April 2011
1 post
Chicken Vanishes, Heartbreak Ensues →
I feel like I need to apologize again for what I did. I was the one that took Gertrude, not my friend. I just couldn’t muster up the courage to admit to it in person.
Let me start by saying that I never intended to hurt Gertrude and that while she was with me I took very good care of her. As you can see she is in perfectly fine condition. Maybe a little confused, but I won’t pretend...
February 2011
1 post
The Mystery of the Red Bees of Red Hook →
No one knew how he had managed to get inside, let alone how long he had been in there. Though it was a busy subway station, that particular entrance had been closed off for decades, the stairwell shrouded by a metal cage at the platform level and shuttered from the world outside by a padlocked trapdoor. The grime of abandonment had accumulated in the area under the stairs, with food wrappers and...
May 2010
1 post
More With Dementia Wander From Home →
They know where I am. Sun is high up now, looks like noon or close to it. I just have to reach those rocks and make a right. A right at the rocks. I’ll bet I can see the house from those rocks if I can get up there. Used to be able to climb like a little monkey. That big oak in the backyard, could see the whole damn valley from the top there. Out here, not one tree… Just rocks. Those tests...
March 2010
1 post
Playboy Previews Accidentally Shown On Children's... →
After days on the road in a filthy rental van there was nothing quite like the southern hospitality of a beautiful woman. Lee hadn’t seen her since their college days together, but she was as gorgeous as ever. She now had the glow of a mother, the proud smile of an independent woman.
Amber peeked through the blinds before opening the door. Lee had exchanged a few emails with her but was too...
February 2010
1 post
Body Found In Plane Landing Gear Hatch →
They told him to leave work early because of all the commotion. A crowd of journalists and reporters followed Sujiro on his way to the airport’s parking lot bombarding him with questions about the dead man. Someone had told them he found the body in the landing gear compartment. He repeated what he’d told the flight attendants who’d surrounded him with questions earlier. They all wanted vivid...
January 2010
2 posts
On Subway Tracks, a Loss Compounded by Mystery →
On this day, like any other, he would walk the two blocks from his apartment to the subway station on the neighborhood’s rubbish strewn shopping avenue. Some days he would try to count his steps from the stoop to the station’s entrance, so as to eventually compare this route to the one that went around the block, past the Chinese laundromat. He would think about counting but never get past the...
8 Deaths in a Small Town, and Much Unease →
He parked once again by the grain elevator at the end of the lonely gravel road. The early morning fog hovered over the surrounding fields and reminded him of some dream place inside of a cloud. He’d dreamt of flying only once and in that dream he’d seen lost landscapes hidden inside the clouds as he swooped through them, shadows of places he only half remembered just beyond his grasp. He took a...
December 2009
1 post
Picking (Up) Winners Without Placing a Bet →
Charlie ran away from home during a blizzard that turned the night into a black and white cocoon. Everything felt far away and the short walk to the subway station seemed to last an eternity, its completion a much deserved period at the end of a run-on sentence which wound its way around his thoughts. Charlie’s mind was reeling, the argument with his father repeating itself and producing alternate...
November 2009
1 post
Window Watchers in a City of Strangers →
That week he learned that his grandmother had passed away. Although this was something he foresaw, as it is what grandmothers are wont to do, it hurt him more than he expected. He hadn’t seen her in years and only occasionally spoke to her on the phone, but her presence loomed large in his life. The timing of the news was particularly distressing for him. For days he had been unable to sleep,...
October 2009
5 posts
Beating Followed Molesting, Police Say →
Vincent waited for the bus with both hands burrowed deep into the pockets of his hoodie. A light drizzle fell all around him, onto the gravel beside the road and onto his freshly cut hair. He squinted trying to see through the haze passing cars sprayed into the air, looking at the distance for a bus that would take him to the prison where his father had been locked up for the past fifteen years....
13 Injured in PATH Train Crash Near Herald Square →
Mom repeated that things were just fine. She tried to convince me by giving me a new dress, and by then I was old enough to know that such tricks were a bad sign. She didn’t know but I would catch her crying in the kitchen while she made dinner. I would sense the growing anxiety in my father’s hands every time he ran his fingers through my hair at night and whispered “sleep tight, don’t let the...
Once Reviled as Nazi Collaborator, Now a Savior →
His mother waited for years to tell him the details of that fateful journey. From as far back as he could remember she had mentioned bits and pieces in order to impress on him above all that he was lucky to be alive, that they all were. People had been ravished by the war, the scars were clear on their faces and everywhere in Budapest, as they still are. Nevertheless, his mother was a cheerful...
Howard Unruh, 88, Dies; Killed 13 of His Neighbors... →
I just want to go home. Yesterday I turned 28 sitting in a muddy ditch outside of Da Nang with my best friend dying in my arms. You know I don’t care about birthdays but this one had been creeping up on me in a strange way, had me thinking about it more than I care to admit, and sure enough it turned into the second worst day in my life. When that man came into my house and murdered my family he...
One Dead and Three Hurt in Queens Apartment Fire →
They called me in to identify the body. My mother’s wrinkled face was black with ash and blue with death. Her eyes were closed but her mouth still agape, still gasping for air. Her thin hair was mostly burnt and she looked like a man. I could still hear her screaming my name in frustration from across the apartment, as she often did when I still lived there. For the most part I tried to forget...