Dr. Simmons studies the results of our daughter’s blood tests. “Mr. and Mrs. Jacobsen, I’ll get right to it.” Glenna leans forward. I try to squint away the words I don’t want to hear. “Your daughter has Byrd’s Syndrome.”
The weight of his diagnosis lands on my chest. My wife gasps.
I was too young to remember the day my Granddad past away but the night my Gran died, the swans came.
I don’t mean that she had anything to do with them, it was just that I noticed them that night.
The handsome interviewer smoothed his shiny red tie. “Says you’ve worked at the docks for practically your whole life,” he said, scanning Gwen’s resume on the other side of the desk. “That your crew unloads—whoa—a hundred ships a day? Is that true?”
Continue reading “The Womb is a Careless Weaver by Mark Benedict”
The amaryllis appeared on the windowsill one Sunday morning in June. The bulb protruded from the soil in the cream-coloured ceramic pot, and sat next to the basil plant we had diligently kept alive for four whole weeks.
Come now, Stranger, and be at your ease. It is true that in the past I was cruel to travelers, but those days are now long faded. You see before you a broken creature. I will do you no harm. You must be weary after your long journey. Sit yourself down. Take what food and drink there is. It is only the simple fare of a shepherd, but I offer what I have.
“What are you in for?”
“Nothing…”
“Same.”
I had a feeling we would become friends.
This is a story about insanity. Well, about my attempt to stay sane inside insanity. No, the story about me battling insanity. No, about my victory over the insanity of life. No, still not right… or true. It’s a story about me. Hi. So buckle up. It’s going to be a bumpy ride!
‘The yung stag stood there wi blud on his muzzle. Prostrated before him wis the defeated challenger. They didnae fight for the right to a wuman, nor the right tae land but fae the sake of fighting’s sake. A hatred bore within both stag’s hearts exploded that misty mornin. For one had been taught to hate the other and the other tae hate the first. In truth the stags both looked the same and lived the same lives. Yet one lay deed and the other munched on his flesh. The ecstasy of hate well realised pumped thru the yung stag’s veins. He felt strong and mighty and the monarch of that moment. Whit did his violence gain besides this fleeting high? Fuck all. He sustained a wound to his left shooder and part of his earlier impressive crown was snapped aff and jammed in the deed stag’s neck. Blood soaked his soft brown coat and he looked altogether minging. The meat of the deed stag was tough and manky. The yung stag was close tae boaking so he left the quiet scene of quiet violence.’
Miss Margaret McTuckleberry is incredibly tall, incredibly thin, and incredibly strong. Strong enough that, if she wanted, she could pick up a troublesome visitor to her pub by the scruff of his neck and throw him out of the front door from several paces, sending him sailing straight over the porch and onto the gravel just outside “The Dancing Bear”, perhaps the toughest and most notorious pub of all the pubs in perhaps one of the toughest and most notorious counties of the entire United Kingdom, the county of Kent.
You weren’t yourself, that night.
Usually, when you got back late, you went straight to bed. I’d wait for ten minutes or so, until you’d finished clattering about up there, then creep up the stairs and slip into bed beside you. And then lie awake, staring at the ceiling. Listening to the clock. Tick. Tock. Trying not to wonder where you’d been, and with whom, and what you might’ve got up to.
Jane couldn’t keep her clothes on.
She’d been arrested a few times on public decency charges but when the authorities witnessed her prison togs repelling themselves from her, the charges were dropped.
She was referred to experts on everything but there were no experts on spontaneous clothing removal by the clothing itself.
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