“Follow the recipe exactly,” said Mother. “You’ll delight your stepfather.” So, I braised the beef, cut the carrots and diced the onions, as directed. But I substituted arsenic for the oregano and garnished with pomegranates instead of parsley. And that groping, bad-breathed Judas loved it to the end. **** Brooks C. Mendell Brooks C. Mendell
A fly landed on the bottom of the saucepan that was resting on the drainer. Which was allowed. Because it was on the bottom of the saucepan, not inside it, unlike the fly that had greeted Cora when she’d opened the butter dish on Tuesday morning. It had been dead on its back, right in
After departing in a blaze of mediocrity, Graham Vasey returned to St. Joseph’s Junior School only twice in his life. The first time, it was being renamed the Graham Vasey Junior School, in dedication to his Booker Prize-winning success. He had sprung from such humble origins; he thanked his schooldays, in several interviews, as a
You’ve just walked in the door, stripped off your Lycra and turned on the shower when you see it: the toe. Not an ordinary toe; not a toe attached to a foot attached to a leg attached to a body. No. This is a severed toe. Freshly severed. It’s upright and propped against the wall.
You show me the mouldy, rotting body of yet another Siamese Fighting Fish so we stop drinking and head off. In the pet shop we stop to talk to the yellow and blue macaw which answers to the name Pauline Conway. ‘What a disgrace. It’s too big for that cage. We’d do a better job,’
He came into the room and he had no idea that he wouldn’t be leaving, at least, not the same way in which he had entered. It wasn’t that kind of room. The kind a person can just up and decide to retreat back the way they came. She was already there. Sitting. Believing. That’s
Josephine cooked the fish I did not want as I stood on the back porch smoking. The garden was alive and moved with unusual sounds. The wine tasted like metal on my tongue, cold red, that’s how she drinks it and that’s how it is. Ice ice baby. The forty degree heat sizzled my cool
Just now, while you’re walking through the park, if you look up at the right-hand corner of the third floor of the hospital, you’ll see her, Bryony. You know she’s seen you; she has keen eyes and a sense for the coming and going of things. Back in her early twenties, when she was studying
He arrived on Nathan’s tenth birthday. It wasn’t a shock; it was as if Nathan had been waiting for him to appear all along. It had been a nice day, a little chaotic, but nice all the same. After opening the presents and tucking into a mountain of sandwiches, at three o’clock they cut the
Surrounded by bamboo trees, Molly lounges in her stained oak rocking chair, observing her spotted male cat and wondering which Goddess showered the boy with the gift of true patience. But not the kind exhibited by humans, who simply fall into a momentary lapse of reason and stare with vacant eyes at their immediate surroundings.
