I’m sorry, Russa thinks. But I need something for my thesis. Something worthy of all-nighters, her parents’ part-time jobs, and endless scholarship applications serving her family’s trauma to eat. Something worthy of the theft her class committed to get this mummy here. She lays a nitrile-gloved hand on the mummy’s bare one. Desiccated by smoke […]
One second: I have ten fingersThe next: I have nine.I’m sure you’re picturing the scene: the bright, sharp smell of blood. Emergency surgery. Months later, a morbidly funny story to tell at the office Holiday party, the jagged scar a ring branded into my flesh.But that isn’t what happens.I’m chopping carrots for dinner. My husband, […]
First there were mindsets. Then there were constructs. Then archtypes. But, let me tell you, it’s all bullshit. The only thing that worked was the invisible. Until now. * * * Annie stares in my direction. She pauses as I wave my arms. My throat is raw from calling her name. But she doesn’t see […]
The woman from the county throws her shoulder against the bathroom door, and the hardboard coughs open, surrenders a narrow gap, then slaps into a mountain of plastic bottles filled with urine staling to lemon curry.“Christ alive,” she whispers.They think I’m in my death throes, now, having discovered the bathroom. Downstairs, the biohazard crew peels […]
“One day the fog will come and Mrs. Gamp will arrive.”“When will that be?”Kenzie looks down at the little boy. He still wears a diaper though he is near the age of five. Other than a dirty white shirt with an odd yellow character from some cartoon, he wears nothing else. A smudge of mustard […]
In the basement, there is candy. Boxes teetering atop boxes, overloaded with gum gums and chew worms and those little nougat-filled eyeballs that blink when you stare overlong; with honeyed do’s and honeyed dont’s; with tar braids and clots of candied floss. The basement has all the candy you’ve ever dreamed of, a sticky thrill […]
Posted (12:04 AM) Sorry for the grainy photo, my phone camera isn’t the best. I was working on my Econ paper when this moth landed on my laptop. I may have emitted a very dignified and high-pitched shout because this sucker is huge. I think it’s around three inches long and maybe five across with […]
My husband keeps secrets. Sometimes his mouth moves in little patterns, opening, his tongue pushing against the roof of his mouth, but I hear no words. His secrets are not meant for me. The roses know. He spends more and more time out in the garden. I never go out there. It would be intruding. […]
The little girl is under my porch eating a bird. Her hair is matted. She did not bother to push it back before she began, and blood has clotted against the white strands. I try to ignore her, but she is crunching its bones, and the sound is like the ground cracking open.I creep under […]
Seventy-seven steps from the back door of our house up to the little house. I’ve counted it enough times. Two hundred and forty-one if I walk all the way around it, letting the coke bottle sweat in my hand until Mama hollers out the window, “You get that Coke in there right now.” She don’t […]