Stories

“Are you going to be my new daddy?” she asked directly.

“I don’t know,” he said, looking down at the flowery dress squirming beside him on the edge of the living room couch. “I like your mom, but to get married you have to really, really like each other.”

“Here you go Missy.” Elizabeth hears her daughter say as she enters the kitchen. Brooklyn is sitting at the table, pouring milk into the empty glass in the seat beside her.

I was born with a birthmark that looked like a bruised flower. It trailed along the left side of my face, from hairline to where neck and shoulder met. I grew accustomed to open stares, sidelong glances, and children being chastised for pointing.

Today is the worst day I have ever experienced. But it’s not over yet. It’s not going to end for thousands of seconds.  Thousands of raw, grating seconds. 0

The freaks are out again tonight. I hear them howling. I hear branches cracking off trees. There were out last night, too. It has been warm and heat draws them to the streets. It’s been like this since the war, or since the raids, but really it started with the slave ships. 0

It was dark, and the party was going to start on the other side of the freshly-plowed south pasture anytime. Bob impatiently stomped through the damp earth toward the Thompson Farm. 0

A middle-aged guy in a dark jacket and a patterned shirt sitting at a bar, a woman of a similar age in a deep purple dress walks over and sits next to him

On his bench in Madison Square Soapy moved uneasily. When wild geese honk high of nights, and when women without sealskin coats grow kind to their husbands, and when Soapy moves uneasily on his bench in the park, you may know that winter is near at hand. 0

Describe the storm for me, would you? My brother speaks to me in a hushed tone, as if the shaking echo of a louder voice might break the sight in front of us. We sit on top of the tallest hill in our plain Midwestern subdivision, surveying the damage,or, in his case, the heavenly view. […]