(Content Note: Some readers may find elements of this story disturbing.) The greatest tragedy of Lydia’s life was when she broke her boyfriend during sex. Admittedly, he was a brain in a jar, but she’d been trying to make do. Ross hadn’t always been a brain in a jar, but he’d been cerebrally canned long […]
Once, on the edge of a stony scrub named for a star that fell burning from Orion a hundred years ago, there stood a hut with tin spangles strung from its rafters and ram bones mudded in its walls. Many witches had lived in the hut over the years, fair and foul, dark and light, […]
I always thought of the cabin on the lake as a magical place—which, in retrospect, seems a little ominous. The four of us arrived around mid–afternoon, and everything was as I remembered, not at all diminished by time: the long, shadowy dirt drive narrowed by looming fir trees, suddenly opening into a clearing saturated with […]
When the cave’s ceiling crumples, so do I. Through my body, stone kisses stone. I die. Afterward, footsteps pass by my head. I track them to the opposite wall, the one clear of debris. (If I’d been cowering there, I’d still be alive.) The bearer is wearing my dress, and when she reaches into the […]
First came the murmurs. Then footsteps above our bedroom, where no feet should have been. Josh guessed we had squirrels in the attic. “I hope not,” I said, lying next to him the first night in our new rental. “Seeing as how we don’t have a key to the top floor. Anyway, it’s just the […]
The budget hotel is empty and desolate, the lady behind the check–in counter drained of color. Her eyes are wide and fraught as she looks over our reservation form. “Two bedrooms with double beds?” We nod. Rich passes her his credit card. “Five keys?” We nod again. She hands the keys to Rich with a […]
22. Tea for Three Published 1934, Harem House Press, 128 pages Gudrun hated her name, her mother, and bad art. She loved her house, a wild turkey called Murray who had decided to live out his sunset years in her garden, and Cold Palace Brand No. 1 Silver Needle Tea, which, by the time the […]
The traits that make me who I am are written on my skin. My biggest words are in my mother’s handwriting—smart, loving, resilient, organized. She wrote them on my back because there’s no way I’ll ever be able to reach that skin myself. Mother’s largest word is considerate, written in her father’s blocky letters, filling […]
This is the room where The Snow Like a Dancer dies, year by year and piece by piece. When they wheel in the cradle where she rests, she always thinks—for a bare, suspended moment—that it will be all right, that it will all end well—and then nausea tightens around her, and the white and stark […]
On the Avenue Count the houses of worship: From Tyson Street to Tabor in Olney, you can walk a straight avenue of redemption, rising with the sun. Baptist, Buddhist, Catholic, Episcopal, and Evangelical—every people to their house. Only I visit them all, as part of this mester de juglaría, this cycle of irregular meter and […]