short story

Possession

Beams of hazy sunlight stroked Christopher's skin as he took his usual place at the window. The gently rustling drapes, a melancholy shade of mauve, fingered his thighs and calves carelessly like an inattentive lover. Peering out over the newly awakened city, Christopher inhaled the fragrance peculiar to a late spring morning in Vancouver. A lush, green aroma rich with the pungency of Japanese blossoms and lilac bushes clung to the air. Christopher closed his eyes, timidly inviting the quiet of the early day to wash over his nakedness. Read more [...]

The Drop

The man stood waiting with his back to the desk. It was dim in the room. Pale light struggling through the small barred window fell onto the tiled walls and floor. The shelf opposite the desk was stacked with dressings, rolled bandages and a large, rust-coloured bottle of iodine, to disinfect caning wounds. I tried to swallow. Bile pooled at the back of my tongue but my throat was too dry to get rid of it. Read more [...]

Address to the Greenville Senior Women’s Club 35th Annual Pedigreed Dog Show

Address to the Greenville Senior Women’s Club 35th Annual Pedigreed Dog Show by the mystery writer H.L. Lemontre It’s quite an honor to be speaking today as both a guest and a participant. I am asked to speak at a lot of dog shows by fans of my mystery series, but rarely do I get the chance to speak in my own hometown, and even more rarely do I get to speak at a show where my own dog is also a contender. Perhaps you’ll indulge an old woman if I tell you a bit about how I came to write the [i]Fluffems[/i] series. Read more [...]

Grandma Scott’s Funeral

Everybody called her Grandma Scott, but Eliza Scott (nee Lingstad) was nobody's grandmother. The Scotts didn't have children. Eliza was the eldest of three sisters, and she treated her younger siblings' offspring with grandmotherly affection. My mother fondly recalled spending several weeks each year at the Scott farm helping to tend and feed the animals and taking baskets of food and water to the fields for the threshing crews at harvest time. She and her older sister Nora helped Grandma Scott make the sandwiches for the noon meal for the workers. And every morning she and Nora were dispatched to the barn to search for eggs deposited in secret places by the Scott's brood of laying hens. My mother said there was nothing like having fresh eggs for breakfast. Eliza's sugar cookies, as big as dinner plates, were a special treat as well. Read more [...]

Miracles

My barber, Frank, is the world's most talkative human being. He is a tall, skinny man with straight blonde hair, big ears, almost no chin, and the bluest eyes you'll ever see. Frank is smart, forthright with opinions on an endless variety of subjects, and unburdened by the handicap of a formal education. When you sit down in a chair in his shop, you never know what else you are going to get in addition to a haircut. Last week it was a lecture on Intelligent Design. "I get a kick out of these religious folks," Frank offered after he had draped me with an apron and wet and combed my hair. "Trying to sneak God into the schools by the back door." Read more [...]

THE ANGEL OF FUGUE

THE ANGEL OF FUGUE BY ANDRES KAHAR ______________ Fugue Noun 1. Fugue - dissociative disorder in which a person forgets who they are and leaves home to creates a new life; during the fugue there is no memory of the former life; after recovering there is no memory of events during the dissociative state ______________ Underemployment was a nasty, yet increasingly familiar, state of being for his generation of university-educated talent. Well, that's what Guy Burgess kept telling himself. Guy, you see, was trained as a journalist. Guy even worked as a journalist. But, one barely remembered chain of events later, Guy ended up on the fringes, working in a call centre. Read more [...]

The Stranger I Care For

[i]The following piece was published in The Statesman, Calcutta, India, on January 10, 2000. The subject of this piece passed away on 3 April 2004.[/i] She is lost to me already, without having died, this woman I care for in more ways than one. Bound to her by indissoluble ties, I sometimes pause to wonder, guilt-stricken, whether my commitment to this stranger in all but name and appearance can honestly be described by the euphemism that pervades the literature available on the malady--"a labour of love". For oftener than not, I am unable to regard it as anything other than an exercise in frustration, resentment, anger, futility and resignation. Read more [...]

Cyclops

Cyclops by Kevin P. Keating -1- White sunlight pierced the cracked, mud-encrusted windshield of the pickup truck, stinging my one good eye. The woods, green and lush and wild in the full heat of summer, became an impressionistic blur. With trembling fingers I adjusted my eye patch, desperate to see where I was being taken. Dirt and gravel churned beneath the tires of the truck as Hollerin' Bob, laughing with raucous child-like glee, stomped on the accelerator. Thick rivulets of brown saliva Read more [...]
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