That yard was out to get me: to make me pay for his neglect. I’d cared too much about the inside and, jealous, possessive, he’d lost his muddy mind. I’d been keeping my eyes up, you know; worrying too much over the above-ground happenings: erratic employment, broken...
To make a mask that fit like a second skin, they required a mold of my father’s ruined face. I sat in a green vinyl chair and watched them work while he breathed through a rubber tube. This was after midnight in an office above a bowling alley. The woman spooned...
The stoplight felt endless. I flipped through the radio dial—sick of the same old stuff—and paused at a soft hits station. It blared some power ballad from the 80’s. Not my music. I reached for the dial but hesitated, vaguely captivated by the hypnotic mélange of...
Some women lose their cool when they miss a 50 percent-off sale at Sak’s. Others have a hissy fit on a bad hair day. Me, I get pissed (or piqued for those delicate souls) whenever I can’t hear the rest of an interesting conversation. I don’t mean...
Dr. Louise Fuller exits her house on Bristol Way promptly at three, the bells of St. Michael’s tolling the hour as she makes a right at the corner and strides down the sidewalk. It will take her exactly fifteen and one-half minutes to walk to Stanley Hall, wherein are...
Words falling, dropping against the floor in Cuban jazz rhythms. “What’s hid-ing in the ten-e-ment hawwwls?” she sing-songs, her fingernails trailing against the old hallway that’s wearing thirteen coats of off-white paint. She looks over at me...
