Clay County, Illinois April 4, 2017 My whistling dies on my tongue the second a familiar scream rips through the trees. It comes again before I’ve extricated myself from the briars of the Ghost Woods’ treeline, and dropping my school library copy of Of Mice and Men and a ziplock baggie of foraged morels, I […]
The first time Annabelle’s son overdosed, there had been an outpouring of support. For her. For him. A community. The first time Annabelle’s son went to rehab, there had been check-in texts, casseroles dropped at the door, stories of recovery and hope. The first time Annabelle’s son relapsed, there were friends clucking maternal platitudes, invitations […]
Chapter 1 Tiny white dots—seed pods?—tumble across the workspace where the apprentice slumps. The candles spit and flicker. Half of them have already gone dark. He does not stir. Not even when the wind drags fresh lines across the wet pigment markings that he’d drawn so meticulously with his stylus. He only lies there, drool […]
One My father was a rose rustler. The early seasons of my life were measured in the lifecycle of rose bushes, and I memorized David Austin’s catalogue of English roses the way other little boys memorize the makes of cars. My father prized the ability to identify a rose by sight and would quiz me […]
The Xiagu Market was once a place of unparalleled delicacies and unrivaled views. From Chun State, on the other end of the continent, people had journeyed to the fertile valley of Xia for a taste of the market’s offerings—thousand-spice pig trotters, oxtail soup simmered with pickled chrysanthemum greens, bear paw braised in hawberry wine. Bellies […]
First Place Winner of the Voyage Lucky No. 7 Challenge Now baby, promise you won’t fly too high? A man on the street gets too close when he speaks to me. His breath is a lit cigarette and the words it propels are a leering threat. I realize I’m not afraid in the same way […]
CHAPTER 1 I owed him my life, and then one day, he came to claim it. The card arrived first, announcing his intention to visit. In appearance, it was no different from the last birthday card, or the one before that, or any other card he had sent: the same stiff over-square envelope licked carefully […]
Chapter 1 On Sundays, Jeanine and I got ready for games together. We’d trade off whose apartment we met at. My apartment had the smaller bathroom, but in my bedroom was a big vanity mirror where we could smear on makeup, outline our lips and eyes with slick crayons, and watch our faces brighten and […]
1964 The sideshow is a part of me. Crimson and cream strips wind about the helices of my genes. If I listen closely, I can still hear the calliope, its fluting notes echoing in the water traveling through the pipes in the walls. Sometimes, the shouting of the warden takes on the authoritative bark of […]
1 “It sounds like cats dying.” She said it in the glum tone of a child only just now being introduced to the disappointments life had in store. Mark Provaunce felt a twinge in his chest at the sound of it, thinking for the third time that morning of how his little girl was not […]