Everything changed when the door opened. It was like an unexpected blow to the head and I rocked back in recoil, stunned senseless, without thought. The person who greeted me was not even close to whom I anticipated. As I walked confidently from my car I pictured someone entirely different. I had not devised a contingency plan, a fall back position, a way out. Before I knew it, or had begun to regroup, I was inside, behind a closed door with no escape, committed for the evening. I was stuck. Suffice to say she was not her sister. Read the rest of this entry »

Benjamin Franklin described how it was difficult to decide if a painting at the signing of the Declaration of Independence was of a rising or setting sun. As he watched the members put their names on the document he decided it was definitely a rising sun. In another, different kind of ceremony near Philadelphia, along it’s second river, the Schuylkill, the sun is most certainly and thankfully setting on another hot, scorching hundred degree day. Read the rest of this entry »

Hector and Sandy brought the groceries into the kitchen and unpacked massive quantities of the same four items: Frosted Flakes, powdered milk, Folgers, and Campbell’s Chicken Soup. On the other side of the cabin, Eric talked over the never-ending Russian MIDI music emanating from the console in his hands. Read the rest of this entry »

We never expected to end up here.  No maps showed us this; the charts failed us.  Hungry, bloodied, exhausted, we fell upon the doorstep, fully expecting to make this our final resting place, imagining our wasted bodies and eventually our bleached bones attended to by nothing more than the strange birds and scurrying, unseen creatures populating these woods.  With no water left, no food, and no hope, we set our packs down on the hard-packed earth and sank into the shadows of the mammoth trees obliterating the sunlight we could only assume was overhead.  We didn’t speak to one another; we hadn’t spoken in days, though I hadn’t been cognizant of that fact until I submitted to closing my eyes for what I believed would be the final time.  The forest had robbed us of our voices and, subsequently, of our will.  I reclined against the base of one of these wooden pillars of the sky and exhaled through cracked lips, feeling my lungs compress but unable to muster the energy to fill them again, nor to develop any concern for the fact that I was certain they wouldn’t.  The dull humidity of the woods filled my ears as consciousness fled into the undergrowth. Read the rest of this entry »

I was driving home last Thursday when suddenly, with no warning, I was behind a school bus.  Dammit. 

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He must have been old school. How could anyone think otherwise, when the Amazing Mesmer pinched a metal chain between his thumb and first two fingers? Read the rest of this entry »

The dogs wouldn’t stop barking.  They were hoarse, the sound of their raw throats reverberating around the garage below.  The more animalistic their behavior, the more human they sounded, like children crying now, howls that started aggressive and defiant degenerating into unmistakable fear.  Three hours ago, they started scratching at the door, and the sound of claws on sheet metal snaked through the drywall, as if the house itself were whining.  Two hours ago, they started throwing themselves against the door, a series of living cymbal crashes echoing up to the kitchen.  Fifteen minutes ago, they were whimpering as much as they barked.  Read the rest of this entry »

Miller Hyatt had never sailed any boat larger than a Sunfish, and the last Sunfish he piloted sank fifteen years previously. Read the rest of this entry »

James Rutherford moved fast for two hundred twenty years old, and, judging from the triumphant “Kiii!” as he incapacitated his final opponent, he enjoyed it.  Stepping over the sprawled bodies of much younger, broken men, Rutherford accepted a robe tossed across his shoulders by his personal assistant, then brushed the boy away with a silent wave of his hand.  As the gymnasium doors shunted open, he paused to breathe deeply of the rain forest air before marching on into the trees.  Read the rest of this entry »

Alan accepted a Dixie cup of water from the press operator named Ellen, and tried not to wince too visibly when his tongue reacted to the metallic tang of the contents. Evidently the press workers hadn’t yet benefited from the water filtration units that management had begun to install in the building’s water fountains. More disturbingly, they weren’t paying enough attention to Mathew Heath, who kept flopping down on the break room couch and trying to sleep. Read the rest of this entry »