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Short stories: A little suspense Mother and child
In the end, I only have what slips through my fingers, the stuff of dreams, fading. My feverish brain drugged up and loopy, held together only by flashbacks, of a pelvis cracking open, all fissures and splits. I couldn’t sleep in case the contractions exploded, even though my child slept beside me. The birth over, my brain determined to stay awake and watch for more danger.No rest, only the bits of panic jumping off the hot skillet of my brain. An exquisite manic madness, agile, deft, quick.I wake and dip, wake and dip surfacing under the moonglow of a large black tv, alien mother of this ward, spewing silent colors that splash and swallow. Gloved mummies come and go, pressing my uterus for leftover blood. I don’t know where they’ve put the placenta, medical waste in a biohazard bag at the bottom of a plastic bin? I didn’t opt for a lotus birth, carrying the placenta around in a bowl, still attached to the baby, salting it for freshness. I wasn’t among those in my yoga class that vi
Short stories: A little suspense RESIDUUM
For three nights now I have heard the gnawing at my front door. Each time, I choose to ignore this and fall back asleep. If a mouse or squirrel is seeking access, let it try. Come morning, when I open the door to inspect the wood, nothing is there. No scratches, no gnawing. When it happens a fourth night, at two a.m., I grab my 34” maple Rawlings and crack open the door. Nothing again. But as I turn back around, the old man is sitting at my computer playing backgammon, his left leg dangling over the arm of the desk chair, his bare foot bobbing while he charts his moves.“Avis?”He turns. My God, it’s him. Looking just as he did when he died last year: ancient, a monk’s pate with a hula skirt of white hair, thick black frames port-holing genteel eyes.“Where’s my bulldog.”He clears his throat to repeat, minus the rasp, my bulldog.My butt puckers. The dog is elsewhere. Given up. I retrieve a statue from a nearby shelf, a white, palm-sized replica with bovine spots parked on its haunch
Short stories: A little suspense THE KEYS
THE BLACK BUS pulls to the stop at 30th Street splashing the water from the gutter and stops before you in an oily haze. The door opens and you step across and up the well-worn steps. The driver’s there on his perch in a white shirt and tie and black pants, and he glares down at you as though thinking—how dare you be here. You ignore his stare and your hand goes down in your pocket and there’s no change there, but no keys again either—and you try the other pocket and it’s empty too and you panic— you just had your keys but they’re gone again, where could they have gone to, you try the pockets again but nothing’s there.You’ve lost the keys again. Your house key. Your car keys. You just had them again but you’ve lost them again—Get off my bus, snaps the bus driver. Get off now. And the bus driver’s eyes push you back down the steps as you’re thinking the driver doesn’t have to be so rude why was he so rude—and you step back onto the curb and the bus door slides shut and the roar rises
Short stories: A little suspense DEEP FRY
Barnes read intently from the book in his lap—remove the neck and giblets from the turkey cavity. Discard or use for giblet gravy or stuffing—Wilson interrupted him again.Why do you want to toy with death like this? said Wilson.Barnes looked up from his magazine.I’m not toying with death, he said. I’m reading about deep frying a turkey.It’s a sin to toy with death, answered Wilson, pointing. You know that? It’s a sin just like playing Russian roulette would be a sin.Russian roulette?Right. Russian roulette. If the turkey’s even the least bit still frozen, it’ll explode when you put it in the fryer. These turkeys are like big bombs.Oh, and how do you know that?That’s what I read on the Internet.Why were you reading about deep frying a turkey on the Internet?Oh, I don’t know.Thinking of deep frying a turkey, Wilson?No. Of course not.Then why read about it?I read about a lot of things.Hum.Barnes let his feet down from the table and sat upright with the magazine spre
Short stories: A little suspense THE GHOUL AND THE GUNSLINGER
It was 1978. Rachel showed up at the Tudor-style house in Palo Alto for the party. A ghoul opened the front door. He leaned casually against the door jamb and, crossing one ankle, said, “Why, hello, Your Grace.”“That’s Duchess to you,” she said, without missing a beat. “You’re thinking about something and that makes you forget to talk. I can’t tell you just now what the moral of that is, but I shall remember it in a bit.”The Ghoul, replied, just as easily, “And the moral of that is — Oh, ’tis love,’ tis love, that makes the world go round!”Rachel was enchanted. She and Ghoul were quoting lines from her role as The Duchess in the multi-media production of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass put on by her slightly misfit company of players, The Antediluvian Repertory Company.It was Halloween. Rachel was twenty-six and she was all done up like a forties vamp in worn velvet. Her frizzy, long brown hair was piled high on her head and fastened with a rhinestone clasp. She
Short stories: A little suspense BAD PAPER
Leap year, winter of ‘84. Make a deposit at the local blood bank and get twelve dollars. If late, it’s ten. I hang out and drink all their orange juice.“Thank you, Sergeant Robinson, for your donation and service. Can’t stay here, all day.”This happens every time.“Just Willie, please.”I turn and hit the streets. Cash twelve-dollar check around the corner at a multi-purpose Package Store in West Roxbury. Get a sawbuck back. Bloody usury. This is bullshit. Young gypsy girl with sad eyes reminds me I have a daughter somewhere. Touches my hand, turns it over, scans the lines, frowns, and shakes her head. Gypsy girl knows. Never charges me for coffee at the Packy. Never says thank you for your service. Half Asian…maybe, “Have a nice day, Willie.”“If I were younger….”She laughs, smiles, hands over my coffee and paper sack. Good kid. Packy owner would fire her ass in a Boston minute if he knew about the coffee. Fran from the shelter and me, we loiter outside the Packy sipping coffee.
Short stories: A little suspense THE FAITH HEALER
During the winter of 1982, the New York City subways broke down frequently. I was living with my husband in an apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, but I noticed that the problems affected the whole system, because I commuted all over the city for my job. I was conducting residencies in the public schools for an artists’ organization. I spent one day of the week at an elementary school in the Bronx and another at an elementary school in Brooklyn. Just after the first of the year, I began a program at a junior high school out in Massapequa, Long Island.I got up early, especially when I went to Long Island. The apartment was dark. Nervous that I would oversleep, I usually awoke before the clock radio’s alarm and turned it off so as not to wake my husband. He was in graduate school. He stayed up late at night studying and slept in the mornings. After I got out of bed, I made coffee in the cold kitchen and drank it while I dressed by the hall light. I arran
Short stories: A little suspense MOONLIGHT ON THE BAY
As the rain got heavier, people moved inside. When the annual Art Walk was held in good weather, everyone stayed out and enjoyed the spring twilight. Last year’s mild temperature and clear skies meant poor sales. Tonight, just about every place was packed. Moving among the paintings on display was difficult, and some business owners grieved the occasional drops of water shed by hastily closed umbrellas, even as they celebrated the occasional keen interest in one or two pieces.Celia was soaked. She’d had to walk into town because her boyfriend, Terry, had been working swing shift all week at the hospital and just didn’t have the energy to get off the couch and give her a lift. Might she borrow the truck? Just for tonight? He reminded her that it was less than a mile, and that she was always saying how she needed to get more exercise. Celia was a cashier in an upscale grocery store, and found that hours scanning jars of imported olive oil, Oregon bleu cheese, and Japanese eggplant didn
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- Short stories: A little suspense WITHDRAWALS
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- Short stories: A little suspense TALK OF THE TOWN
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- Short stories: A little suspense ELAINE'S IDYLL
- Short stories: A little suspense LIFE DRAWING
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- Short stories: A little suspense TIE-DYE