Category: Fiction

Even for Cassandra, it was hard not to stare. The diminutive man appeared to be the consummate outcast. His ghoulish face, scarred with burns and deep gashes, exuded misery. Perched on his flattened nose, a thick, bent pair of...

The thing that tortured us was that we could see she was tortured. At first, we all played word games. She would watch television. She seemed especially to enjoy local commercials where the proprietor displays the product and...

Subject: Thanksgiving Mass My dear brothers and sisters in Christ,           After much prayerful discernment and thoughtful consideration, we have once again chosen to present a beautiful choir program as a sacred offering for...

On a warm Friday morning in April, Helene Baxter was out by the curb in front of her house on Dorchester Road, raking the sodden leaves from the perennials. Monday through Friday, except in the dead of winter or bad weather,...

I usually don’t tell people. I learned it only makes them quiet, their eyes shifting as if they don’t know what to think or say. As if they want to escape. This time, though, his eyes got wider, not in surprise, it seemed, not...

Rolf Westerling looked for a final time at the faces of his three children. They were gathered around his bedside, heads bowed as if nodding off, a sniff from his youngest, the nervous tick of his eldest’s perennial...

Cody ran up the hill with his red Celestron telescope, which was almost as tall as he was. His same-aged cousins chased him. Diana hadn’t expected him to be in charge even though he was about to start junior year. Soon enough,...

Dusk. Her favorite time of day. Anne poured a glass of wine, and walked out onto the balcony. The view of Central Park was always breathtaking. She never tired of it. Wrapped her favorite shawl around her shoulders. The air was...

My eyes considered the sea, its anger much reduced. Wisps of purple-pink clouds framed the sun. Seabirds squawked and argued over almonds, then rose precipitously to navigate the winds. I was about to leave the beach and its...

The quiet in the flat, with which he had become used to, rarely failed him. It gave him much needed room in his head and body. Yet the canary’s song from the garden endeared him, reassuring him in some odd way, that his day...