Month: January 2021

I mounted the knoll and ripped my lungs at the sky. Twilight eddied in blood and ochre dust from the far lip of vision to the dome high overhead, though lessening in distance as my knoll and I ascended screaming into that golden eye, the epicenter that I could with a daring finger reach for…

Like all boys he liked movies. He expressed no preference for the after-dinner feature, but not for lack of interest, to our relief. It was easiest to set him before the TV and increasingly difficult to engage him any other way. During the films he would chut and vroom over the sound effects. What had…

I missed the outdoors. Growing up I took it for granted, cursing whenever the wind ruffed my hair. Now I imagined the smell of ice, the awkward nods on the sidewalk, and the glare of the stoplight on wet pavement from the safety of the windows, without getting too close. I was Mother’s secret, the…

August 5, 1923 By the time Ruth settled in, she had already had enough. She smiled, nevertheless, and greeted him with taut lips. “Good afternoon, Mr. Woods.” Kenneth quit jostling de Lila’s hand and returned to the table. Scarlet lozenged socks peeked out from herringbone trousers as the magnate sat and crossed his legs. “Lovely…

He sat in his chair, which had yet to acquire the old Elm smell, and rolled the awl between his palms. It was Daphne’s parting gift. The point was so fine that if he stared directly upon it, letting it tease his eyelashes, he could scarcely recall it from thin air. He looked to the…

He played with the yellow blocks only. Roughed by sandpaper and sticky fingers they handled well. Warm faces, chipped edges. He was not a builder. He lined and walked them one by one. The block shaped like a bridge he teetered leg to leg, imagining an elephant crossing the rug in search of water. Due…

But, alas, she was a manatee. Unlike the seals that capered round her she could not sprout legs and climb foot after foot upon the pebbled shore. She would have to watch from her kelpweed cove, head ducked like a button between her shoulders as the shrieks of their sunshine games bounced off the sandstone…

A man walks down the row of crossed sticks, shaking dirt from his brown paper wings. The turned earth smells like bread. The Moth Man shapes the loaves. With fish eggs for eyes he turns a dead gaze on you and does not smile. Move, and he vanishes. I could tell of spooks and how…

She knew when he picked the orange one that he would kill somebody. The timing and target were irrelevant, only the certainty of a fate laid bare. For he chose his blocks with painstaking selection, admitting first the yellow then, after weeks chewing over the block bin, the blue. The logical successor to yellow and…

The following is a condensed version of the story “The Mountain” He walks down the graves, shaking dirt from his brown paper wings. The turned earth smells like bread. With fish eggs for eyes the Moth Man turns a dead gaze and does not smile. Move, and he vanishes. I can tell of spooks and…