The first call was to David. I recognized the name from the faded photos tucked in the back of Mom’s closet – David in his twenties, windsurfing, teeth flashing white against a tan that screamed California. Now, he probably looked like every other aging professor, paunchy and balding, desperately clinging to the ghost of his…
The first call was to David. I recognized the name from the faded photos tucked in the back of Mom’s closet – David in his twenties, windsurfing, teeth flashing white against a tan that screamed California. Now, he probably looked like every other aging professor, paunchy and balding, desperately clinging to the ghost of his…
The salt spray stung my face as I knelt on the beach, the same prayer on my lips that had been there every night for years. ‘Please, God, give me a son.’ The other fishermen whispered about me, called me crazy old Silas, touched their heads when I passed. A man alone, they said, shouldn’t…
They called it worthless dirt. Oklahoma scrubland. Land nobody wanted. That’s what they told my parents when they handed over Sarah’s allotment back in ’07. They said it was a favor, giving us land at all. Said we should be grateful. My mama, she just nodded and smiled, but I saw the fire in her…
The fluorescent lights of the Nuremberg prison hummed, a sterile counterpoint to the moral decay that clung to the very walls. I was Captain Douglas Kelley, a psychiatrist, tasked with evaluating the sanity of the Nazi high command. But tonight, it was Hermann Göring’s turn. He sat across from me, not in a cage, but…
The letter was postmarked Madrid. Not Manila, where I’d always believed my father had served God faithfully until his death. Not our small village in the Philippines, where his name was synonymous with piety. Madrid. It arrived a month after we buried him. A simple, cream-colored envelope, addressed in elegant, unfamiliar script. My mother, her…
Merv hadn’t eaten in three days. Not a single nibble of his salmon-flavored kibble. Refused the rotisserie chicken, wouldn’t even lick peanut butter off a spoon. “He misses you,” I said to Anna over the phone. “He just lies by the door all day.” “Don’t do this, Russ,” she said, her voice tight. “You know…
The buzzing started low, almost a purr. Tiffany, Brittany, and… God, I can’t even say her name… they were all laughing, circling her like vultures. My Sarah, usually so vibrant, was frozen. Just staring at the floor of that stupid rich-kid greenhouse they called a ‘common room.’ It wasn’t the shaving itself. It was the…
The buzzing started low, almost a purr. Tiffany, Brittany, and… God, I can’t even say her name… they were all laughing, circling her like vultures. My Sarah, usually so vibrant, was frozen. Just staring at the floor of that stupid rich-kid greenhouse they called a ‘common room.’ It wasn’t the shaving itself. It was the…
The sound of a BB pellet hitting vinyl siding is distinct. It’s a sharp, plastic crack, like a knuckle popping, but louder. It was the third time I’d heard it in five minutes. I was standing in my kitchen, clutching a dishtowel so hard my knuckles were white. Through the sliding glass door, I could…
