“Don’t worry. This won’t hurt,” he says and grins at the old lady’s stony face. Sonny makes the Y-shaped incision from shoulder to shoulder and down to the pubic bone. Smooth as slicing warm butter. The layers of fat and… Continue Reading
I looked at the green glow of the clock. It was two-thirty in the morning. Someone was thumping on the back door. My husband was away on a week-long trucking haul. So it was just me and my two daughters… Continue Reading
There is no reality beyond the one which lies in that momentary form which we succeed in conferring upon ourselves, upon others, upon things -Luigi Pirandello As the remnants of your dream slip away, you wake up thinking about oranges—specifically… Continue Reading
It started on the third Tuesday after the funeral. I was slicing apples for my school lunch, and the dog, Ravi, sat by the door, watching. He always watched me, but that day, he did it differently. Not like a… Continue Reading
You are ten years old and a fly zips around you and you scream that it’s a bee. You cover your head and scream and scream until your mother swats the fly against the wall and it falls, dead. She… Continue Reading
Jim was thick as old-growth timber, and Camerin danced around something while he hung his work shirt in the mudroom. I had no faith he’d catch what she was trying to say. None. Jim had to meet the crummy at… Continue Reading
A long time ago there was a small town in a picturesque valley where they kept finding more and more coal. It started growing in the mid 1800s and people from all around the region moved there to work in… Continue Reading
I decided what to do with the doll. I’d leave it on a train. Any train would do. I picked the last one that night; the one heading to Greensborough. It would be almost empty. I’d put the doll on… Continue Reading
When I moved into the boarding house on Whitaker Street, I was told the room across the hall was empty. It wasn’t. Every night, I heard faint movement: drawers sliding, a chair scraping the floor, a cough. But every morning,… Continue Reading
I hadn’t been with anyone in three years. Maybe it was the smell. That persistent, sour rot in my breath that no doctor could fix. I tried mouthwash, gum, toothpaste with activated charcoal. Nothing worked. Only garlic helped. So I… Continue Reading