Month: November 2022

I guess you could call it an idea. Moody brought it to me. “It’s pissed,” he said, storming into my office. The door was open, and I don’t stand on ceremony, but a courtesy knock on the way would have been nice. I was in charge, after all. “What is?” “The moon.” He appeared to…

I didn’t know what it was. The noise I mean. It woke me up. I thought it was car doors slamming, hooligan kids terrorizing the trailer park. Good thing I didn’t tell anybody but Horse that. Found out later, watching the news, a volcano exploded, erupted, whatever in Tonga. The shock wave took nine hours…

Sharambali shook her head. Her vision doubled then doubled again. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply and clenched her body and will against the twin waves of pain and nausea. She dropped to one knee, her blood pounding in her ears.  After a few minutes, her heart slowed. She tried to slow it further…

Esmerelda Lee planned her suicide with the meticulous attention to detail so many of her teachers and friends and parents of friends — along with her own parents, of course — had commented on so many times in the course of her eighteen years. Seemed to Esmerelda it was the only thing about her they had noticed. To make…