The candle flickered, slowly puddling into a ball of wax as Alex bent over the dark gray hide. Dull pain pulsed through her shoulders, her eyes straining to see. I am too young to feel this old, she thought. Soon the sun would rise over the ocean, bathing the cottage in soft golden light, but…

I made a habit of hitchhiking during the holidays when I had no one to see and nowhere to go, which was more often than not. Strangers were always in a kind Christian mood between Thanksgiving and Christmas and I’ve never been opposed to taking advantage of others’ generosity. Which meant finding rides around the…

Another one of her husband’s business functions tonight and it was her job to play the wife. She loathed these things but faked it admirably well for short durations. Mark — her husband’s name was Mark — thought she might enjoy this one: “Samson will be there.” Everyone expected she and Samson got along, for…

The hand has to be quick, forceful, reaching under the broody hen to clutch the eggs she guards. The rats would love to get in. There are traps for them under the indoor part of the coop, far under where the dog can’t reach. The eggs are warm in my pockets. I stop by the…

When we were kids my sister and I shared dreams. Recurring, vivid scenes of the wrinkled old man at the end of the cul-de-sac, his cool, orange-freckled grandson, the boy who’d built his own tree house. Trees that turned to witches after sunset, twisting down to small, frail bodies, their dresses the dark brown of…

Except for its lemon-yellow complexion — Brie-ann thought to herself — the naked corpse was beautiful. She tried hard not to see the body in that way, as something beautiful and alive, but Brie-ann was having trouble shaking herself free from her rebellious imagination.The age of the deceased woman was probably the problem. She’d been…

Sixteen thousand applications received by the new school; two thousand selected to write the entrance exams; three hundred ten-year-olds invited for the admission interview; me finally getting my turn after waiting six hours. These are the numbers I remember. Three of us at my primary school wait four months for the list of successful applicants…

The boy massages the brush into the soap cup, building the lather white and thick, and spilling over the rim onto his thumb. The lather is warm and he can just feel it. He sets the cup on the edge of the iron stove, the brush resting in the cup. He opens the razor carefully,…

You’re fairly certain that a sudden ability to see other people’s pain as colors isn’t listed as a potential side effect of Evalia, the new arthritis drug prescribed by your doctor last week. The day after you first punch the pen injector against your thigh and feel the viscous liquid bruise its way into your…

Ian laid down to sleep on the grass and when he woke up he was human again. Lana had laid his clothes out in the usual grove: a tie, a button-up shirt, and slacks. Nestled next to the clothes were his loafers, cashmere socks balled up inside. He dressed quickly, although his hands were no…

My mother never eats cherries, she is afraid of the pits. She isn’t afraid of swallowing them, but she thinks that worse, they have something inside of them. She says that her grandmother had a line of cherry trees on her property, and that they were all in perfect symmetry. “That’s one thing about nature.…

The sunset’s almost right. From peach it slowly turns crimson, leaching the colour from the sky overhead as I press my cheek against the cold window. Down the road I notice the boy with the baseball cap — I can’t see which team, I don’t know any — folding grey wadges of paper and pushing…