A lone firefighter walked through the deserted street. He saw the playground where he’d run as a boy, and watched for a moment as the swings, faded but intact, swayed in the autumn wind. A yellowed piece of paper blew… Continue Reading
It started with the chicken. Soon after came the rabbit, the pig, the goat, another chicken, another pig, two baby lambs — whom I would rock to sleep after feeding, one cradled in the crook of each arm as though… Continue Reading
At breakfast with his father, who had been dead fifteen years, Barden Bernick noticed his own heart had stopped beating. When he first recognized his father in the maple colonial captain’s chair he’d occupied during informal family meals, Barden checked… Continue Reading
I am typing quickly now, feeling better about the direction this story seems to be going. I take the last sip from my coffee and contemplate getting up to get more. I look around and calculate the odds of someone… Continue Reading
They appeared in the night. On Friday the world went to sleep. On Saturday morning they appeared. Billions of them. As many as there are people. It’s on the news, it’s in the papers, on the radio and on-line. Everywhere.… Continue Reading
I burned your name in blue fire and released it to the wind. The wind twirled it around the lemon trees in the yard, swirled it around the bougainvillea draped over the brick fence and carefully carried it out. I… Continue Reading
Everyone in the village thought it was ridiculous, the way Laurent was pretending not to notice the bear that had become attached to his coattails. To be fair, it was a reasonably subtle bear, as bears go. It didn’t grunt… Continue Reading
“You don’t have to do this!” Joe grabbed Mara’s hand as she reached for the doorbell at number 81. “This is not you!” An odor of damp emanated from the stone facade. “This was your idea,” Mara pushed Joe away… Continue Reading
“Hey, I think we broke something,” he said, shaking me awake. Ann’s dad always looks like the snapshot she’d had of him, taken on the Burma Road: bare-chested, center-parted hair, broad smile, burly. The clock said 2:45. Ann’s side of… Continue Reading
Feed me the sun, said Grandma, so I can get warm again. I woke up crying, my hands still curved from pressing Grandma’s cold, soft, swollen feet in my dream. Outside it was gray and damp but without the relief… Continue Reading