This House of Hopes, This House of Bones

By Cynthia Zhang

My husband is home again. I cannot hear him well, not with the ringing in my ears and the throbbing headache making every movement agony, but the ghosts keep me informed. There he is, slipping off his coat and shoes at the door and placing his briefcase on a drawer; there he is in the kitchen, chopping vegetables and tasting the broth for salt. The worried caretaker, ever careful of my comfort.

The ghost with ribbons in her hair strokes my arm. She is the youngest of my visitors, with a round, heart-shaped face framed by curling ringlets that reach the middle of her nightgown—a picture of Victorian innocence, skin white and smooth as a doll. A knife gash winds around her throat like a ribbon, blood spilling down her dress like rubies.

Transparent fingers reach for mine, squeeze with more strength than you would imagine a ghost could possess. A voice scrapes inside my head, soft and high like whispers in the wind. Now, she whispers, now, now, now.

But I cannot get out of this bed. (Continue Reading…)

An Inordinate Amount of Interest

by Ayida Shonibar

Green flows from your imagination onto the page, bleeding viridescent liquid through the intermediary of your brush. The handle bends to your grip like the natural extension it’s been for as long as you remember, the interface between skin and lacquered wood as familiar as your eyelids kissing to blink.

This last stroke completes the painting. It’s not finished finished—you could always add a layer of yellow to bathe the leaves in warmer sunlight or deepen their definition with purple shading. More details to bring this rendition of the peepal tree closer to how it’s rooted in your memories of your homeland.

But there’s the time limit to consider.

The interviewer waits for you to slide the paper to her side of the table. Her gaze traces over your artwork and lights up. “It’s beautiful.” She splays her fingers an inch above the still damp branches. “So lifelike it hardly takes any effort to do this.”

Light suffuses her hand. Beneath her palm, foliage springs from the paper and spills across the tabletop. She pulls it upwards, fingers still glowing as they curl around the sapling to draw it out of your now blank canvas.

Air catches in your throat. Pulse pounding, you lean closer to gingerly touch a heart-shaped peepal leaf.

It’s solid. Waxy. A real piece of where you came from, a shining emerald on this other side of the planet. When you dig your nail in, the bitter scent of raw vegetation tickles your nose. (Continue Reading…)

The Work of Smith House

By P.C. Verrone

The photos hardly did Smith House justice. Its stone façade loomed above the red oak, black cherry, and eastern hemlock that had thronged the country roads for most of my drive. Towers with parapets sprouted at odd angles, and a hundred arched windows stared as my car approached the iron gates.

The middle of nowhere was not exactly where I wanted to find myself, but I didn’t have much choice. Developers had bought my rent-controlled apartment, and my freelance graphic design gigs could hardly pay for a new place in the city. I had a bed back in Kansas, but I sure as hell wasn’t about to go back to live with Dad and the rest of them. So, I found myself scrolling through listings of sublets and artist residencies that might let me shack up for a few weeks until I figured out my next move. Then, I stumbled on Smith House.

I was a city girl at heart, but I could do worse than a mansion in the Berkshires. The call for applications also contained these magic words: Residents are welcome to stay without charge for as long as they feel artistically nourished. The only issue? The call was for “Indigenous Cultural Bearers.”

The Indigenous part I had down, but I doubted my graphic design exactly fit what they were looking for. Still, I was desperate. So, I wrote beadwork as my discipline.

It was only a little white lie to get a roof over my head. Besides, these places typically didn’t care what you did while in residence. Every artist retreat I’d ever attended began with the hosts emphasizing that we shouldn’t feel pressure to produce, and that rest was an important part of the process. One acceptance email later, I was throwing all my earthly possessions into my Dodge Wrangler and ended up on the front steps of Smith House.

The heavy door cracked open and a white woman in round glasses and a gray turtleneck poked her head out. “You must be Miss Crow,” she said. “I’m Miss Fairewell, Mister Smith’s assistant and coordinator for the residency. Please come in.” (Continue Reading…)

The Yellow Wall Paper

By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer.

A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity—but that would be asking too much of fate!

Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it.

Else, why should it be let so cheaply? And why have stood so long untenanted?

John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.

John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures. (Continue Reading…)

Jerry Got Bit

By Richard Dansky

Linda’s words hung there in the air, a bad omen that had arrived uninvited. Before I could say anything, she looked at her watch, then back at me. “We don’t have long before Vic finishes up with those losers and comes looking for me, so we’ve got to be quick. The only other thing you need to know is that they’re not human. They look human, and they talk human, but they ain’t. They’re faster and stronger than us, they can smell you before you ever see them, and those teeth ain’t for show. They’re predators, we’re prey, and the only advantage we’ve got is that they haven’t figured out yet that serious firepower can even the odds. They’re arrogant, ‘cause they think they’re just better.”

I thought about that for a second. “Sounds like they kind of are, really.”

She threw a wadded-up tissue at me. “Whose side are you on, anyway? Now get ready.” (Continue Reading…)