Ken Elswick was a retired archivist known to list stone-skipping as one of his many hobbies. He owned a labrador named ‘Future’ and held to a variety of unusual beliefs, including the idea that tennis balls could feel pain. In his later years he’d occupied himself with volunteer work down at the local animal shelter and frequent birdwatching in the hope of one day spotting the elusive blue-footed booby. He’d also taken to home renovation – with gusto. One bright summer’s morning he and his wife Booka, who had a fondness for the color oatmeal and looks-wise was a dead-ringer for Bea Arthur from ‘The Golden Girls’, decided to replace the wallpaper in their upstairs bedroom. This was done partly out of boredom and partly out of a long-harbored dislike for the original wallpaper, the pattern of which Ken had often referred to as resembling a ‘murky yellow-brown Christmas sweater’.…
Stella Cromwell was a once-in-a-generation housekeeper. The calmness that came with keeping house – from dusting vintage wine bottles down in a cellar to…
Cracks grew deep in the barren, parched soil; baked hard like a wrinkled old face. Hot and dusty – the sort of dust that…
Paul Lipshut had been casually digging a grave in the pretty hard ground within the grounds of Necropolis cemetery. At a certain point, he…
Wally Funk could feel the weight beginning to press down on him. By his own guess, there were now nearly ten kilograms of live,…
Sometimes you just have to hit things. In Carla’s case that meant the rubber-sheathed steering wheel she was holding. Uselessly she’d already shot the…
Three lone strands of hair were all that remained atop of 4th grade teacher Bruce Starkweather’s curious-thought-filled-head. Moving at a pace his body would barely have…
None of us changes over time. We only become more fully what we are. Peddling his spindly pale legs like a demon possessed while…