He stayed up all night excited to be sleeping under his own roof for the first time. After years of working overtime, living in cheap rentals with noisy roommates, driving a rusty car that limped from repair to repair and taking no vacations, he saved enough to put a down payment on a house. He got out of bed before sunrise and could not wait to start working on the yard. Unfamiliar with the rules of American suburbia, he did not want to awaken his neighbors and waited until he saw the first signs of activity on his quiet street. Emboldened, he went outside in the summer morning and was greeted by the rising din of neighborhood lawnmowers, leaf blowers and weed whackers. His neighbors waved from across the street and he felt for the first time that he had finally arrived.…
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After I killed my boyfriend, I hid his body in the basement, where he was swallowed by the stone, becoming nothing more than a shadow. Even in death, he finds ways to surprise me. Many nights, I wake to find him staring down at me, and I know he wants to kill me. But apparitions can do nothing but bloom on the walls like flowers, pleading to be noticed.
It’s never enough, but it’s all they have—and all he ever deserved. “At least you’re never alone,” I whisper to his silhouette. “Isn’t that something?” I’m not alone, either. Finally, completely, he belongs to me.
Killing him was an act of mercy; some might even call it fate. I did what was necessary to save him. I love him, and now, he finally understands how much.…
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The world isn’t real. The homelands are a trap. The tricks with which a place can lure you in. Some nimbus clouds that imprison you, a shooting star. The space so fragile, gluing every two things between you and everything else. Your mother warning you of the beasts in the woods, the chimeras that assume the shape of men. A man is a baby is a wound. A man is a world that swallows you whole, a red ant that nips at your bloodied toes. Your sleep is deeply troubled, your dreams sold to a troubled soul. This is your new life, the soul insists. This is the home you want to keep. You listen to the trees moaning at night, carry their whispers through the wind.…
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Edward slid the eviction notices under the door of every apartment. Then he stuck poster-sized copies in the stairwell on each floor, where the tenants couldn’t fail to see them. Not that he thought it would do much good. Nor was tenants the right term—perhaps squatters was better, since at some point they stopped paying rent, yet refused to move out. Edward’s own neglect was largely responsible for the building’s decay, but he didn’t feel that he deserved the vexation they caused him. He never wanted or expected to become a landlord.
It had got to the stage where he dreaded setting foot in the place. On the top story, Mr. and Mrs. Zimmerman gazed at him with disappointment whenever he called. Then there was the bitter lady in 2B, who shrieked insults from behind her locked door.…
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After the shipwreck had finally been pulled onto the beach, back in March, a salvage crew kept cutting up the crab boat’s hull and cockpit. The workers had shooed her off like a small girl, even though they must have seen the trash bags she carried full of the styrofoam, fiberglass, and plastic every new tide spat at the beach. If she wanted to play, they had scolded her, she could do so farther north, past where the creek emptied into the ocean. She’d kept silent through their tirades, maybe afraid of worse consequences; the beach was officially closed. The stink of leaked diesel clung to everything she touched. Yet she couldn’t stay home and kept coming back, filling bag after bag with rope, floats, and styrofoam.…
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In all the horror movies I’ve ever seen, the haunted are powerless to the ghosts who do the haunting. Ghosts invariably arrive on their own terms: a quick flash of their reflection in the bathroom mirror when the victim wipes away steam; a vase that, unprovoked, falls to the floor and shatters at the living’s feet; a shiver that raises goosebumps all over a grieving lover’s body on the hottest day of the year; a disembodied moan outside a widow’s bedroom window on a windless night. So when my mother died after threatening to haunt me for eternity in her last voicemail message (which I immediately deleted) if I didn’t return her call, I expected to be haunted in all the usual ways and, knowing how creatively spiteful my mother was in life, in ways I could never imagine.…
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Mom told me I looked a lot like Great-Grandma Thelma. She took a faded black and white picture off a wall where it sat surrounded by empty nails that until recently held photos of her wedding and showed it to me.
Great-Grandma Thelma wore a shift dress and a long string of beads hanging from her neck in 1920s fashion. On her head, she had an ornate headband with a large feather protruding from it. Dark hair cut short framed her round face, and she had an impish smile as if she had either performed some mischief or planned such a thing. I could see a family resemblance.
“Great-Grandma Thelma was a prankster, ” Mom said as we stared at the photo. “She liked to pull harmless pranks on her kinfolk.…
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