“Nobody cared for long where I had come from. They made their guesses, tried to coax my voice, but nevertheless they quickly made me theirs.”
“In town, people used to rumour we were witches, but no one dared to tell the priest because my grandfather employed half of the townsmen in the hacienda, and because mother and grandmother cooked beans for the women in the village.”
“Now, he notices only my absence, the things I have not done: a thin layer of dust in the hallway, an unprepared meal in the pantry. I’ve started abandoning tasks just to see if he notices, the calculated neglect like a beam from a distant lighthouse.”
We got into the limo. “Does this thing have a mini bar?” I joked. Nobody laughed. I attempted to flatten the creases of my dress. The car started moving, following the hearse through the wintery streets. It went slowly. Sometimes I caught the eye of a pitying stranger in the street, so I decided to look straight forward. I was
The hospital is a cruel place: it lives on pain, suffering, loneliness and misery. All that can come from a human soul. There is cold shielded in shadows, threaded through tarnished grey hallways and the fixed strobe lights above sick beds. Dark doors hide broken souls, doctors moving like shades between graveyards. They barely glance at the fresh graves not
She sighed in exhaustion and threw the phone towards her bed. She paced anxiously around her bedroom. Bhromor had just called to tell her that the trip had to be cancelled for now. She was in the red zone and the infection cases had increased where she lived. Rune was irritated. It had been a month since she had gotten
“It’s so close in here, so close,” said the woman to no one in particular. “Two weeks before winter officially starts and the radiator burns like it’s mid-January…” She trailed off somberly, listening to the polyrhythmic tap dancing of rising steam. Rubbing her forehead, the woman dropped her fork suddenly, ignoring the clank-clunk that came as it bounced off the
Mervin Trumble watched the miniature clock over his television screen: Seven fifty-four. Six minutes more, and then Charlotte would be on-air for their weekly visit. She was easily his preferred shopping channel presenter now that Naomi had departed for parts unknown. That was the pattern with these women, here today, then off to who knew where for reasons they never
The daylight began to fade, and the breeze speeded up a little making him curl his cold toes in contact with the damp floor. He was alone in his cabin, sitting on a stool and peering at the curvy gravel road through his window. A dusty lantern sat on his table beside the long-forgotten bowl of scratch meal containing boiled
Each day, Emma watched for the large white van pulling up in her driveway. At first, she’d hidden herself behind the thick lounge curtains. Now she felt bolder, stronger. If her hair straggled in tousled clumps onto the shoulders of her milk stained housecoat, she no longer cared. When the conservatory walls were being fitted, she had carried the baby
