Steadfast

by Trisha J. Wooldridge

Dear Suzanne,

I only got here and our camp’s on light discipline, which means that a shambler horde is close. Most of us can’t sleep and are up writing and sharing these tiny LED headlamps.

Dave’s company is at this camp, too. We saw each other at mess, and he looked like crap. Worse when he saw me. No one told him I’d been drafted. He never expected it with my bum leg. He said no one was talking about the front lines, but if they drafted someone like me, things must be really bad.

I told him I was here for more… political reasons. I don’t want him doing something stupid to your dad when we get back because he would. He didn’t think it was possible they could mess with medical records or pay off enough people to get me drafted, but here I am. Both of us are worried about Mom. You’re still checking in on her, right? Are you able to without causing any problems with your dad? I really hope so. Give her our love. She must be a wreck.

I know your performance is coming up, and I wish I were watching you dance rather than being here. But, I don’t regret our kiss. No matter what your dad thinks he can do, I’ll return to you for another. Thinking of that and thinking I am maybe keeping these horrors from getting to you, help me get through.

Love,

Peter (Continue Reading…)

Slipping Petals From Their Skins

By Kristi DeMeester

Carolina smells of viburnum when we bury her. My sister and I stand over the closed casket and pretend the fetid, cloying scent is the death lilies wreathed about the church, but of course we know better. Know if we opened up the box we’d put her in and pried open her mouth, those tiny white flowers would peek out from her throat like lace against her teeth. (Continue Reading…)

The Grave By The Handpost

by Thomas Hardy

I never pass through Chalk–Newton without turning to regard the neighbouring upland, at a point where a lane crosses the lone straight highway dividing this from the next parish; a sight which does not fail to recall the event that once happened there; and, though it may seem superfluous, at this date, to disinter more memories of village history, the whispers of that spot may claim to be preserved.

It was on a dark, yet mild and exceptionally dry evening at Christmas-time (according to the testimony of William Dewy of Mellstock, Michael Mail, and others), that the choir of Chalk–Newton—a large parish situate about half-way between the towns of Ivel and Casterbridge, and now a railway station—left their homes just before midnight to repeat their annual harmonies under the windows of the local population. The band of instrumentalists and singers was one of the largest in the county; and, unlike the smaller and finer Mellstock string-band, which eschewed all but the catgut, it included brass and reed performers at full Sunday services, and reached all across the west gallery.

(Continue Reading…)

Blue John

by D.K. Wayrd

I’m behind the bar shucking oysters when Blue John enters the tavern. He’s wearing a plain tweed suit instead of a policeman’s uniform, but still moves with a constable’s swagger. “Boy,” he says, “where’s your master?” I lay down my knife and leave to find Father, to tell him our new lodger has arrived.

That night, in the storeroom where I sleep, I drag my straw pallet to a spot over Blue John’s cellar room. Gaps between the floorboards give me a slivered view: a table, a wardrobe, a bed. The rest of the cavernous room is dark, beyond the reach of the gas lamp’s wavering light.  Blue John sits half-naked at the table, his bull-chest covered with dark curly hair. He holds a red leather journal in his lap and strokes it lightly, as though petting a cat, before opening it and beginning to write. (Continue Reading…)

The Golgotha Dancers

by MANLY WADE WELLMAN

I had come to the Art Museum to see the special show of Goya prints, but that particular gallery was so crowded that I could hardly get in, much less see or savor anything; wherefore I walked out again. I wandered through the other wings with their rows and rows of oils, their Greek and Roman sculptures, their stern ranks of medieval armors, their Oriental porcelains, their Egyptian gods. At length, by chance and not by design, I came to the head of a certain rear stairway. Other habitués of the museum will know the one I mean when I remind them that Arnold Böcklin’s The Isle of the Dead hangs on the wall of the landing.

I started down, relishing in advance the impression Böcklin’s picture would make with its high brown rocks and black poplars, its midnight sky and gloomy film of sea, its single white figure erect in the bow of the beach-nosing skiff. But, as I descended, I saw that The Isle of the Dead was not in its accustomed position on the wall. In that space, arresting even in the bad light and from the up-angle of the stairs, hung a gilt-framed painting I had never seen or heard of in all my museum-haunting years. (Continue Reading…)