Month: May 2022

Ellie’s orange roses rest in a cracked blue vase on the table by the kitchen window. The sun shines through the window, making the vase glow, and the sea breeze brings the scent of the roses across the room to where Ellie sits in Gram’s rocker, sipping samovar tea and looking out to sea. She […]

Langley “Let’s try a puzzle.” Langley’s counselor tipped a box. Brightly colored pieces flooded the tabletop. Langley smoked. Puzzle pieces had smooth edges and joined up. Not lifelike. Not like Langley’s life, anyway. But. His counselor looked so hopeful. So earnest. Langley dropped his butt into the stale coffee at the bottom of his Styrofoam […]

The banging wouldn’t stop. Ronson Begay opened his eyes and squinted. Once he made sense of the image on the other side of the reinforced glass, Ronson realized he was looking at a university cop tapping on the window of the hypobaric chamber with his nightstick. The cop stopped tapping when he saw Ronson was […]

Bryn was taking her first sip of coffee when she saw it. She blinked twice then snatched the binoculars she kept for birding to make sure: a four-poster bed, complete with red velvet curtains and elaborate molding had appeared in Old Man Kemmerer’s field. Keeping out of other people’s business was one thing, but Bryn […]

Kowalski dragged his hand down his forehead, over his not insubstantial nose, and into the tangled mass of his beard. He was pretty sure it had more gray hairs in it than when he’d woken up in the morning. “Tell me again,” he said, “who dumped the dolphin in the pool. It sounded like you […]