The power is off, it’s 100 degrees, and I hate my wife. Days after the storm, there is no place to go but this sweltering apartment. She suggests we play the game Monopoly. This is a terrible idea, but since I’m irritable already, I reluctantly agree. I deal out fake money, slipping myself a…
Category: Tragedy
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Dispatched
“9-1-1. What is your emergency?” Casey moved to the edge of her chair, fully aware that all eyes in the Dispatch Center were on her. She struggled to focus on her first call, her mind ruminating on the “we-need-to-talk” text she sent Michael that morning. Her boyfriend had grown distant since starting classes at…
As the last two customers finished their enchiladas, Joslynn began to close for the night. She preferred being at work—or even school—ever since her mother’s boyfriend had moved in. He liked drugs and so did her mother, but his leering eyes made Joslynn’s stomach tie itself into knots. Mothers are all slightly insane, Joslynn had…
Categories
That Creepeth Upon the Earth
“We’re getting slammed,” Frank grumbled to Tony. He tapped the call bell twice. “C’mon Jennifer—pick up orders for tables 11, 5, and 25. You gotta hustle during the lunchtime rush…” Jennifer wheeled around and flipped the cook the double bird. Without breaking her stride, she refilled glasses with lukewarm water. “Jennifer—!” Frank bellowed. Without a…
Of course, Missy was making a scene at the reception’s welcome table. Thirty-five years had not blunted Missy’s expectations that she should be greeted by anything but a bevy of uncaged doves and a fanfare of trumpets. She seemed disappointed with us. “I don’t see my name,” she asked, blinking at the table cards. “Do…
I have fed the cat butter and cream before he dies. Dairy is terrible for a cat’s gastrointestinal tract, but then again, so is abnormal dilation of the colon. I’ll take the blame for the dairy. God can take the blame for the rest. For the hundredth time in a week, the cat valiantly tries…
“Find us a good place to sit, Suzanne. In front of the scaffold, but not too close.” “Absolument. I know just the spot.” “I will be back shortly.” “Where are you going, Jacqueline?” “To buy a nosegay.” “Who’s selling flowers on such a day?” “There’s a stall near the tumbrels—next to the prisoner carts. The…
Part I: It was so terribly cold. It had always been cold in Denmark, especially on New Year’s Eve. The wintry winds brought a desperate chill to those unsettled and impoverished. Wars continued to ravage the land. Treaties were torn up as soon as they were signed. Industrialization poisoned Scandinavian cities and its people. The…
The Bellagio was known for having the hottest bartenders on the Las Vegas strip. Cassidy had been making eyes at one before Tommy DeMartino sat down beside her. “You alone?” “I am now.” “I saw you earlier on the dance floor—with your friends.” “My friends have to work tomorrow. I don’t,” she replied, crossing her…
“Thank you for coming in, Mrs. Sampson,” the principal said, smiling thinly. She motioned for the anxious mother to sit in the chair across from her desk. The bookcases behind Mrs. Sampson’s seat were filled to capacity, mostly with well-annotated history books that the principal kept from her years of teaching. Holding her designer handbag…
There were too many of us, Lizzy thought, tucking herself behind a door jamb. Her father smoked in stony silence in front of a television, while her mother swatted her brothers who snatched fingerfuls of mashed potatoes from a large bowl on the dining room table.In various sizes, her brothers pushed and yelled, whining about…
It’s easier with the drunk girls—especially the loud-mouthed ones who travel in packs. Dressed in sparkly tops, short skirts, and wobbly heels, they wear “Bride To Be” paper tiaras or “Nifty-to-Be-Fifty” ballcaps. On weekends, I expect them after the bars close. They burst through my door, tittering, eyeing the darkened reading room with glassy cows…
Their high school friends had gone on ahead, laughing and teasing one another, yet the thought of entering the Fall Festival’s “Howl-O-Scream” terrified her. It was the not knowing what lurked in the darkened corners that bothered her the most. She hated being surprised. “Are you ready?” her boyfriend asked. Boyfriend. What an insubstantial word…
Maybe the lights won’t come back on. Maybe you can sit in silence in the back of the community center next to your ex-wife for a little while. She’s been remarried for years. You try to remember where what’s-his-name works. You hold her hand. She squeezes your hand back. 🜋 🜋 🜋 You know the…
There is something liberating about losing the love of your life. Compounded with all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, it makes the choice to lose one’s mind easier—not to mention the choice of losing one’s life. I guess that answers the question whether to be or not to be. If I were still…
🏅“No, she isn’t my daughter,” he corrects a colleague. “She’s my wife.” On cue, I beam at my husband, innocent and doe-eyed—like I did in my 20’s when he was in his 40’s. His friend invariably elbows him, making comments about cradle robbing and spring chickens. We laugh. I say something clever in reply. His…
“Where’s Papa going with that ax?” My sister Lizz holds up the book she is reading to her 3rd grade science class. The eight-year-old students go wide-eyed at seeing a picture of little Fern attempting to wrestle away an ax from her father. He has planned to kill a newborn pig, the runt of the…
Andriy watched his father move an anti-tank mine out of the roadway using his bare hands, all the while smoking a Chinese cigarette, the tobacco loose and pungent. “Your name, Andriy, means manly and strong,” his father explained through clenched teeth, delicately carrying the explosive. “I named you for days like these. You will be a…
“Sister Theresa, what time does the new applicant arrive?” Sister Pauline asked politely, to avoid Sister Theresa’s wrath. For a Franciscan, Sister Theresa could be entirely uncharitable, even to the abbess herself. “Oh you old cow, I’ve told you twice already!” Sister Theresa replied, throwing the bread dough she’d been kneading into a large wooden…
