All in Fiction
She feels as though she has been at this camp for a year instead of a month. Each day owns its unswerving, inevitable routine, like the sandy desert tides. She’s certain now that her schooling is a diversion, that less than a kilometer away, these boys are being prepared to shoot rifles, perhaps even missiles. Maybe she can save one or two lives.
This was different from his initial story to the cops. He told them he had heard someone shout “gun!” He’d turned to the woman behind him, who only a moment ago had asked where in the mall the women’s shoe store was, as if that were something a guy like him would know. “Gun,” he hissed to her, afraid his voice would alert the shooter. Then panic: “Gun!”
But in the later tellings of what he alone called the Galleria Mall Shooting he definitely heard the shot as he was shopping for new headphones. A blast that’d make you taste foil.
I wanted to learn about colors so I could develop a language for your hair, and how it falls into your eyes in the same way that boys in books that I liked were described. I don’t think you “swoop” it back, but you do something with your colorless hair to get it out of your lashes that deserves to be described.
Apartment C104 in Wyncote, PA, was born out of the blackness of chaos. An unknowable place with a flat roof and red bricks that shared a parking lot with Michael’s Diner. The apartment was created in the absence of light in the under-dark of Tartarus, the darkness from the bottom of the underworld’s world. Rainwater leaked into the complex during storms. The kitchen sink never drained. When the sink was full of fetid water, the apartment cat, George, would drink from it to gain his powers of disapproval.
Sarah, who was the nicest of the group, turned her body to permit Jolie’s entrance into the circle. The women made her feel impossibly short, but she didn’t mind since the top of her head being level with their shoulders also made her feel like their kid sister despite the fact that she was at least ten years older than most of them.
I have fingerprint black and blues on the soft meat on the inside of my thighs from the whorls of your fingers. During the day, I vacation to the front of a mirror and press them, the tiny shocks of hurt reminding me of your dotted hands. I think about the loops and patterns and meanings of your fingertips.
Dolly pondered from her place at the kitchen sink, the room littered with dishes. She hadn’t remembered buying so many dishes and wondered how they would fit inside her cabinets, which were too small. Each dish needed washing, which brought her back to her everyday question, is this what it’s like, standing alone at the sink while the child drools?
His name is Bobby, but often, he responds to the call of Booby. We are grown, up, but he stays Booby to the best of us. Who would name a cat Bobby or Booby? Beats me. Like orange and its equal-opposite.
Tessa tiptoed over to the bag. Its presence was heavy in the room. Her hand moved, delicately, towards the zipper, as if she were disarming a bomb. She didn’t know if she wanted to see what was inside, and yet, she moved the zipper along its designated path, her hand acting of its own accord.
Of these three words (liar, whore, communist), it was the middle one which gave Sheila the greatest pride. In another world, another life, she would have worn it as a badge of honor. But it was November 1961- a full two years before the philandering President of the United States was shot to death in Texas- and a lying communist whore was not widely perceived as a great thing to be.
They said they didn’t want me to die here either – at least not before we got our cannolis and tiramisu. I assured them that I meant Boston and not the restaurant. But Boston was the only place I’d ever lived, I say, and I loved it, but I didn’t want to die without having lived somewhere else. I tell them heading south and west.
He loved the stars: he would speak endlessly about Orion the Hunter, Hercules, Corona Borealis, Sagittarius. If we were outside at night he would point out their locations and recite the myths and stories surrounding the flickering of those magical lights in the sky.
I got into the liquor business at a young age, and despite what anybody might have you believe, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. My knack for logistics was something I discovered along the way. It’s funny how successful folks like to hide a thousand mistakes behind one big breakthrough. And let me tell you, I made plenty of mistakes.
She was on her mother’s boat, wearing a floppy hat that let her long blonde hair have just enough freedom to appear wild and refined at the same time. As I grew to know her, I learned that she was exactly that: the perfect balance of wild and refined.
“Look at the CCTV tapes again and see who the pizza delivery man is. I think the double-chinned bastard .. oh, I beg your pardon,” Miss Klein said, looking at Hubbard, who was busy downing another doughnut.
There comes a point when you have lived your life with someone for so long that you can't hide your guilt. Naomi had stumbled upon mine with a simple look in my eye and she knew. She asked, “What are you not telling me?”
I knew the Lord was testin me, but I also knew he had not abandoned me. I watched the trees grow shaggy and buds erupt. The colors and the insects returned. He was resurrecting the world yet again. And if he could do that, year after year after year, I knew I could go on.
She never imagined her father not being there, had never questioned his authority, but his illness made him less imposing. She had grown out of his shadow. Still, she surprised herself at how easy the truth came.
She’s saying something else, but I’m out of reasonable earshot, so it’s socially acceptable to pretend I don’t hear her now. It just so happens I did forget something, not capers, but a sauce for my spaghetti. I’m making dinner for Judy, my wife; she says I don’t surprise her enough. Tonight, I’m proving her wrong.