The First I Heard of It
Most of the nine months I should’ve spent in the third grade I spent in bed. On the first Friday in September of that school year, my mother got me and my brother up like she always does. Then she said she was keeping me home today. She didn’t say why, and I stopped asking after the look she gave the second time. I didn’t want to push her into one of her whacking moods. She didn’t seem to have any problem with Louis going to school though. He was in fifth grade at Cooperstown Elementary. He and I polished off our Lucky Charms and bananas, like we usually would, but neither of...
Read MoreSkulls
Their delicious late lunch of bratwurst, sauerkraut, rye bread, and light beer had come to an end. Megan pushed her chair back from the table with a scraping noise on the scratched wood floor. “It’s now or never.” The next morning they would be leaving. “Do you mind going up there by yourself?” Alex asked. “My feet are killing me.” His new walking shoes had proven to be too tight. “Besides, I’ve seen enough churches.” Together, they’d visited at least ten cathedrals and chapels on this trip — on Alex’s part, because of an appreciation for history and beautiful...
Read MoreIsland Field
May 14 and it’s raining. The brackish water is six inches deep when I put my feet down to get out of the rental car. My sneakers, socks and pant legs are already wet from the other three driveways that I stepped into and sloshed through. I stopped caring about getting wet. Then, I stopped caring about whether my rental car was going to make it through the water. I’ll see how that goes. There is a pattern now with this going from house to house, searching and knocking. Out of the car, then taking a moment to mutter a subdued curse into my chest as my feet sink yet again into the...
Read MoreThey Come Back
The respectable newspapers, for the most part, carried on as if nothing were out of the ordinary. And why wouldn’t they? Ambrose wondered. Why risk the embarrassment of having reported the end of the world, when good business sense was to duck your head and go on assuming you’d still have an audience the next morning? The date in the paper’s corner — December 20, 2012, Thursday — seemed smaller than normal, if anything, as if they’d tried to slip it in under the radar. Ambrose chuckled to himself over the headline. It was some nonsense about next year’s...
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 MoreSlug Boy
The rain tapped against the bathroom window as Abby showered, getting ready for work. She was soaping her legs when she noticed a dark mark, like a swipe from a brown magic marker, on the tile wall. That’s weird, she thought, how did that get there? She leaned in through the steam to get a closer look. “Oh crap,” she said to herself with a start. “There’s a baby slug in my shower.” For some reason having the slug in her shower while she was naked made her feel vulnerable, as if somehow it could get her because she was without her clothes. As if clothes could protect me from a...
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