He asked a simple thing: go for a ride in his car, just around the park’s edge, just this once. I was a girl who felt guilty refusing. We drove along the park in a slow dissolve, like an ice cube on a finger. I watched children my age surround a boy with a gold…
Tag: Short Story
Safe Keeping
The cold storage plant is right on the water. Acres of metal the colour of dried sage. Some sections are taller than others. From here it looks like giant boxes plonked down next to each other, but when you get up close you can see it’s all joined. The land slopes sharply upwards from the…
Third Party, Fire & Theft
The car burns as I sleep fully reclined in the driver’s seat. The acrid plastic smoke wakes me. The smell of burning dolls. A crowd clatters out from the cliff top café next to the tourist car park, the cook banging a thick fist on the driver side window. The smoke curls its heavy weather…
Incident Reports: The Vanishing
Case File: No. 1 My husband was washing dishes,his hands in those yellow rubber gloves,the water running, a hum.I looked up to a sink full of soap,limp gloves on tiles. * Case File: No. 2 I scoured the woods on my ownafter 9-1-1 was reduced to a busy signal.Kept checking under the same log.Your shovel,…
Siberia
Eleven days after my husband died, he telephoned me at dawn. “I can barely hear you,” I said, sitting up in bed. “Somewhere in Siberia,” he whispered. His notebook was still on his side of the bed. I wrote in the half-light. The directions were incredibly complicated. I had to ask him to repeat himself…
Projectile Sounds
That year, I learned about the Doppler effect in physics class. What makes the noise of a speeding car seem a pitch lower after it’s sped by you. It was fall. My pimples were mostly gone but I was still fainting. I had not yet learned how to take the new refrigerator for granted–the choice…
Baby Talk
They look up and gurgle and coo. They are plump and wide-eyed and smiley. They stare at the bubbles that float by. They are hypnotised by the mobile that plays the Brahms Lullaby. They sleep deeply, dreaming of . . . what? The struggle to get here? The months trapped in the warm liquid? The…
Five Imaginary Babes
In time I’ve had five babies. The first one was boneless and meatless; it was a puggish fold of skin, and I would throw it on the ground in disgust where it would puddle up and gurgle little flatulent gusps that were almost cute but stank like dank pot. Within a few days, having accidently…
From Ribs Come Tales
A story begins at the point where two characters meet. If I put Adam in a garden by himself we don’t have a tale. Adam stares into space drumming his fingers. He doesn’t even think about anything because he has nothing interesting to think about. Now if I put Adam into a garden with Eve…
The Axeman
At night, the Axeman comes. He enters her apartment silently, and stands over her bed, watching her sleep. He listens to her snores, her whimpers and her sighs. When she gets up in the middle of the night to pee, he follows behind her and from the darkened hallway watches as she pulls her lacy…