Abel’s blood cast a blight upon the land. After he buried his brother, Cain could wrest from the soil nothing but beets. All that he planted — wheat, barley, even grapes — came up beets that stained his hands and… Continue Reading
It wasn’t Spring. The temperature fluctuated from one day to the next, teasing us with sunshine and warm weather, and the next day, temps plummeted and froze again. The cherry tree, azaleas, and buttercup blossoms turned brown and withered. One… Continue Reading
I like simple stories. Heroes who are always heroic. Villains who stay villains. People aren’t that way. You can be with people for decades; think you know them and then suddenly find out what you thought you saw wasn’t there.… Continue Reading
It’s time to divide and transplant the winter-dormant residents of Bellamy’s garden. The shovel and she work as one: slice and step and scoop. Gloves on, hair back. Low sun slants across the sleeping plants. A fern over there will… Continue Reading
“Pimple?” he asked. “Um, yeah.” Her fingers lowered from where she had been idly pinching the pressure point on her chin. “I guess all this sunscreen doesn’t agree with my skin.” Maia ground her teeth and shaded her eyes, gazing… Continue Reading
Joe thought we should dress up as the Holy Family for a Christmas card. “Since nobody knows who Eli’s dad is.” That kept him in the doghouse well into January. I don’t know why Mom got so bent up about… Continue Reading
I press A7 on the vending machine — it shudders as my Mountain Dew gets stuck in the contraption, grunts like an old man coming in his sock. Its LED lights flicker as I kick the damn thing one, two,… Continue Reading
He was full of the blarney, this one. The nuns had taught us how to fend off the amorous advances of boys but they hadn’t really told us how to cope with our own desires. Maybe they thought we didn’t… Continue Reading
Big Sassy had a knack for breaking two things — balls (not the bouncy kind) and hearts. I’d been stationed at Lunar-Oho on mining duty when I first cast eyes upon her magnificence. Hair caked in grease, a pot-belly that… Continue Reading
I am sitting here watching the news, numbed by the endless repetition of details, each time with just a little more added to the picture. The man standing there with a phone in his right hand and a raised arm… Continue Reading