Originally published in Bewildering Stories. A blown kiss. “Hi, beauty. You look tired. Did you hear the news?” The Man doesn’t pause between ideas, shoving them out of the airlock a step ahead of him. They’re faster than the kiss. The Woman is hunched heavy over a pad at the dining room table, an aching …
Originally published in Bewildering Stories. It was a Saturday when I went out to work on the hole, but I was in my Sunday clothes. Dad had made me throw them in the dryer and put them on hot, because he said we were going to be late for saying goodbye to Lucky. I sat …
Originally published in MungBeing. Go to part 1 | part 2… It was snowing hard the day of the annual Winter Parade. I met Harald in the park after church. He had already staked out a good spot underneath a big elm right next to the sidewalk. It was our tradition to dive for candy …
Originally published in MungBeing. Go to part 1 | part 3… Aaron Telco was a decent guy when I knew him in school. He was three grades older than me, so he would have been perfectly justified in acting like a dick around my friends and me, but he always wore his age with grace, …
Originally published in MungBeing. Go to part 2 | part 3… Last night I dreamt about wax and failure. I was trying to read a story to Emma, and the candle I was using kept guttering out. I had to relight it over and over, until the sun came out from behind a cloud of …
Originally published in MungBeing. The Callows let me join up because I was good at telling their stories back to them. My mum passed on before I graduated and I needed a place to stay. The Callows took me in when I told them I knew words, like virtue and violent, and could use them …
Originally published in MungBeing. Sammy came on like a plague of handshakes. “Hey, buddy. How’re you? Say, did you hear about the Wands kid?” I gave him a firm grip and lied that I hadn’t; I barely got the words out before Sammy went plowing ahead. “Yeah, no, he got thrown out of class. Cheated …
Every day since that Saturday when I had sort of run away from home, I had gone to the cave. I had gone down on my hands and knees, like a pilgrim, and scraped forward into the tight, cool path inside the rock. Crossing the threshold was like going to bed late in summer with the windows open and the sprinklers on outside. It was peace, held tight to the bosom of the mountain. It was old peace, with air that hadn’t moved for centuries.
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