Short Stories
Monsters and Tea
March 18, 1976
Flo was scared. It was her first night by herself in the apartment, yet she could feel that she wasn’t alone. She had just purchased the 1946 building in an attempt to start her own life. The previous owner had mentioned something about its troubled past, and Flo had told her sister about her worries. Sophie had laughed at her, saying Flo had always seen things that weren’t there, that she needed to grow up.
“Maybe it’s another creature!” Sophie had taunted, twisting away from Flo’s chastising swat.
“I’m serious this time Sophie, I feel like there’s something else here.” Flo knew she was right. There was something strange going on.
“Just like how you felt there was something that night in the theatre?” Sophie raised an eyebrow at her.
“Shut up. I told you I saw something.”
“Yeah, a mouse.”
Now, Florence lied in her bed staring at the chipping ceiling above her, too afraid to close her eyes.
Rustle Rustle
She stopped breathing. She laid there, silent as the grave, waiting for another noise.
Rustle Rustle
She jumped out of bed and leaped across the floor to the light switch. When she flicked the overhead on, the room was empty. Nothing skittered between the furniture or hid under the bed. She let out a nervous sigh.
Something is in this house.
Download Full Story
Back to Top
A Chorus of Cattle
She sits under the reaching branches of the youngest pecan tree, staring up at the leaves as they dance in the wind, sunlight reaching through them dappling her skin. She sits here often, listening. The music sways and dances with the branches above. The songs sung were a culmination of every individual melody, forming their choir.
When first she heard them, she was no higher than her grandfather’s knee. The singing came to her from the outside the house, inhuman and beautiful. She wiggled and wormed her way through a sea of legs. Once free, she ran, as fast as she could down to the pastures to stare as the cattle’s voices came to a crescendo on the air. She tried replicating their language but found herself tripping over the human noises coming from her mouth. She couldn’t join them, she could only watch. From then on, she sat and listened from under the youngest pecan staring up at the dancing branches, enjoying the music, separate from the beasts.
The white farmhouse was her family’s. The rectangular stumping creation paled in comparison to the open green fields, speckled with the large black-and-white beasts. She never understood why she couldn’t stay down by the pastures forever.
“Coyotes.”
“Rattle snakes.”
“Because I said so.”
None of these excuses seemed legitimate to her. She had never seen a coyote and the only snakes in their yard were small and boring.
Download Full Story
Back to Top
My Grandmother is a Gardener.
Mary Ellen Guiney has 6 children, two German shepherds, and a beautiful Jade Plant. 5 of those children are girls. Each one blessed with bottle-blonde hair and a glowing green thumb. When Mary Ellen passes, her Jade is clipped and wrapped and packaged and sent out.
A piece for each girl.
My mother’s Jade arrives via black suburban. It’s wrapped in a damp paper towel, sitting in a plastic stadium cup. The Bruins logo stares at me from our windowsill for days. Untouched.