On Monday Grant experienced another episode of vertigo. This one lasted much longer than the rest. The whole world was spinning, a top that increasingly wobbled as the whirling went on for several minutes. This time closing his eyes didn’t help. He struggled to get into his reading chair without falling over. As it had […]
That new moon night, Elena ran toward the door of the house and grabbed her grandmother Carmen’s hand. Her fingers sank into a soft layer of loose skin. She could feel the old woman’s tendons and bones shifting with an almost rigid quality. She did not let go even though the woman gave a small […]
For joy I could embrace the earth. I shall delight to be buried in it. —Henry David Thoreau “I wish to discuss matters of the heart,” Calvin Greene said. Ellery Channing winced. So this was what it was all about. This after Greene had produced his copy of Channing’s Thoreau: The Poet-Naturalist, lauded Channing’s decision […]
That was a long summer—you know the sort: a heatwave we thought would never end, days we thought would never end. After the brouhaha died down, I swore myself to silence. I was eleven years old. It was a few months after my grandmother had died, and later I would understand it as the year […]
Ruth thought she no longer measured her life in weeks or months, but in bin collections and laundry. Her days and nights were punctuated by bouts of washing up and differentiated by what type of vegetable peel was blocking the plughole, in the way they used to be punctuated by dancing and drinking and art […]
Bisma couldn’t bring herself to follow Mama out of the midday sun and into the stranger’s house. Bisma knew she’d have to—in the end she always did as Mama said. Of course she hadn’t asked any questions when Mama ordered her to pick up their cleaning equipment and follow her to the house at the […]
When the first box arrives, you don’t think much of it. Nondescript black, sealed with a glossy logo sticker. Dark Deeds: Midnight Reads for Horror Fans. You set it aside to deal with later. After all, surgeons are busy people. Your practice has been thriving. You don’t have time to look up what to read—that’s […]
Paula lives in the cul-de-sac. She likes it there. The smooth curvature that dead ends into the split-level Gary bought for them back when it was enough to work at the drugstore. When the paycheck stretched far enough to pay the mortgage and keep food on the table and clothes on two kids’ backs. A […]
Most everyone has heard the Ben Franklin saying that death and taxes are the only constants in life. But there’s one more. I call it the Law of the Door. If someone tells you not to open a door, you absolutely will anyway, especially if you’re thousands of dollars deep in credit card debt and […]
Alejandro clung tightly to his mother’s dress when he saw the gravedigger take the first nail out of the bag. It was large, a palm long, rusty. The man gripped the hammer and settled into the bottom of the grave pit. Alejandro’s father lay directly on the earth. He had a sunken part of his […]
