The kitchen was still except for the ticking of the Westinghouse range clock and a faint whirring sound coming from the back of the refrigerator. It was becoming light outside, but the birds were still quiet in the thick fog.
Continue reading “South of Oromocto Depths by Mitchell Toews”
When we get our first whiff of mortality, which typically happens in our sixties, we are inclined to take inventory of our lives. For the self-satisfied, this is an easy matter: one simply declares himself free of baggage and on an express track to heaven. But that is only true for God’s favorite children; the rest of us have a harder time of it. The bits of good we might have done fade like yesterday’s news. And sins long forgotten assail us like phantoms, leaving us as wary as thieves.
Continue reading “Cheating the Jail out of Time by James Hanna”
Sighs, echoing laughter, and half-remembered faces that belong to all-forgotten names gather in the pooling shadows of Corson Street; the ghosts gaze at Holly More as he walks alone in search of a hundred-year-old man. No matter how much money Charleston pours into the “revitalization” of the Corson district, its ghosts remain stubborn and continue to luxuriate in the riches of the poverty into which they had been born, thus lived, and brought home from their graves.
It was Christmas the first time they made love; he said it felt like coming home. He bought her a silver bracelet with a chunky heart charm.
October 11th, 1997
I am about to make history. That I know beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Armed with several months of supplies and two inept-but-well-meaning graduate students, I have begun what I am sure will be a monumental work of scholarship. I, Dr. Reginald Fitzfauntleroy, will be the first person to contact and live among the ancient and reclusive Sentinelese People. These people have existed for thousands of years, and they have resisted contact with the outside world. There have been attempts, but all previous explorers have been killed or were engaged in skirmishes that made the Sentinelese passionately loath outsiders. To contact or to visit the Sentinelese is considered to be a death sentence. They are the most elusive and dangerous peoples in the world, considered a myth by some anthropologists.
Continue reading “The Flexible Rules of Anthropology by Alex Colvin”
I wondered where the wonder went. Another bottle of wine, another moment gone, carelessly misplaced along with the forgotten tomorrows. I picked at the bandage above my eye.
I thought of the millions of self-help books I had read.
“Allow yourself to go to a different place, a better place, in times of difficulties.”
“Embrace your inner child.”
“Breathe.”
“Be kind to yourself.”
“Stay positive.”
She knew from the moment that the notion entered her mind that it was surely a terrible one. The odds were too high that he would fully transform. It seemed these days that the slightest annoyance and the stiff orange hair the color of an emblazoned sun would streak the ridge of his spine and he was all claws and jagged teeth. He bit a boy on the playground last week. A smaller boy who’d done nothing more than deny Wallace the privilege of destroying his small diligent sandcastle. It was like watching a Godzilla movie if Godzilla were an outraged baboon decapitating beach condos with shoddy foundations instead of a giant lizard. And then they had all spent three hours staring at the sterile screaming walls of the ER while both boys were tested for rabies.
Roscoe Griffin, sheltered by the corner of the three story windowless building, waited for the procession of cars to begin drifting into the parking lot. Morning was just breaking and the autumn sun converted the chemical fumes coming from the stacks on top of the building into a mosaic of colors. Colorful though the fumes were, they held a deadly future. The smell, as the fumes drifted down, made Roscoe’s already nauseated stomach even worse.
Continue reading “Where the Air Tastes Like Copper by Lee Conrad”
I’m one lucky son-of-a-gun. I’m not boasting or complaining. I didn’t create my good luck. It was something that just dropped on me. I’m not talking about that fool’s gold good luck of winning the lottery or a bet on the Kentucky Derby. I’m talking about the real meal deal like when you bend down to pick up a dime, and there’s a hail of bullets hitting the wall where your head was seconds ago. My kind of good fortune steers me out of harm’s way, and when I do enter the danger zone, I leave pretty much intact.
I was driving at 85. The night was darker than it should have been. There was nothing on the road, not in the windshield, not in the mirrors. I was so sure that we were not coming back. That we would go into the dark and then never appear at the other side of the road. She lay on the back seat staring at me like a voodoo doll. Oh, and she was dead. Did I tell you she was dead? She was. The wind whistled past me through the window like running away from something. The trees beside the road ran back. I looked at her once and she blinked. I turned back and focused on the road.
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