Origins
This is how it happened.
Time is circular, so after the serpent convinced Adam and Even to bite the forbidden apple, they were given the knowledge of good and evil, made more like God, and expelled from paradise. Not being God, they did not understand why, and so...
The Mattress Inspector
Fully clothed, Richard Yoost lay flat as a plank across the covers on the king-size bed. It was ninety degrees out and only a slight cross breeze came through the bedroom windows. The plank position was his first response test, and he learned early on it left an...
Midnight Blue
I was alone in the forest. I was alone on the hill. The sky above me was midnight blue, and its darkness shone like a sheet of glass in the moonlight. But there was no moon. There were even no stars, though there should have been: the nearest town was dozens of...
The Dare
“How could you stand there naked in front of a bunch of strangers, stark naked?”
Phil didn’t get it, and that saddened Karen a bit. He usually got her perfectly.
“Well, for a shy person, it was the perfect job. I didn’t have to talk to anybody, or make eye...
Authority
Once, he had graded papers. People make jokes about a red pen, but it had been standard, back in those days, and the students hadn’t argued. The red, like the robe of an inquisitor, had meant authority. He was a polymath, teaching history and mathematics both … a...
The Shore
The keeper of the lighthouse took his indentured apprentice down to the beach for the first time yesterday. Down the narrow path between the crags that looked like teeth from a tiger and through the jagged points resembled nothing so much as tusks. The keeper showed...
Tweezing
Some people pace when they’re nervous. Others can’t stop talking. I, given the opportunity, tweeze. My eyebrows, that is. I don’t know if anyone else does it; it’s the one habit I have which makes me wonder if I’m compulsive. I tweeze my eyebrows every morning no...
Soloist
Patty has Vaseline in her hair and waterproof blue mascara smeared across her eyelids. Hank can see the hibiscus bobby pin in her bun from up in the stands, and now that he sees her in the pool, her arms above her head as she waits for the music to begin, he is nervous....
Argentina Love
When I was ten I lived in Odessa and dreamed of sailing to Africa, Australia or Argentina. I loved all far away places that started with A. My name started with A, too–Alla–but I didn’t like my name. I kept altering it. Angelina. Angela. Ariel.
Yes, I was...
Shifted
I fire my gun. People around me turn swiftly, some duck and take cover. No time to explain. Plastered on the building straight ahead is a movie poster. Your typical will-they-won’t-they edge-of-your-seat romantic comedy. A bullet hole in the male character’s washboard...
