Walking back to the squad car carrying two fresh wrapped pastrami sandwiches, my heart is pounding and hands sweating, the growl in my stomach doesn’t drown out the voice in my head that scolds me, “See. You should have listened to your old man, you idiot.”
Blessed Margaret of Castello was a blind, hunchbacked dwarf whose aristocratic parents could barely stand the sight of her. Born in Metola, Italy, in 1287, she spent her childhood isolated from the world because her parents found her so repulsive that when she was six years old, they had a small cell built in the forest next to their chapel and locked Margaret away like a lunatic.
What now?
Rose.
Rose was the only person I trusted, the only one who was kind to me that day. I went for a long walk and wound up at a quiet park where bushes exploded with red and yellow flowers reaching for the sky. Too late, I noticed three guys closing in behind. The last thing I remember was the smell of their sweat and the red mud caked on their boots.
Elonda stared out of her window, squeezing her face into the entire frame, and her breath began to fog up the dew-struck glass. She quickly used her sleeve to wipe away a near perfect circle. The winter was visible again.
Bill returned home after a particularly strenuous workday to find Loretta in the living room nose to nose in conversation with a stranger. Rather than interrupt, or inquire what was going on, he observed from the doorway.
Cordelia Cates stepped out onto her deck overlooking the lake as she cradled her coffee cup, which had more than a splash of Bailey’s Irish Cream added in for good measure. She sighed as she wrapped her cardigan around her with the other hand and surveyed the red clouds overhead.
The situation was this: Bret’s ringing phone had woken him up just before daybreak. Jeff, his once fairly close, but now hardly close friend, sounding frantic, had asked him to meet him. Bret had said he would and asked where, and Jeff had calmed down enough to give him clear directions.
When Nataliya had finished the last crumbs of her cake, I paid the bill and we left the café, the bell tinkling as the door closed behind us. At half past four, the grey winter afternoon had already turned to night. I offered Nataliya my arm, as the cobbled street was slippery with frozen snow.
It’s almost midnight when they leave the beach, tired, thirsty, still too high from the freely flowing weed. They’re jammed into Ed’s aging blue Volkswagen, Lisbeth up front, Jonathan and Denise crowbarred into the tiny back seat as they head onto the Mid-Cape Highway for the trip back to Manhattan from Truro.
If this is not a meat bun from heaven, Dr. Wu doesn’t know what would it be. A meat bun from heaven (天上掉馅饼) is a Chinese saying, meaning pure luck.
Dr. Wu has worked as a Rehab physician in the hospital in Texas for a few years. A few weeks ago, her department chief, only in his fifties, suddenly left.
The gentleman was always a man of contradictions. Born in the quiet, unassuming town of Nowhere, Tennessee, his early life unfolded amidst the slow rhythms of rural America, where the days stretched on like the endless horizon.
She twirls a slender dagger in her hand, while Egypt’s Pharaoh drinks wine from a golden cup. Seth settles across his cushioned lounge, dark eyes locked firmly on Neferet’s twisting fingers.
His grandparents had gotten drunk on Saphire highballs with friends around the fire the night before, and the way they had started acting strangely—grinning and cackling through the evening, their faces gone somehow wicked and distant…
News of the impending arrival of a word warrior shook the sleepy town of Surrender, New Mexico. For Deputy Sheriff Ingrid Zoe Cole (“Izzy” for short), it didn’t change her routine much, except she took a second glass of bourbon instead of her usual one at lunch.
I received an email saying that my work account password is about to expire, but I am not sure which work account this pertains to, since we have multiple. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I feel like I am lost in a sea of passwords.
When the old horse ‘n hay barn came down off 450 South, smoke rose for days, carried for miles. A great gray cloud come to overtake. No one thought Old Man Neeri was tethered up inside. Days later, after the coals had quit their smoldering, the authorities picked through to find the cause of the burn.
The bearded old Mexican operating the levers of the yellow forklift sings, “Tomás, ooh-ooh-ooh.” He is singing to me even though my name is not Tomás – first or last. But I am a bit of a doubting Thomas. And a peeping Tom as a kid. But not a Tomás.
August 15, 1945
Betty shows me her scar. Dark purple it runs six inches down her belly. She says it’s ugly and I say it’ll fade in time.
Drove through town on my way back. Jap surrender is all over the news so people hold up two fingers for victory. It’s when I get away from the crowd.
If you head downstream, there’s a waterfall that empties into a natural pool so deep that no one has found the bottom yet, which means it’s perfect for practicing the fanciest of dives and biggest of cannonballs. But it was also a great place to lazily float in large, gentle circles.
At first, the black lines cast by the window bars of the drunk tank were a mystery, and the pain in his body a specter. Then the shadows became the field plots of the Llano Estacado he had crossed on his run from Louisiana.
No one was quite sure what to make of Mary Whemple’s behavior. For the past two weeks, she had spent all of her lunch breaks standing at the entrance of her office building, arms spread, eyes closed, and her wrinkled face tilted to the sky.
Gwen and I looked up at the crystal doors we approached. They must have been twenty feet high and twelve wide, and emblazoned across them, the letters IT in that famous logo. Without a whisper, the doors opened. That’s not the right word. They simply vanished.
One winter afternoon, Nick Miracle walked out of Perk Up Coffee with a caramel ribbon crunch latte, his drink of choice on special occasions. For the past five years, he had been a junior loan officer at Wabash River Bank. Beginning tomorrow, he would manage its Honey Creek branch.
Charlotte’s dad is gone. If it weren’t for king-size candy bars, she would have realized sooner. But he disappeared while she’s eying the grocery store candy. It’s so much better here, which is why they always stop when they visit him on the god-damned island.
That’s what her mom calls it. Then Charlotte makes her put a dollar in the swear jar.