Melvin Fernsby buried his hands in his overcoat as he approached the one-room unit at the end of the cramped hallway. The thin carpet tried in vain to swallow noise from neighboring apartments: televisions squawking baseball games, infants crying, people… Continue Reading
Maddelynne Baird stopped at the junction as usual, waiting for the lights. An early evening moon, whiter than all the laundry and shining tiled bathrooms of her workday, lifted her mood from weary to pensive. “This is where I stand,”… Continue Reading
The sign above the door read, “The Pierotta sisters. Psychic readings. Achieve wealth, love, and happiness! Walk-ins welcome.” Archie wasn’t sure if he believed in psychics, but he was feeling desperate. He’d been demoted at work. His girlfriend Eliza was… Continue Reading
Madame Daphne rarely went out, but when she did, high-heels were nonnegotiable. She liked her shoes black, shiny, and pointy-nosed, as much as she liked her shawls to have fringes and the sprinkles of beads at the ends, and her… Continue Reading
Sir Percival Pettigrew saw things other men did not see until it was too late. “I should have named you Cassandra,” said Lady Pettigrew. “Pity you were male.” Only his mother understood him. Sadly, she died in a hunting accident,… Continue Reading
“Tell me how the world ends,” Ani says. Michael shakes his head. “Some things,” he says, “it’s better not to know.” They sit across from one another, at a table in the back of a dimly-lit bar. His hands are… Continue Reading
As a child, our son Timothy told his teachers he was adopted. During adolescence, he wailed in misery, certain that his best friends had moved away. By age twenty, Timothy’s grief sank into glum desolation, and he would lie on… Continue Reading
I glance at my programme: ‘Clairvoyance with Sheila Blackburn’ runs for fifty minutes. Some workshops are included in the ticket price — I arrived early and did Crystal Healing to pass the time — but this one cost another tenner.… Continue Reading
The morning milk was sour and Mom blamed me, sent me back to the liquor store to buy a fresh carton even though it wasn’t my fault it went sour. I said it was probably the little people and she… Continue Reading
Cora pushed her hair from her eyes and examined the eighteen-inch-high white neon letters, all capitals, floating dead center in the display windows; the left window, PSYCHIC, the right window, BARBER. Even though they seemed a matched set, Cora was… Continue Reading