Hallucinations
When the unearthly being made her acquaintance, Claudia Linstrom was beginning her first year of ob/gyn practice at Montbleu Women’s Center. She had just finished four years of residency at Montbleu General under the tutelage of Dr. Raymond Pileggi, who was now, unfortunately, showing signs of dementia. Since being a child, she remembered wanting to be a “doctor for girls,” and now she felt assured that the field she had chosen was perfect for her. Occasionally, she had even fantasized about having a special mission to perform. Soon after starting at the center, she rented a more...
Read MoreBrodsky
Catherine’s husband, Douglas Hewitt, had been famous in scientific circles for being a boy genius. He was still a genius at forty-five, though now no one made a fuss about it. In fact, his current work was a secret from the general scientific pool. For the past six years, he’d been working exclusively for Rhys Milestone, the British billionaire. The personal goal of Douglas’s employer was to be the first layman in space using his own ship. He claimed that he wanted to take tourists to space, even to setting up “space hotels,” but from an occasional comment from Douglas, Catherine...
Read MoreA Solitary Man
Louis Pickett had finally, after years of carefully saving his money, attained the status of home owner. The house was a small Cape Cod in a neighborhood changing demographics; Jewish and Italian ladies dying or leaving for nursing homes and middle-class blacks, Hispanics and single WASP women moving in. Louis’ house sat on a corner on a large lot backing up to woods. His first action after settling in was to erect bird houses on high poles. Possibly he could prevent the squirrels from reaching them, though he doubted this after watching an Animal Planet show on highly intelligent...
Read MoreThe French Teacher
“You must not forget the accent aigu!” instructed Bertrand. “Je vois que vous le faites habituellement.” He was wearing his usual tormented expression. Had anyone ever told him about it? And what was it that seemed to worry him so? “Je suis désolée,” Julianne said. “I will try to remember.” She was paying for these French lessons with her parents’ Christmas present, which every year consisted of the same sized check, and for which, considering the rise in food and gasoline prices, she was grateful. In August,...
Read MoreRoot Canal
Could he have possibly heard that right? Zack held his eyes shut, though he felt he was thoroughly awake. Well, not totally, but he had definitely not gone into la-la land like he usually did under nitrous oxide. It could be due to his heightened anxiety or the fact that he felt like a corpse somebody dug up, then dragged for ten miles behind a garbage truck. That’s what a savage frat party’ll do to you. It was one sweet orgy with a bazillion people there. He was so annihilated he’d passed out in a Dumpster. Or someone put him in it; who...
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