Robert Mende pulled the plug on his marriage not with a violent jerk, but in spurts; it may not have added up to much of anything at first, Mende was nothing if not scrupulous; he kept at it, and after a good year and a half of solid effort his wife was thinking of divorce. …
“Play ball,” the umpire yelled, raising both hands. Crouching low behind the catcher, he pointed his finger out toward the center of the diamond, out toward the girl standing high on the hill. She nodded. Then pressed her fingers against the gleaming sphere, drew her eyes into slits, and looked for the sign. Around her, …
One afternoon, as Denise watered plants and I changed a light bulb, we heard the squeal of brakes and a terrible howl. We ran outside. An old VW van with a bright mural painted on its side was parked in the road. A wild-haired, older woman stood next to the van. Our dog lay …
The border hasn’t always existed. It was put there for complex geo-historic and political reasons so long ago that no-one knows much about them now. I live right next to the border, which is a line drawn in the dirt. That is also true of my home, which is a series of straight lines, bisecting …
Born in 1890, Tod Browning, one of the first horror genre directors, began his career during the silent film era. “He was the John Carpenter of his day,” claims Dr. William Dodson, Professor of Rhetoric, Literature, and Media Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Browning directed such films as the original …
Dear dome of impenetrable darkness— It is only fair I give you some glimpse of my own birth: that was the year the Andean volcanoes sent England magnificent weather: tides blasting against the shore, light dashed across the sky, the slant of rain coming down like a puppet’s strings. Mid-August, a comet smeared the inky …
Listen, most sinkholes occur on Thursdays. If you don’t believe that, go Google it and see for yourself. If that doesn’t suit, come and take a look, this Thursday afternoon, at my neighbor’s yard, so perfectly landscaped until an hour ago. Now you can stand half way up Wanda Brooker’s rock garden bank and look down …
When we were young, we all believed in something called earth changes. The coming of quakes, floods, droughts—natural disasters in increasing frequency and severity—pole-shift and climate change. Things of this nature. But we were not afraid. We were so young then that we believed we cared more for the earth than we did for ourselves. …
She wore a plain brown scarf on her head, dark crow’s wings of hair peeking out from the rough cloth, framing a pale, thin face. A young boy, with the body of a three-year-old but the large round head of a much older child, pulled at her skirt, also rough but with a bright, flowered …
Sam brought in the mail just after noon on Wednesday, threw it on the table, and started to make some lunch. He didn’t sort through the envelopes until a few hours later. After lunch, he cleaned up his plate and put the long bag of white bread away. Then he got on a kick about …