Why is it that the end of summer is the busiest time of the year? For our ancestors it was because the harvest needed bringing in and storing away. For us, here in the north anyway, I suppose August to September is a time of transitions — a change of season, the start of a […]
On each floor, across from the elevator, is a chute where we plummet garbage down to the basement incinerator. There is no excuse for a cluttered room, messy hallway, overflowing waste can. When you open the metal door, much like an enormous mailbox, the hot breath of rotting and burning blasts in your face, so […]
It starts with a heavy pinpoint, sharp, deep in the middle of Aaron’s heart. As he reads Megan’s letter, it swells and blooms, licks like fire through his veins. This feeling should be love. It is love underneath, but it’s wrapped in something hard and cold and perpetual. Death. Death’s followed Aaron for twenty years. […]
The nightmare drifted at the girl’s shoulder as a dark, sinuous coil of mist. As I crossed the room, its eyes followed me, as red and changeable as coals glowing in a grate, and the sharp sting of its malice raked over my skin. “He won’t hurt you,” said the girl. She sat cross-legged at […]
When his daughter came home with her first hole, Martin plugged it with gauze and said, “School can be cruel sometimes, darling.” After, they shared a pizza and watched Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, which had long been her favorite. The next day Lauren came home with two more holes — one above her collarbone, […]
The hours had passed with the miraculous rapidity which tinctures time when one is on the river, and now overhead the moon was a gorgeous yellow lantern in a greyish purple sky. The punt was moored at the lower end of Glover’s Island on the Middlesex side, and rose and fell gently on the ebbing […]