The small Hyundai coupe crept around the church parking lot. Obviously anxious, Jason Halpnuscht peered about as he drove, his head swiveling back and forth. He surveyed the area around the dumpster and the large hot air outlets on the rear of the building with care.
Pastor Penn Benner hated to see homeless people on the property.
Continue reading “The Business of Saving Souls By Mitchell Toews”
We love Christmas, Sandra and me. We love all its traditions, like mince pies, and getting presents, and stuff like that. The best bit as far as I’m concerned is the swilling down the booze so I can’t remember what happened the morning after, but Sandra says that’s not very healthy and I have to ease up a bit this year.
When it came it was sudden.
There had been a bunch of false alarms and near misses.
Paul Buckington had avoided the inevitable for as long as he could and at some points he thought perhaps, Providence played a part, and at others he credited himself with simply persevering against daunting odds.
The atavistic avatar dropped from space:
“I did it only to see the look on our face.”
1
On his way across the short overpass that unofficially connects Corson Street to Torqwamni Hill, Holly glances down at a small house below. It’s an ugly little fist-like rental that had gone up during the Second World War—as had countless others of its kind in Charleston. Like the caw of a crow or a bit of dandelion fluff getting stuck to your cheek, this house exists only in the moment you share with it. Yet nearly thirty years gone by, the same house had once unclenched and gave Holly a touch of honesty; thus it had it had earned in his mind its own small history.
Continue reading “The Inescapable Touch of Sunset By Leila Allison”
The world stops. Lincoln no longer hears the sounds of recess through the open kitchen window facing the grade school playground. In the living room, his wife holds fast, motionless, her words clipped as quickly as shears snip a stem. The silence rushes over him the way water envelops a diver. It’s startling and complete.
”I used to live up there, in the red house. My window was just behind the oak tree and I stared out during the night, over this graveyard. I guess you can imagine how I’d fantasized. Wandering ghouls and vampires. Back then only this lamppost existed. Not that one or the one after. This lamppost was like a lantern, a lonely lantern in the dark, and during damp autumn nights when it was dead silent I snuck down here and stood next to it. Heard only the flickering sound of the lightbulb. The hedges were walls all around me. And when a wind flew through the branches and when someone visited the graveyard, I hid in the bushes.”
Erica pressed out a mint from the candy tube and ate it. “Time to go?”
Over millions of years ago Breakheart Woods, between Saugus and Wakefield in Massachusetts, had been bookmarked by boulders and blow-offs and earthly cataclysm, and to this day, somewhere in its innards from those first struggles of granite and earth fire, from violent fractures and upheavals to be known again only at the end of it all, was a cave, a cave as dark as a heart, a cave that once, I believed, pulsed with a heart. Now we were searching for that cave, in earnest.
Continue reading “The Hermit of Breakheart Woods by Tom Sheehan”
Sam held the squirming green legs with both hands while Nick held the long scissors, trying to get the blades in the proper position. He prodded the tip of one blade into its mouth, the other blade hanging above the smooth skin behind its raised eyes. With one quick squeeze the steel sliced cleanly through the frog’s skin and the head flew into the air. The squirming had stopped. Sticky red fluid flowed out of the opening and onto Sam’s pink palm. Sam set the body on the lab counter and both boys’ mouths hung open as the frog crouched into its normal sitting position. It didn’t even seem to miss its head. Nick touched the frog with the moist tip of the scissors. The boys jerked back quickly as the headless frog jumped off the table onto the cold gray floor. Not knowing what to expect next, they kept their eyes on the frog, which was now motionless. Their eyes darted from the floor to each other as they stood in silence. A sudden burst of laughter broke through their bewildered expressions and echoed through the empty classroom.
How were they to know?
Ah sir, you come upon me just as I am closing for the night. No no, it is not a problem to remain open whilst you make your purchase. Come in, I insist! I would not have you come out all this way on a night such as this and leave empty handed. Commutes are soulless enough endeavours, without being denied sustenance for the sake of an old man closing his establishment five minutes early.
In the name of the wee man! I thought the number 102 was boring and then I looked up 103. If you ever want a reason to kill yourself, access that piece of amazement.
Continue reading “Week 103 – Paris Buns, Titles And Holidays”
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