“Look at the dead,” my dad said from his nest on the sofa. The bodies lay in envelopes of white cloth, some half-length, under the awning of a makeshift morgue. Their faces informed the sheets with almost-recognizable profiles. He brandished the photo before us. Mom shifted in her chair. The longer he held it, the…

We arrive, one at a time, at our Grand-Pop’s shore house. We claim rooms like it’s a free for all. Mom already has one of the master bedrooms and Dad is nowhere to be found. We don’t remember the last time we’ve all been under the same roof. Maybe it was a holiday, we think…

It was just after noon when a tall man in a dark suit rapped on Buella Dodd’s newly white washed screen door. She’d seen him coming up Standish Hill Road, making his way over the twisted and rocky path running between the trees, where the smell of mossy earth and dead leaves was strongest. He…

I thought I would have to go into the coop to find Hunter, but he was actually out behind the building. I heard his snarling first, and then the strangled cry of one of the chickens, cut off suddenly amidst a growling outburst that made my hands tighten on the rifle. I glanced over my…

When my wife wakes, her hair a mass of tangles and her breath smelling like lighter fluid, she tells me I should consider cutting and pasting. In the last many months she’s been speaking riddles, many of them barbed. She’s been stealing people’s mail and piling it up in her underwear drawer. Last week she…

He beats the girl, stabs her 22 times, rapes her, then uses his fingertips to push her orbital sockets into the back of her head before killing her. At trial, he laughs about whether or not there are others. The reenactment posed in front of us by some under-employed actor makes him out to be…

I hate flies. A day that begins with killing a fly is a good day. I hate the way they sneak into bins and loiter around food. I hate the way they well up like thick, black rain. Their buzzing pollutes a room so that the air is bad to breathe. I hate how they…

Frank cut out his own tongue so that he wouldn’t have to give the best-man speech. I heard from Kate. She didn’t believe it, either, not until we saw the caterer wringing blood from his apron. The caterer stood by the big garbage can, right near his vegetarian buffet. He didn’t even try to hide…

The newlyweds step kissing across the threshold of their moon-lit honeymoon hotel room. When the door closes behind them, they see a curled bundle of silhouette near the end of the double bed. “Someone’s pet is in here.” The woman is in her husband’s arms, and her voice is tinged with laughter, as though this…

Of the Grieved Still no rain. Eight months, says Hollister. More like nine, says James Earl. We stand in Hollister’s high meadow, what’s left of it. A hot wind crests the ridge, whips at the beard Hollister hasn’t trimmed since the disappearance, ripples the loose hides of his skeletal cattle like limp sails slapping against…

1. Declare your intent to think positively. This is not the time to be tentative. Call your friends over and inform them that you will no longer expect the worst in all situations. When they offer alcohol as a token of solidarity, accept it. Take a deep breath, and repeat out loud: “I am an…

Sam says that, theoretically, medicine is easy. With a detailed enough history, he says, you can diagnose anything. Then you just deal. There are diseases you can cure, conditions you can treat, and situations you just manage, or wait out. He says this when we’re on the steps that lead from the highway down through…