“Ahhh.” The palm reader sighed heavily. Such was his power that we all exhaled lightly with him, and then leaned forward to hear what would come next.
Tag: death
The Bard of Oracle Park by Leila Allison
Oracle Park has one tree. It’s a little non-fruiting cherry that seems nervous because cherry trees usually grow in numbers. They typically line parkways and chatter amongst themselves like a backstage gaggle of pink-clad chorus girls. By itself, however, a cherry tree seems fretful. Now, a lone wolf oak is expected—for it has a greedy nature that sucks up the best of the soil and hastens the death of the grass around it. But not the cherry; they are used to sharing resources as though they are swapping garters and smoking off the same cigarette. One suspects that without intervention the little cherry in Oracle Park may die of anxiety, or from overdosing on too much sunshine and minerals. If this one survives, it will most likely grow to cast an uneasy shadow.
Liquid Memory by Christopher Dehon
I pulled up to the 7/11 and realized I couldn’t remember the last time I’d ordered an Icee. I mixed Coke and Strawberry into the biggest cup they had. I remembered when Cheyenne and I were in middle school how we used to mix this with the vodka her mom never bothered to lock up. The girl behind the counter looked like she’d recently graduated from high school, although she held herself with a toughness beyond her years. She’d either shrunk her uniform shirt on purpose or lied about her size, because I could see her belly button ring on her washboard stomach. I looked at the half-eaten nachos behind her and figured she only had a few more years to look like this. She didn’t ask where I was going or where I’d come from. When she handed me my change, I noticed the frenzy of old cuts on her left arm. These weren’t those superficial, privileged, symmetrical cuts girls in my high school had. These were frantic and left her arm looking like an old cutting board. These were the cuts that you get when your uncle’s bent you over a couch for a year and no one believes you. I thought about giving her a hundred dollar bill to impress her. I could tell her where I was headed. She’d be touched and give me her number, and then…what? I threw a pack of Cheyenne’s brand of smokes on the counter, paid with a twenty, and left.
A Witness by Dyaus Rai
Jim sat in the living room with his gun on the coffee table staring at the wall. He had just locked her in his bedroom and was contemplating his next move.
Between First and Final Breaths by Kathryn H. Ross
The first thing Miguel became aware of was the blistering sun on his cracked lips. He could feel the great white eye of the earth staring at him, taunting him to fully wake and confirm that his recurrent nightmare had once again followed him into morning. He opened his eyes and blinked slowly, taking in the brilliantly white-washed blue of the sky. It was day five. He felt death in his bones.
Continue reading “Between First and Final Breaths by Kathryn H. Ross”
The Scene at Scott’s Mill by Tom Sheehan
Old Scott’s Mill had given off odd sounds since the day it closed down. Now it gave off a sense of passage.
Crawfish Prayers by G.A. Shepard
Tommy lay in the middle of the train tracks looking down between the railroad ties. It was fifty-feet to the shallow river that ran underneath the trestle. A low growl made the wood and metal shudder.
Reflections Aft by Tom Sheehan
Eight years locked in bed by an accident, his wife’s life an obscene penalty, Peirce Keating was left with only imagination. And little hope, though today might prove different. He loved his wife May, the sea, and bright company. Old pal Gary Mitman was this day’s gift, this day where hope might gain one foothold. That and viewing mirrors he controlled by head movements.
The Banshee’s Bargain by Suzanne Murphy
The first time I heard the cry of the banshee was three days before the full moon. My blood ran cold because I knew exactly what it meant. In my youth, my grandmother entertained us with fantastic fairytales and spooky stories. The haunting tale of the banshee had been one of my favorites, so when I heard the strange keening, I immediately recalled the legend. The story about a witch who announced the imminent death of a loved one was common throughout Ireland. There was even a poem that children sometimes chanted in the schoolyard, often around Halloween:
Hail Caesar! by David Louden
I had been at University six months when I got the call to tell me my old school friend Eamon Donovan had died. Drug overdose. He wasn’t the partying kind; it was a different kind of drug overdose. An entirely intentional one. Eamon was from the north of the city, like me; The Bone. That particular stretch of hopeless home-front had given rise to a nasty habit of suicide. In the years I had been out of my working class no-man’s-land I’d stopped counting the amount of associates who had taken the off-ramp. It had become so frequent that it had been dubbed the North Belfast Green Card.
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