Calvin always argued to never think of today. He just kept looking forward, to not just tomorrow, but next month, next year, the next ten years. He planned and executed. He saved. Days were rungs of a ladder and the top was in constant view, his green eyes gleaming as he spoke about each step […]
Read MoreCarol and Bruce had said all they could say. The day was expiring the same way their words had; quietly, but with a kind of ferocious inevitability that spread like hungry fire across the cloud-bruised sky. Carol looked up often, noting to herself how the gray had exploded into rich orange above the sea, their […]
Read MoreWhen she’d wandered out into the rolling green of McClellan’s Glen, Sarah had no need for anything but the box, the shoes on her feet, and the light blue windbreaker she’d inherited from her sister as the cancer took hold. They were of course the same size, but months before she died, Laura had lost […]
Read MoreRina sat on the edge of the high rocks and dangled her gangly legs over the crash of the sea below. It growled at her as if it were a circus lion set free on a cruel ringmaster, and so she faced the gray above and welcomed the cool mist covering everything as if the […]
Read MoreHad they made thousands of these? Yes. Thousands of unique, captured dreams mailed to the homes of the rich, the lonely, the sick. And he’d never touched her although he so often dreamt of what that warm, smooth skin would feel like beneath his hands, of what her breathing would feel like under the crush […]
Read MoreShe’d been modeling for him over the past sixteen years, and while technology moved on, their dances didn’t change. Clifford hated the flat boredom of video. It lacked the latent image, the romance of a movie camera. And he had no patience for editing. He captured only what was raw and real, a single reel. […]
Read MoreThe camera churned, a kind of rough chewing made by it’s teeth as they pulled 16mm film by its sprockets, delicately capturing her on celluloid for the last time. She looked this way and that, trained to ignore Clifford and his lens, instead appearing as if the moment were candid; as if this motion picture […]
Read MoreCallie believed in dreams. She would watch clouds pass overhead and the way the sun faded and strengthened behind gray cotton, and she’d make a wish whenever she could see it without squinting; an orb of unimaginable power staring from Heaven like the eye of God. Then she’d think of Damon, his sea blue eyes […]
Read MoreThe last thing he saw was the last thing he ever wanted to see. She, on bent knees, prowling like a cat in the wild, but not desperate or hungry. A well fed cat. Confident. Relaxed. The night outside was cast in the glow of streetlights, their orange bent into umber by the low ceiling […]
Read More“Isn’t it just the damnedest thing?” he asked in a cracking voice gruff with tobacco and experience. “It’ll carry you, transport you from here to another place and from there, another and another.” I nodded, hot sun playing at the corners of my eyes. He smiled crooked, lips curled somewhere in the middle of rumination. […]
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