Last of all arose the age of hard iron: immediately, in this period which took its name from a baser ore, all manner of crime broke out; modesty, truth, and loyalty fled. Treachery and trickery took their place, deceit and violence and criminal greed…The land, which had previously been common to all, like the sunlight … Read more
Her, she could make an angel out of any ghost. He didn’t have that gift, unfortunately. He wished to somehow praise the light, but his night vision was so much keener, the details and sharp fragments of truth emerging from the darkness with perfect clarity. The smallest breathing thing will take but an instant to … Read more
I had plenty of occasion, believe me, to wonder what the hell I was doing with my life. How was is that I found myself living in a garbage scow of an apartment building (crammed with shitheels) that had the nerve to call itself Christ Is Risen Estates? How had I acquired so much confusion? … Read more
I don’t suppose you’ll get this letter before I shove off, Phil, but I wanted to leave you with a few words all the same. You’ve probably known me longer than just about anyone, and you know that I’ve always been a dreamer. You probably recall that I used to dream about being an astronaut. … Read more
I used to sit around late at night, mulling and wondering, and watching dark things scuttling through the long shadows on the floor. I would try, try, try to get the story straight, my story, but the thing was no longer capable of running anything but crooked, and it ran through some thick patches of … Read more
As a child he had been hesitant, self-conscious, and frightened of everything, all products of a certain persuasive calamity of the blood, an inbred insecurity that even the constant certainty that he was loved could not entirely vanquish. His response to this crippling insecurity was to act up, and in time, as he grew into … Read more
Since he lost his job as an aviation mechanic in the late 1980s, Riggs has been a clerk at the International Repository of Regrets. He hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in almost ten years. The Repository, housed in a World War Two-era train depot, is a vast place of bad light and spooky, institutional … Read more
When he came up through the tunnel, the darkness had not yet lifted and the cicada were still in full damp rattle. The heat had broken in the night, and the coolness was stirring up an apparational moving fog, heavy, moist. The street lights were dropping fuzzed cones of grainy and ineffectual light straight down … Read more
This is mine. This. This word. These words. They are mine. They belong to me. Increasingly they may be the only things I can claim with any certainty. They come from me, from the mysteries of my blood, from the contents of my brain, welded together by the sparks traveling in my nerves and up … Read more
Please. Thank you. Preceding or preceded by a transaction with some anonymous servant of convenience, and occasionally involving as well a few other words in the form of a request. For days, sometimes weeks, little more in the way of human conversation. His voice was disppearing further down his throat by the day. He would … Read more