I knew about her in advance of course; the Hutchings Center had called before they released her to me for subsequent therapy. “Hyper-religiosity. No longer violent, but needs to talk more, and to a woman, I think,” the psychiatric nurse… Continue Reading
In the morning, Mrs. Anderson said: “We’re all just dustbins. You and I are no different from cobwebs or used paper plates. Everything inside us gets swept away by the wind eventually.” By afternoon, Principal Lopez was standing in the… Continue Reading
If I saw all my ex-boyfriends on the train, I would not be surprised. There’s a section called the Transbay Tube that most commuters take and it is crowded. Breathing in there can be difficult sometimes and nobody was free… Continue Reading
Singleton is a country town in New South Wales, with about sixteen thousand residents, but on a Monday lunchtime during the Covid lockdown not one of them was on the street. Amelia, lecturer in philosophy of history at Sydney University,… Continue Reading
She had been talking with the man on the balcony long enough that the beads of condensation on their wine glasses had evaporated. The man’s face reminded her of a beach, full of reddish freckles and seashell-white teeth. Even the… Continue Reading
In that dreary mid-March, mid-semester time, Larry found it hard to get up. Long after his wife, Cheryl, left the house for her student sewing circle and after his own alarm sounded, he lay awake. He listened to a dragging… Continue Reading
self-raising flour caster sugar mixed spice butter lard currant egg milk bread potatoes peas Bisto Delyth looks at the slanted writing, the looping gs, and the capitalized B for Bisto with its flourishes, making even this common-or-garden shopping list look… Continue Reading
He saw her reflection in the chipped mirror on the wall. She was standing, gazing out the window, her back stiff with anger. They had driven for an hour, through deeper and deeper stone-cold silence and unforgiving mutual accusations, the… Continue Reading
“Wow, that’s gorgeous. Where’d you get it?” Mariel asked Reno. “That new place on Main Street.” Mariel admired the tattoo and touched it lightly with her fingertips. His skin was cool to the touch, and the tri-color tat popped against… Continue Reading
I’ll always remember the way his car smelled, like stale Pall Malls and Vicks VapoRub. It was memories of court-ordered, every-other-weekend visits, chicken fingers and ice cream for dinner from the Dairy Queen, and peanut butter cups baked into the… Continue Reading