The truth was not that we were the only ones. It was that we were the last ones: the only ones left.
The whales knew.
In their infinite wisdom, and with characteristic empathy, the whales recognized not only that the doom was upon us humans, but that they had the ability not to stop it but to mitigate its effects. In a world of growing despair and certainty of the end of all, the whales realized that they of all creatures had the ability to be harbingers of joy to those whose world-weary civilization was about to collapse upon itself.
Enthralled, shouting with delight, the passengers on the Queen of Capilano ferry in Howe Sound watched in wonder as two humpbacks breached in tandem; just the week before, other commuters had witnessed a pod of orcas frolicking in the blue-green waves. …
The wars never end, nor does the bloodshed, and it makes men rich. The world has gone crazy.
The children continue to starve, their cries fill the air, Elsewhere food is wasted. The world has gone crazy.
The water, air, and food are poisoned. The oceans and its life are dying. Mankind can’t see the forest for the trees, that are falling to the axe of its own greed. The world has gone crazy.…
Jack and I sat like gods on nice, flat chair-sized rocks right outside the mouth of the mine shaft. We looked down and watched the two idiots hop across the mossy creek stones. Sure enough, the fat one slipped and landed on his butt. I looked at Jack. He shook his head, took a short nip out of the pint bottle, and tucked it in the back pocket of his jeans. I didn’t consider that to be a safe place to store a glass bottle, especially when you’re inside a mountain, mining gold. My little brother isn’t as smart as me though.
The idiots finally made it across the creek and started climbing up the slag pile. They didn’t look like much, but that’s what you get when you recruit your help out of the Crazy Horse Saloon.…
They thought they buried her beneath silence, beneath shame, beneath the twisted shadows of what was never her fault.
A girl, broken open before she knew what “no” could mean. Her innocence wasn’t lost it was stolen, stripped by hands that never knew the weight of consequence.
But still, she breathed. Each day she woke with trembling limbs and fractured dreams, but she woke.…
The day was gray and calm. The river, a sheet of ripple-less obsidian, stretched before Alan and his stepson, Travis. Alan’s line was taught in the water, the pole pinned between two large rocks, while Travis’s pole laid between the fishermen as Alan fed line through the eyelet of a treble hook. Alan worked his thick fingers around each other with gentle precision a couple of times to complete the knot.
“Livers, please,” Alan said, studying the hook in his hand and giving it a tug to test the knot.
Travis extended the open container, Alan retrieving a slippery liver from the soup with a slurp.
“Closer ‘er up,” said Alan, massaging the treble hook into the liver, then calling for string.
Travis riffled through the tackle box before extending a spool.…
I see them vaguely in the darkness. Their eyes glow green in the firelight and their sharp white teeth shine hungrily in their wide mouths, plumes of steamy breath floating forcefully into the frigid air. They wait. They are patient, but I can see the desire in their dreadful grimaces, in the long, slow strings of saliva descending from chin to ice-covered snow.
I watch the play of the fire as the harsh wind gusts past the slim shelter of the overhang, pushing the blaze nearly flat, threatening to shrink it to nothing. Then the gusts abate briefly, and the flames flare upward again. Icicles melt slowly from the stone roof. The drops hiss as they plop into the flames. I feel no heat. My legs are frozen, and the numbness spreads slowly up my torso.…
