Marya stared at the whitish-yellow coffee beans in front of her, shoulders hunched. “Try again,” Dad snapped. Marya bit the inside of her lip. She was trying, but her coffee beans stayed stubbornly un-fermented. She’d never be a proper coffee… Continue Reading
Finish up your chicken, child; those potatoes and green beans. Seventh-Hour Man will get’cha if your supper plate’s not clean. — A childhood cautionary The Canuck Territories | 1 September 1905 Charlie Haggard always felt more alive after a wedding,… Continue Reading
Kelsey draws an invisible line on the kitchen floor, all the way around so that when she straightens, she stands in an imaginary circle. “There,” she says to Kyle, “That’s my line in the sand. Don’t cross it.” Kyle crosses… Continue Reading
The tree was old, but not as old as the soldier lying at its roots. When the Armies of the Cumberland and Tennessee slaughtered each other in the forest by the river, the tree was only a sky-blue berry. Trampled… Continue Reading
You swing that sword around because it’s the only thing you know how to do. Because when the rain comes down at night, clinging to it is the only thing that yields any solace. You don’t know how you would’ve… Continue Reading
Dad points with his sword he won’t let me touch. “See those rocks in the river, Roy?” The boulders sit in the middle of the kingdom’s river. “The slimy grime balls.” Dad peers at my hair that resembles a buffalo’s… Continue Reading
The damn wind, it never stops. Nor the heat. A dust devil skips across the parking lot as a lone boy wanders around the back of the café, between the cars — some parked, others abandoned — calling for his… Continue Reading
A breathy voice swept through Hazel’s mind like the glimpse of a memory: This is your last day. She gazed out from her square view of the world, mind muddled from a combination of medication, insomnia, and disease. Her cloudy,… Continue Reading
The snow was cold under her bare feet, but her notice of it was cursory, lacking any real emotional response. She could only really attend to one thing at a time and right now, that one thing was her aching… Continue Reading
During the darkest days of the Troll War, the local militia captain dynamited the bridge spanning the Oterfjorden. Her plan proved a strategic success, disrupting the enemy’s supply lines and shortening the war by six months. *** With permits, environmental… Continue Reading