Your medicine cabinet is spotless, curated. Candy-colored dropper vials, squat pearlescent tubs, and crystalline perfumes all lined up like a miniature, glittering skyline. You’ve turned them inward — shyly, discreetly — so I can’t read the labels. You’re daring me… Continue Reading
Emma Monroe’s phone rang. Eighty years old, a former professor of philosophy, she liked to believe she hadn’t lost any of her sharpness over time. She answered the phone before the second ring, noting that she didn’t recognize the caller… Continue Reading
Martin takes his daughter, Stella, to the clearing behind their cottage. She’s young for an eclipse viewing but he hopes she’ll at least retain a shared memory of absolute darkness in the daylight, then light again. He holds her hand… Continue Reading
The small soggy furry lump had lodged itself firmly in the crack between tiles. Shannon stood silently watching over it. She had recently been watching a lot of spaghetti westerns and had been struck with the idea of becoming a… Continue Reading
“It’s a little early, even for you.” Susan’s right. Even for me. I smile sheepishly. “It’s Friday.” I don’t tell her it’s my second. I don’t tell her why. I don’t tell her about you. “It’s always Friday with you,… Continue Reading
Bob Wanstead walked around the black engine, pausing for a moment to pat one of the big driver wheels, something he’d done before every trip since he started on the line forty-four years before. It left a film of coal… Continue Reading
Ever since I was little, I knew the crown came with sacrifice. Even so, in the spring I turned eighteen, I met a girl in our court who loved Lady Guinevere as much as I did. My sweet Primavera. Like… Continue Reading
I’m hanging with the roadies in the wings when James gets in my face. “What are you doing here? You’re on in 20 minutes,” he hisses. He must have been scared I’d skipped out or passed out. “Just catching the… Continue Reading
I am not sure how long I have been dead. Perhaps a month. A year. Or maybe even a few days. I can’t tell. My brain has been fuzzy lately. However, I do recognize my home. I am in my… Continue Reading
Of course, they didn’t call it The Swedish Death Cleaning Act. “Death” wasn’t going to get any votes. But when they switched in “Patriotic” and “American,” Tada! The “Patriotic Environmental American Cleaning Enactment” passed with a bipartisan majority. Belongings were… Continue Reading