What once looked like a baby now spewed smoke, echoing a dreadful, strangled sound through the cramped alley. Radoslava walked, filthy, bruised, one hand on her swollen stomach, the other clutching the squirming, twitchy thing in her arms. The baby’s… Continue Reading
One night, my husband slammed my body against our bed. When I woke up the next morning, I found that he’d left cocaine on the coffee table, and the door opened for a backpage Craigslist prostitute. Hours later, I was… Continue Reading
The warder and the priest come before dawn to rouse me from shivering non-sleep. Heads shaved, barefoot, we are pushed from the gaol into the shadow of the cathedral. My fellow murderers are both men. The thin grey one rubs… Continue Reading
Posted on December 5, 2023 by Wife of Devoted Packer Fan / 3 Comments I’ve been making sugar cookies for my husband Bob since I was a seventeen-year-old blushing bride, pregnant with what would have been our first child. I… Continue Reading
Shelly loved Mama’s garden. It didn’t have as many pretty flowers as Gramma’s, but it also didn’t have so many thorns. Shelly hated thorns. Their vindictive little spikes would scrape her arms and legs whenever she tried to explore, patterning… Continue Reading
In her English class, Gillian was assigned an ode. She wrote to the jagged Zorro scar above her knee from the August night she taught Benny to surf in the rickety trailer camper their father towed. They’d been banished from… Continue Reading
Charlie’s never seen me burn lamb chops, but he’s grown outraged over less, and over nothing at all. “Budweiser!” he screams into the phone. “What do you mean I can’t cancel the dispatch? That’s my code word! … I don’t… Continue Reading
Andrew timed it perfect: he opened the front door just at the moment Mama’s thrown picture frame hit the wall right behind Daddy. Neither of them heard him leave. He learned early to get out unnoticed when he wasn’t the… Continue Reading
Alkina opens wide one eye against the cold steel of her late husband’s telescope and remembers on a clear night, less than three months ago, Mare Fecunditatis, appearing so close she would have sworn water lay there. That morning he’d… Continue Reading
The best part of setting fires is the beginning. Mama’s new shag carpet has tempted me for days. I lie down in the living room late one afternoon while Mama’s out, matches in hand. Janie smells it right away and… Continue Reading