“Darn Billy. Told him to stop sending me things,” I said to no one but myself, and the package that I eyed critically. The package sat on my front porch, strapped to the gills with packing tape. The box itself was about three feet wide …
When the earth was youthful a wood grew upon it, and beside that wood a village was built. In the wood there lived the Horned Owl and in the village there lived a young woman named River. This story is theirs, and begins in late …
Once she got home, she climbed into the wardrobe. Closing the door behind her so that no light could reach in, she settled down on her side upon the wooden shelf, usually saved for shoes but now empty. They’d bought a new shoe-rack a …
A cold Sunday in November. Snowflakes drop from the gray sky and swirl about. There is a long red brick building by the side of a country road. The interior is almost like a hospital, with nurses and medical equipment in the hallways, but not …
The afternoon light penetrates the parlour curtains and irritates me. Flickering on my eyelids, the red-white on and off wakes me. Red. Heat. White. Cool. The custard-thick air is hard to breathe. The last strands of sleep drift from my body. It’s hot. There’s that …
Benicio’s near-death experience didn’t come with blurry, never-ending tunnels in decorative shades of pearly-white, nor did the whole of his past life flash through his mind in the space of a nanosecond. He did, however, have the time to register a mental expletive and to …
No more mixing it up. No more starting in the middle. No more, ‘them and us.’ In his own time, Cartier stood outside the gray army barracks in Battersea, London, and looked up at the castellated battlements of Marcus Hately’s mayoral campaign office. No more …
Muffled excitement murmurs from the floor below, but Mathew drowns it out with his thoughts. Alone in his childhood bedroom, he twirls a mini Eiffel Tower figurine between his fingers. His jacket lies slung on the desk chair, dejected, while he sits on the edge …
I called a friend and we talked about the variables in crossing a street, like what if halfway across you realize that there is nothing on that sidewalk in front of you that will make you feel any different than you do here on this …
“You know some guy they call the Professor?” “Who?” “The Professor.” “That’s a weird name.” “Yeah it is.” The RPG round floated down Sacramento Street as if suspended on a wire, whistling past the bunker, Sarge watching in disbelief, and then striking the …
