living on "other people's equipment." Audacity and Denial is a reflective look at the friction between the grit of the streets and the cold calculations of the boardroom.

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License to Observe

At its core, this is a story of intellectual alienation and redemption. The protagonist lives in a liminal space: he has the pedigree of the "Yuppie" world but chooses the blue-collar life of the cab lot. He views life through a lens of risk management and philosophical inquiry—citing everything from Marcus Aurelius to Georgia O’Keeffe—while his companions, the "wrecking crew," are fueled by audacity, denial, and debt. The narrative reaches its peak during the "Desert Stretch," a sixty-mile gauntlet of Nevada highway that serves as a metaphor for the characters' internal states. While the protagonist uses logic and reflective models to survive, his companions' recklessness leads to a violent mechanical explosion. The story concludes not with a jackpot win, but with a quiet act of grace, as the protagonist chooses to preserve the dignity of his flawed peers over the cold logic of abandoning them.

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