I’d been up on the high shelf for a month, luring gullible punters in for five quid a pop. We’d travel with different carnivals, into different villages, parks, run-down towns — but everywhere felt the same. Us big ones rarely… Continue Reading
No one could say when the town started coming apart. First the mill cut shifts. Then pay. Bread got a little higher every month until people stopped pretending not to notice. Jobs vanished quietly; older workers still kept showing up… Continue Reading
“Well… shit. I died,” I remember thinking. I totally wasn’t expecting it. Hit by a car. I also didn’t expect what came after. The answer to life’s ultimate mystery, except I still have some questions. First, I was shocked that… Continue Reading
Murph said it without thinking. “I don’t miss him.” The oven clicked. The coil glowed red. Heat filled the room, and she stood still in the center of the kitchen, a cold casserole dish in one hand and a dishrag… Continue Reading
My friend Julio wears many faces. He can be elusive, and sometimes disappears for months at a time. But I always find him in the end. We first met while working at a slowly failing startup. I was drawn to… Continue Reading
What happens. I drive to the store. Read in a coffeeshop. Pretend to work. The drama having subsided, the sad affair, the hero dies, a little heroically, the other left alone. How to end it. Had a small success. Child… Continue Reading
Two dark-haired girls with makeup to match, and look, they’ve found something. An oeil-de-boeuf at the gable admitted a circle of afternoon light that fell on nothing and illuminated even less, catching only the turn of dust motes. Mary pressed… Continue Reading
When a client I’ll call Fred first came to see me, he complained of feeling ugly, unimportant, and vastly underappreciated. He said that he’d once been a grand personage — exalted, even — but a dreadful event had transformed him… Continue Reading
I’m floating and untethered, adrift in a place I can only describe in loose terms. I perceive the world in colours now. Pale blues and greens and flecks of deep crimson. The reddish freckles in my vision are calibration markers.… 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