The Shore
The keeper of the lighthouse took his indentured apprentice down to the beach for the first time yesterday. Down the narrow path between the crags that looked like teeth from a tiger and through the jagged points resembled nothing so much as tusks. The keeper showed...
What the brain hasn't told us about Art
Never trust someone who wants to sell you the Brooklyn Bridge or tell you how neuroscience explains it all. Both are scams, though in the latter case someone might actually be sincere. That doesn’t make them any less wrong, though: some of the most dangerous ideas in...
Tweezing
Some people pace when they’re nervous. Others can’t stop talking. I, given the opportunity, tweeze. My eyebrows, that is. I don’t know if anyone else does it; it’s the one habit I have which makes me wonder if I’m compulsive. I tweeze my eyebrows every morning no...
How Crowdsourcing Changed Independent Horror Movies
Back in the days of independent cinema – you know, before 1980 – there were dozens of film production houses that worked region-by-region all across America. Small shops, small pictures, small money – mini-studios that might give you some financing if you had a track...
Soloist
Patty has Vaseline in her hair and waterproof blue mascara smeared across her eyelids. Hank can see the hibiscus bobby pin in her bun from up in the stands, and now that he sees her in the pool, her arms above her head as she waits for the music to begin, he is nervous....
Argentina Love
When I was ten I lived in Odessa and dreamed of sailing to Africa, Australia or Argentina. I loved all far away places that started with A. My name started with A, too–Alla–but I didn’t like my name. I kept altering it. Angelina. Angela. Ariel.
Yes, I was...
Shifted
I fire my gun. People around me turn swiftly, some duck and take cover. No time to explain. Plastered on the building straight ahead is a movie poster. Your typical will-they-won’t-they edge-of-your-seat romantic comedy. A bullet hole in the male character’s washboard...
The Goldfish’s Memory
The sun, the silence, the sound of the little fountain, the warm water in the pool and the quiet resort all so relaxing. The two women accompanying me, my mother and she, made my long weekend feel safe and peaceful. The three of us looked so much like each other, our...
Owl Tree
Darren had proved himself capable, though he’d only been hired as bar-back two weeks prior. He had a grace and speed about him. He had a knack for quick-cut conversations, and for queuing the music that needed to be played. Jessica trusted him.
When Jessica...
The False Knight Upon the Road
A dozen voices hummed rhythmically in the back of her head as she hopped down the stone steps and walked off the quad. A men’s chorus, a tune she had heard a long time ago, as a child … a memory fragment. Her father’s study, smelling of pipe smoke, as he handled his...
