Category: Fiction

When my grandmother died, I had to deal with the deep distress that comes with having something close to your heart taken from you, the distress of losing something special. I lived with this woman for six years, perhaps more, and within those years of living with her, I learned a great deal from and…

It’s 3:17 a.m. The building is mostly glass, and the cold is spread across it like when you breathe on a window. From his little booth, Musa can see the glass panes stretching up into dark floors above him, the kind of architecture that feels proud of itself.

I’ve pictured this scene a thousand times. A table by the window, people-watching in Manhattan, waiting for Sapphire. Rush hour’s a restless river of frantic wipers, headlights, and honking horns. Rain bounces off the sidewalk like bullets while people in raincoats rush for doorways. Meanwhile, I sip a latte, watching the grey daylight darken.

The entrance to their hotel is a heavy door directly onto the street. Behind the door is a little red-carpeted lobby and a high desk in front of pigeonholes and keyhooks. A young woman sits behind the desk, ticking numbers on a sheet of paper and adding them under her breath.

The thought of struggling out of bed felt like a baby being expelled from a blissfully warm womb into a cold, merciless world. The twenty-five-year-old had battled depression since age thirteen, but had recently felt better dating her best beau since high school. That made his breaking up with her the evening before – without…

For once, there were choices available for Pisgah and me. I mean, they were all pretty bloody horrible, but at least we had a choice of how horrible. This would be a day spent doing the least worst thing, so we turned our attention to factors such as energy levels, fuel costs, the preservation of…

My father wanted “a dog with big balls.” So he brought home an ex-police German shepherd, brown with black saddle markings, a Nazi dog. “Bernhardt”, his tag read. Dad the animal’s chest until he lunged, meeting Dad’s swinging boot.

I’d seen her several times before, this woman. Loitering on the steps to our small shopping plaza down the road, wild-eyed in Miller Street, its river of traffic churning around her through canyons of high-rise office blocks, peering into plate glass windows, advertising cellulose injections and other horrors, her expression suggesting the Martians had landed.