There’s a crowd. At least fifty people gathered in the car park outside St Werburgh’s Church. They’re all talking. Reminiscing. Like we’re at a wedding. Aunt Kate hugs Uncle Charlie. “Oh look how tall you are now,” he says to Carl, Kate’s son. He’s fourteen now, I think. Dad’s boasting to the distant family members […]
The first day of school was always a major event in Miss Agnes Smith’s calendar. This is a moment of renewal, a fresh start, as much for teachers like me as for the pupils, Miss Smith thought to herself, as she did each year at this time. The carefree days of summer were over, and […]
Miriam pressed a sweaty Diet Coke can to her cheek and shifted in the lawn chair. Her jaws popped and clicked as they clenched, her sore face muscles the victims of TMJ. The yellow glow of fireflies dotted the backyard, and she wished she was young enough to catch them in her hands, smoosh their […]
I can’t stand ghost hunters, though they mean well. Most of them. They certainly don’t do it for the money. I’m no expert in the subject, but I listen to them sometimes, as they sit in dark rooms with their bowls of water and electronic doodads. They whisper about how they’re going to make rent, […]
I found this growth on my dick. How long it had been there, I didn’t know. It was too horrible to think about and it was all I could think about. Earlier that day I’d been at the library, scrolling through hundreds of images online, comparing them to the picture I’d taken with Emma’s camera. […]
1 Rex had pleasant dreams most nights, though he didn’t sleep much. He thought maybe it had something to do with the smells coming in from under the door, cinnamon, vanilla, sugar. The sparse apartment where he spent his days got good light in the morning, okay light in the afternoon which was nice […]
Bill waited for his brother, Richard, on the curb outside the Summer Sky Recovery Center in North Pole, a thirty minute drive from Bill’s house in Fairbanks. His coat collar covered his cheeks and the bottom half of his frostbitten ears. He smoked a Viceroy. He was done with drying out. He hadn’t had a […]
I knew a man, Mr. Marco Marsden, who lost his hand in a slaughterhouse. The story was different every time I heard it, but the version Mr. Marsden was most fond of was this: he was cutting up meat for market one day when he lost focus—he said that he was suddenly overcome with sympathy […]
How long can it possibly take a supposedly motivated shop-rat to cash a paycheck, minus the $5 fee, knock back just one draft, as he promised, then buy six for the road? For the umpteenth time, Hector Fritch consults his wristwatch in the dashboard lights. And now a cold, early April rain has begun to […]
It starts in Canyon Creek Hospital, where, on Sunday mornings, he waits for his mother to die. She rasps my name as I come to stand behind him. But all I hear is beep, beep, beep: a funeral march for velocity. Each week there is a little less of her, another inch of bone […]
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