“Do you know what sleep means?” joked Jamie. “It’s a combination of be and quiet.” He was bothered again, like a torn-up telegram. Alicia rolled her eyes. Jamie’s anger may have been mislaid, but it was Sunday night and someone up the street had fired a gun. Frightened him. Two or three times a month […]
The drive started out pleasantly. When I left Pittsburgh, I didn’t really know where I was going. I dropped my sister off at the airport, taking her all the way to the gate, because she’s only seventeen and the airport will allow clingy guardians like myself to get a gate pass, if they show their […]
Anya screams from the attic and I know at once she has found the crocodile. I remain by the living room window. It’s March and outside, the Yorkshire Dales are a faded khaki after winter. The fields surrounding my childhood home in Brazil never seemed to change hue. Between harvests, the air shimmered over plants […]
It starts as these things always do with the first one. You don’t notice it at first. It is just there waiting to be seen. A dead wasp in a shop window it’s never really remarked upon. It is just there. When the second one and then the third one appears, people begin to notice. […]
The Lost Body My body is missing. I woke up one morning and I was there, but my body wasn’t. There was no body. My body had disappeared. Have you seen it? My body? It’s missing. My body is missing so I want to ask the strangers on the street if they have seen it. […]
Without my knowledge, my body made the decision that I can only cry once, maybe twice a year. I try to look back and nail down when this order was signed into effect to no avail. One day, it all just stopped. But if I had to guess, I would say I came to notice […]
It was when Dad parked the car in front of Food & More that we started paying attention. “I know about her, Richard. I’ve seen the photos,” Mom said it loudly and threw her seat belt off. Once she was out of the car, she slammed the door. Patty, James, and I looked at each […]
The First Miracle: Parasol Mushrooms Albert’s father would have turned ninety in December, but it was clear now that he had no chances to celebrate his long awaited jubilee. The old man’s congestive pneumonia had started six months before as shortness of breath. Later it had been mistaken for asthma symptoms, and only when his […]
John had never been what you would call a runner. The odd run, or visit to the gym, to blow out the cobwebs when he came to feel particularly sedentary, peppered his life since his late teens. Downloading a running app onto his phone one morning he was surprised to find the login details pre-populated. […]
Each night I lie awake awaiting Fontano’s big monologue, a set piece bed beneath me, eyes closed against the gaze of stage lights high above. I keep still and silent, waiting for the man I love to stumble into our room, cursing as he knocks the floor lamp over. He’ll stand beside the bed and […]
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