“I killed a man, Father. I killed him and I chopped him up.” It was the first, and last, time Jack had asked to speak to the prison chaplain. In a minimum security facility like this one, not many inmates requested to speak to the …
She pours you a glass of red wine and tells you her sister just died. You’re surprised, shocked, you ask her how? Hit by a car, she says as she puts on some music. Just like that. Walking to a job interview, wearing her favorite …
Juanita sits at her vanity table pressing a long strip of toilet paper to her hair. Tilting her head to the side, I watch her pull a couple of bobby pins free from the several pressed between her lips and clip the piece flat against …
The room I grew up in was a walk-in closet with enough room for a twin bed, a dresser, a small wooden desk and chair, and a skinny metal armoire that no longer had a hanger bar because it rusted off. The floor was uneven …
I was sitting on a park bench. No, I wasn’t eyeing little girls with bad intent. I was reading a novel because the movie version comes out in a couple of weeks. Kate Winslet is going to be in it. She’s a good actor. I …
No, no. Nothing like that, I tell her. She wants to know if she can catch it. Like her proximity has earned her danger points. Think of it like this, I say. There’s a part in your car’s engine that it can’t function …
There were two couples. Harvey, who was middle-aged, and his thirty year-old wife, short, plump Christobel; and Kees and Chloe who were about Christobel’s age. Harvey was a writer, still physically fit for his age, but doggedly cynical about anything non-intellectual. Kees, tall and strong, …
I’m elbow deep in frozen entrees when Jenny walks into the Food-Mart. As I lean in, the cold air freezes my breath. My employee nametag taps against the glass as I set the last two boxes onto their stack. Jenny is standing at the front. …
After the lights go out and the tornadoes rip through, the rain lashes the windows, the sirens wale sporadically and the radio mumbles news of funnel clouds, overturned penitentiary buses, jackknifed semis, and roads blocked by fallen telephone poles before simply throbbing a repeated emergency …
I was propelled into debauchery at the Piggly Wiggly. It was the accident that started it all; crashing into a woman’s cart as I recklessly raced mine around an end cap of the cereal aisle. The impact was significant, scrambling our goods. “Hey!” she cried …