Horror and Wholesome
It was a vacation of firsts. My first time on a plane, my first time out of the US (yes, Canada still counts!), my first time taking a ferry. My husband kept insisting it wasn’t a big deal, that we were just visiting his parents, but I might as well have found the wardrobe to... Continue Reading →
Calum gave me the Alexa. He thought it was a sweet surprise. I thought of it as another “smart” device to listen in on conversations. I had barely gotten used to using an iPhone, already three generations old by the time I’d gotten it, to help keep our long distance relationship running smoothly. I had... Continue Reading →
I was twenty when I signed up to volunteer with the Long River Fire Company. My dad had been a volunteer fireman with them for well over a decade by then and I took a lot of pride in wearing my gear beside him. He took a lot of pride in getting to fires before... Continue Reading →
I wouldn't say I didn't have a career choice growing up, more that I just was barely aware there were many other options. Dad was a logger. Grandpa was a logger. And his father, and his father, et cetera, et cetera. I was pretty much born with flannel on my back and an axe in... Continue Reading →
Every night for a week, I woke to a gunshot. Just one, across the house, followed by a loud, ringing silence. And then the footsteps. They shuffled slowly up to my door. The knob would rattle softly a few times, but it was locked. I laid in bed, my covers pulled up to my nose,... Continue Reading →
Mrs. Grady was the first to go. Then Mr. O’Toole and Mrs. Shafford. One after another, starting just after my night shift began at 10. I only knew because Bill, one of the nurses, came in with an abundance of bedding and towels. Being in the laundry room, I was usually one of the last... Continue Reading →
The internet is great for a lot of things, like keeping up with the news of getting help with a research project or finding that one song that keeps playing the only line you know over and over in your head so you can learn the rest of it. I thought it would be a... Continue Reading →
I thought I knew what it was to be afraid. I thought I knew it when I was ten and realized I didn't like girls in the same way all the other little boys seemed to. I thought I knew it when I was fourteen and had my first kiss with Stacey Andrews behind the... Continue Reading →
I’d seen a lot of unusual cases in my time as a dermatologist. The human body produces no shortage of strange and baffling conditions. Skin is no exception. When Flora Springs first sat in my office chair, however, she nor her skin seemed strange or baffling at all. She was a young woman, still in... Continue Reading →
Julien was arrested when he was fifteen. The cops said it would be a pretty open and shut case: traces of the victim’s blood were found on his keyboard and the murder weapon was on his desk beside him. I wasn’t home when they swarmed our house with a warrant. I didn’t have to see... Continue Reading →
