It’s Monday morning when Magda Doubinsky discovers all her chickens are dead. Slaughtered Every egg crushed too. A poultry genocide. Even from here I can see the bright red flecks on the snow. Not just near the ramshackle coop, but scattered the length and breadth of the front yard. Feathers too, although only the dark-coloured […]
A spinning top, a blur at first, then settling into a rapid, humming focus. Mom spoke a language that we gathered and pieced together, tested and retested until we got the desired results. Images lacked context, seemed to drift from us the longer we stared. There was an embedded familiarity within the walls of the […]
There have been three particularly severe summers in Bowers during my lifetime, the entirety of which I have lived in this small town, and while I shall write to some extent of all three, it is the first that concerns these papers most. I was a child at the time, of that age where I […]
Essex, 1647 In the shadows of dusk, Many-Shapes comes, through the woods and over the meadow, fleet to my devilish summoning. First, there’s a sound between the gnarled oaks, a pop of inrushing air, followed by the faint tang of sulphur. I sit in my frock with all the Patience for which I’ve been named, […]
Families moved into the underwater pods at staggered times, so we never met our neighbors. On the long car ride to the ocean, as the air became saltier and the types of trees changed outside the windows, it felt like a beach trip. In the trunk, in Dad’s cooler, ice sloshed around as it melted. […]
Devyn visits the Winchester Mystery House on a rainy day in San Jose. The house is a mess of architectural features, all spindlework and stickwork, red scalloped shingles, rooms jutting out everywhere—an asymmetrical madness. Despite this chaos, the house is beautiful, with yellow walls and so many windows. An enormous layer cake of a house, […]
The river brought the man, but Grace let him spend the deep night on the softly-ferned bank, refusing to budge from the tuff walls of the old granary to bring him in from the darkness. Hunger clawed at her belly. She had not been outside for two weeks. Morning light was slow to pierce the […]
Stacey comes home from school with a small wooden box. It has a hinged lid and is slightly smaller than a shoebox. It’s varnished and is quite dark in colour, but not black. The design is very simple and rustic. It’s the kind of box someone might make in a woodworking class, but Stacey’s only […]
Everything was under control, except the alarm system shouting for attention, the noise piercing into her headache, except the cracked glass of the windshield. Raíssa pushed aside the slowly deflating airbag, head spinning, and the radio continued its lulling song, stopping only when the broadcast announced the hour: it’s a quarter past two, and we […]
The dead woman was drawn to cars. She latched onto them like an unseen scrap-feeder on a marine giant, unsure why she was still here, earth-bound, in some form of consciousness. Cars offered exhilarating speed. Flight. A maybe if I keep moving whoever is supposed to notice me will not notice me and I can […]
