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Fiction
Harper Screamed Again
Harper lost the Wheeler account. He felt it slip through his fingers like something warm and sticky, making a mess of everything. He spent the rest of the morning in Johnstone’s office, staring at the burgundy carpet as his boss leaned a finger into Harper’s face and raged.
December 1989Tales Of Lord Shantih
Once the Lord Shantih was asked to write down his teachings. He took a sheet of paper and covered one side with ink until it was a solid black. The other side he left clean.
November 1989The Reverend Clearwater Immler Meets The Devil
Evil crouched above him in the eaves, watching, soundless. Infinitely patient evil, colorless, invisible in all lights. If evil has a mouth to smile, it was smiling. Its long waiting had at last been rewarded.
November 1989Thin Ice
When we got to the pond, he stopped calling her name. The hole was black, and little black waves splashed against the jagged edges of the broken ice. Father took one step onto the pond, but had to jump back.
November 1989Second Thoughts
I had seen the boy many times before, but never really looked. I did not actually know his name until the day he was being escorted to the front office by a smug-looking assistant principal.
November 1989Alice’s Hunch
Dickens, I find myself thinking. Not Toulouse-Lautrec drawing in smoky bars, but Dickens; this morning I am Dickens walking around with eyes wide open, seeing a pure beam of humor illuminating human squalor.
November 1989Serpent’s Tooth
We lived in a walk-up apartment house. The three of us would anticipate his footsteps, listening for them up the tiled stairs and across the tiled floor. He had a variety of walks: a confident, sober stride; a penitential limp; a self-assured, rocking swagger.
October 1989Class Struggles In Sweet Cider
This is the part where Karen Wheeler jumped in and turned the world around, whether because Karen Wheeler is one fine bowler herself and enjoys as much as anybody kicking the butts of the folks over in Greensboro, or whether, as I’ve said, her heart has spots soft for Gus, I don’t know.
September 1989Rock Sitting
She never talked to any of them — neither the rocks nor the creek, the roots nor the leaves, nor even the birds perching overhead. Words killed living things, fixed them forever as solid matter. Nothing was solid here, as long as she didn’t breathe a word.
September 1989Caleb’s Journal
I live alone. Other men might be lonely. But who can notice what might be absent when other things are present?
August 1989
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