The morning traffic jam at the high school peaked at 7:47 a.m., short tempered fathers slowing down to jettison their surly sons, mothers asking their daughters if they wanted to take an umbrella just in case, seniors cutting off all other cars to drive diagonally through the parking lot. Mister Carlton angrily tapped the steering…
❤️ A cold thick fog enveloped the muddy banks of the River Styx, chilling Persephone’s ankles. Demeter pulled Persephone’s coarsely woven robes tightly around her—robes of finely combed linen made from flax soaked in olive oil. When dried in the balmy Grecian sun, Persephone’s clothing smelled of newborn lambs and gentle sunbeams and fresh mown…
“Okay, little ladies . . . You know this is a difficult conversation for all parties concerned, but I am going to ask you for 110 percent. I am going to ask you to bring your ideas to the table as we think outside the box. This should be a constructive meeting for all of…
“Wait . . . can you still hear me?” she asks, expectantly. She paces around the parking lot at dusk, seeing if the connection is better from a different angle. She holds the phone up and squints at it. She hikes a bit up an embankment, stupidly looking at her phone, wondering if two bars…
The weather forecast called for snow flurries, unusual for this time of year. Yes, she had bundled up the kids for Halloween in all types of inclement weather when they were young—but never for snow. It never snowed this early in the season. No matter, she thought. The ground was parched and dry. Any precipitation…
“Ow! You little bugger—you’ve nipped me for the last time.” Five months in, breastfeeding had lost its luster, especially as the baby began to teethe, searching more for pain relief than for nourishment. Perhaps they were both just thoroughly exhausted, as both mother’s and child’s sleep schedules—blissful for a month or so after a chaotic…
He threw a larger piece of brick, shattering another pane of glass. Who would complain? The warehouse had already been emptied out. A company car drove by, slowly, its headlights washing over him. Gordy momentarily felt sheepish, squinting his eyes, hiding the alcohol he’d been drinking behind his back. He reminded himself he was a…
“It’s time,” the smugglers mutter, steely-eyed, unblinking. “It’s time.” “Martina,” her mother whispers a final directive. “You be Martin until these men take you over the border.” She zips up her daughter’s padded jacket and inspects her newly shorn hair. Just 11 years old. She can pass for a boy. “Yes,” Martina replies, meeting her…
“Because you cannot take care of her properly,” I finally say after arguing for almost an hour. “Now, I’ve brought some brochures—” “I take care of her just fine,” my father replies evenly, those coal black eyes of his boring a hole through me. “I always have. And you know what you can do with…
❤️ Before—everything mattered. Now? Nothing does. 🜋 🜋 🜋 “It seems excessive—” the new angel says, eyes brimming with tears. “Grief descends on them so quickly.” He looks down again, keenly feeling each pang of despair, pooling in black waves around them like a treacherous sea. “It does,” the old archangel agrees. “But in their…
“That’s the thing about this city,” said Detective McMurtagh. “It’s impossible to discern what is real—or just a Mardi Gras illusion.” Maretha shook her head. “I just don’t like the South in general. Voodoo. Fried foods. And that peculiar institution left its stink on everything. The New Orleans slave pens trafficked more people than anywhere…
🏅 Alana’s mother had warned her about the rocks covered in ice near the edge of the lake. The Johnson boy had slipped and tumbled headlong into murk. In 40 degree water, he quickly sank in his heavy winter coat, started to hyperventilate, and drowned before anyone knew he was gone. “He’d only have lasted…
3.1688739 x 10^-10 Millenia In ten seconds you will break my heart. In a thousand years, I will never recover from the words that will come out of your mouth, from this serious conversation you want so desperately to have, from your dead shark eyes that fail to hold my gaze. I will get up…
“You don’t hate me,” my older brother smiled slyly. “You admire me.” With that, he slapped down the queen of spades on top of the pile of cards, adding another 13 points to my score. It was the third hand in a row he’d gleefully beaten me. Roy was only half right. I admired him;…
🏆 ❤️ “We saw your poor Rick,” they say in the grocery store aisle. I smile, unconvincingly, and compare jars of spaghetti sauce that I don’t even want. “We heard about your poor Rick,” they say, half turned on the pew in front of me at church. I sit alone and nod at their thoughtful…
“Where do you think you’re gonna go?” her husband sputters, blindsided by his wife’s packed bags at the bottom of the stairs. “It doesn’t matter,” she replies, dead-eyed and somber. She puts on her coat, the black one, the one for special occasions. “The kids—” “The kids are thirty,” she says, turning away from him…
🏅 ❤️ Twenty five years in, she found herself a ghost. She stood unseen in the living room, stupidly holding a large bowl of homemade caramel corn. The noise from the widescreen television washed over her, the whistles and calls, the screaming of the fans, the roar of the crowd. The men in the room,…
“You can’t keep me here.” “Please, Mr. Van de Kamp. Take your seat,” ordered the imperturbable headmaster, black eyes narrowing over his hawkish nose. The boy stood in his office. Out of uniform. Insolent. “You can’t keep me here—” the boy repeated. “I assure you, we can,” the headmaster flatly stated. “Your father—” “My father…
When I’m gone, finally gone, our children will find this. Behind the wainscoting. I remember you’d insisted on this—this tacky beaded white wall paneling, always insisting on what you thought you knew was best. Did it matter if I wanted the interior of our home decorated in rough sawn oak or weathered pine to create…
❤️ There in the cold hospital waiting room, we gathered together to watch my oldest sister die. As usual, I sat alone and apart. The only person I even liked in this motley group was currently in another room, heavily sedated on a ventilator. If my oldest sister had been sitting next to me, we…
🏅 Act I is the easiest part to write as you don’t even like him at first, unusual considering how hard and how fast you fall. On your first date, he asks what type of restaurant you prefer. Idiot, you think. We aren’t going to get into any place decent this late on a Saturday…