Ruth thought she no longer measured her life in weeks or months, but in bin collections and laundry. Her days and nights were punctuated by bouts of washing up and differentiated by what type of vegetable peel was blocking the plughole, in the way they used to be punctuated by dancing and drinking and art […]
Bisma couldn’t bring herself to follow Mama out of the midday sun and into the stranger’s house. Bisma knew she’d have to—in the end she always did as Mama said. Of course she hadn’t asked any questions when Mama ordered her to pick up their cleaning equipment and follow her to the house at the […]
When the first box arrives, you don’t think much of it. Nondescript black, sealed with a glossy logo sticker. Dark Deeds: Midnight Reads for Horror Fans. You set it aside to deal with later. After all, surgeons are busy people. Your practice has been thriving. You don’t have time to look up what to read—that’s […]
Paula lives in the cul-de-sac. She likes it there. The smooth curvature that dead ends into the split-level Gary bought for them back when it was enough to work at the drugstore. When the paycheck stretched far enough to pay the mortgage and keep food on the table and clothes on two kids’ backs. A […]
Most everyone has heard the Ben Franklin saying that death and taxes are the only constants in life. But there’s one more. I call it the Law of the Door. If someone tells you not to open a door, you absolutely will anyway, especially if you’re thousands of dollars deep in credit card debt and […]
Alejandro clung tightly to his mother’s dress when he saw the gravedigger take the first nail out of the bag. It was large, a palm long, rusty. The man gripped the hammer and settled into the bottom of the grave pit. Alejandro’s father lay directly on the earth. He had a sunken part of his […]
There have always been jackrabbits in the neighbourhood so Michelle isn’t surprised when she comes home to two of them on her lawn, camouflaged white in the snow. What’s odd is Reginald, the Airedale, and Midge, the Wheaten Terrier, standing so silent on the other side of the living room window. Normally they’re wild at […]
The wound on his neck looks like a smile. The resemblance occurs to Darragh the moment he notices it, as he stands in the bathroom scrutinising his appearance in the mirror before school. The white collar of the shirt of his uniform does little to conceal it. Of late Darragh has often found himself examining […]
You are outside of your body, looking down at yourself on the hospital bed surrounded by family and strangers alike with smiles too eerie, too joyous, for the airlessness of the suffocating atmosphere. Next to you, Mother stands, eyes rimmed crimson, lids both above and below swollen, purple veined, pulsing, twitching, bluing lips holding back […]
It’s a dark and stormy night, and the residents of the Castle Arms apartments are watching a scary movie. On the small, bulbous screens of their television sets, a killer stalks in scratchy chiaroscuro. A detective—handsome in that bland, leading man way—is explaining to a blonde-headed reporter. “They call him the Sandman, because he strangles […]
