(Fiction) Time for dreaming

“Is the stag waiting for something?” I stood in the doorway of the old garage. I was supposed to go to a hospital in a couple days. Or was it tomorrow? I could never keep track. But I knew I was almost out of time. I needed help. Maybe I had to break my promise. …

(Fiction) What’s the trick?

The next day was dark and rainy. But it never came down very hard. Not enough to put you to sleep. Not enough to bring earthworms from the ground or flowers from the trees. Just enough to be sad. To keep everyone inside. I was grounded anyway, so it was fine with me. Mom called. …

(Fiction) What were you feeding it?

I woke to flute music. The soft notes fell over me, light and gentle, like how tears fall, or autumn leaves after a stiff breeze. The stag was gone. The sun was shining. I was covered in brown leaves. I had my jacket on and my hat and my hood up, but something had covered …

(Fiction) It whispered something to me

Pringles started barking in the middle of the night. She does that sometimes when I forget to let her out before bed. She doesn’t have much of a bark because she’s such a little dog. She scratched at the back door and yipped. Dad was sleeping hard. He was snoring. I think he drank a …

(Fiction) The pulsing breath of the sky

30Oct Five years ago, a Jewish mystic living in Denmark was found impaled on the spire of a medieval church. It was not clear how she had gotten there, since all points of access to the roof were locked and sealed. She seemed to have been propelled with force, however, since a couple of her …

(Fiction) I will set you free!

People. That was the difference. If they had a mission, they would have put him somewhere secret, somewhere no one would see. Given him orders. When they put him in the middle of a crowd, he knew they wanted chaos. Bryson Beatty sat on the bench looking at all the happy families. It was a …

Wandering the Forest of Forgetting

There isn’t a common name for the magical community—other than that cumbersome phrase, I suppose—which is unfortunate because it’s a tower on a hill. A bastion, a keep, a prison. It gets its fair share of tourists, of course, but those who stay tend to make it a lifestyle more than a hobby. It permeates …

(Outtake) A Visit to the Night Market

“Where are we going exactly?” “The gypsy night market.” “Right.” I had no idea what that was. I hadn’t heard of there being a night market here like there is back home. “Why?” I wanted it to be somewhere public. Busy. Safe. “We still need a pot.” “Why do you keep saying ‘we’? I don’t …

It was a bad sign

It was a bad sign. Ruud stopped when he saw Zen-ji standing outside the closed doors to Erasmus’s chambers. The stiletto killer straightened his velvet tie and brushed back his pomaded hair before walking up the last few steps and standing before the giant Japanaman. He didn’t look up. There was no point. Zen-ji’s colorful, …

I want to tell you something—something I’ve never told anyone

I want to tell you something—something I’ve never told anyone, not even my wife. Not that I was keeping anything from her really. I’d simply forgotten. Just another episode from a busy childhood, too silly or boring to mention. Had I even remembered. Which I hadn’t, until recently. But lately I carry it around with …