Sirius-the-Dog

    It was the one thing you knew you had to do.  You still know it.  It feels wrong but you know it.  Deep down in the coldest part of your brain, it’s there.  She is the one thing that can bring you back.  And she is so close.    You hang up the phone.  It crashes into the receiver with the familiar metallic crunch.  Your hand stays wrapped about the handle for a moment, unwilling to release it just yet.  She’s waiting for you now; waiting for you to be there once more; waiting for you to hold her like you used to, arms about her and your chin resting atop her head.  On the other end of the line her voice sounded beautiful, no

 Jonah knelt over Micah’s body. He lay curled up on the forest floor, hands limp against the loam. Something heavy had cratered the right side of his face into a sharp mess of bones and blood. The cavalry sword that had once hung at Micah’s hip rested on the ground a few feet away. His insides had been cut open and what had fallen out was torn to pieces. They had stopped to eat Leadbelly too. Jonah stood. It was midnight and the trees were moving. An eerie wind rushed through them and rattled the undergrowth. The moon ducked in and out of the clouds moving across the sky. Above him Blue Ridge loomed like an oppressive spirit.

 The signal came like it used to, in the old days, during the war. The smoke burned a pale color tinged green. It rose in wispy clouds from the top of Blue Ridge. Quick winds brushed it out across the sky like watercolor paint on blue paper. Jonah spied it not long after the sun had come up as he often had when the war was about. He ate what was left of yesterday’s kill and finished off a strip of jerky he’d gotten from the Goodwife Hetty a few weeks before. She was the only one who bought things from him since Pastor Sykes had died. He gathered his old musket, checked his powder was dry, and counted his musket balls: twenty&md

His horoscope told him that today was the day.  What a queer thing that was; he never checked his horoscope.  He always threw that section angrily into the garbage.  Not today though.  Today he read it.  God knew he would, so his words went into the paper and no others.  Nobody else could understand the horoscope today, just him.  They would all throw it angrily in the garbage and ask Heaven why today could not have been the day.  But not him.  Today he drove. His car seated eight comfortably.  Leather interior.  Not the fake kind, it was real leather.  It used to be alive. There used to be an animal underneath it, muscle and bones and marr

There was a big fanfare when Todd came back.  Even a couple of newspaper reporters showed up.  It was only right I guess, what with him being dead for a year.  At least I think it was a year.  I mean, he was gone for eight and I'm pretty sure if a person is missing for seven years the government declares them dead or something.  I know that his parents bought a tombstone from the place on First Street a while ago.  They put it up in their family lot at the cemetery, next to his grandparents.  I went to visit it after the funeral.  It had his name and a little insc

 Polo talked too much. At night when the boys came in he came up on the porch with a pack of cigarettes and started up with the first one to put a boot in the camp. He would light a cigarette and wheeze through a cloud of smoke and go on about the old days of operating the heavy lifters, back before they had all the safeties put on them. "Them old two-fits," he said nearly every night with varying degrees of clarity, "Thems was real bastads. Used to come up off the deck too quick on the front side and flip over." He claimed he knew at least three operators who died that way. "Them new lifters," he said, following whoever into the kitchen,

 You are still alive. The most terrifying moment of your entire life just passed and you survived it. Your heart shakes in your chest. You let out a long breath to slow it down. Your seat creaks as you shift your weight. You test your left arm. It feels sore and overworked but not tight like it was. No heart attack then. Something pinches together in your gut and your insides slosh around. You grit your teeth against the pain and test the rest of your body. Right arm works. Your neck is sore but you can turn your head. Legs don't seem to be functioning. In fact you can't feel them at all. Somewhere behind you, amid the groaning and crying

Books falling. Conrad goes through each room and tears them off the shelves with frightful efficiency. His laughter is swallowed up by the bulkheads around us, muted, contained. The hush of the corridors reminds me of a library. He continues to pull books; the muzzle of his pistol glows. We have known each other a long while, Conrad and I. The two of us met in university, at the astronomy lectures. Though the guest instructors were numerous and knowledgeable, I fear I did not learn a great deal from their lessons. I confess that my mind often wandered then, before I had a good fetter on it. My roving eyes glanced too often upon the lovely wo