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Reflections, Part II
Sylvie should have been terrified at a strange man strolling uninvited into her house. But since she moved she’d suffered a scourge of frogs and a storm of owls, and he was handsome, and smiling in a manner a touch haughty but not at all malicious, and she found it hard to believe that a…
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Wild Hunt, Part II
Although she could no longer hear the Adam-daughter’s movements, the old black dog knew by instinct and subtle vibrations that she had risen in the early morning light. The Adam-daughter looked puzzled and tilted her head in the manner humans adopted for their ineffectual ears as she walked down the hallway toward the living room…
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Reflections, Part I
Sylvie poured Kat more chardonnay and resumed her casual lean on the wrought iron fence rail. The lake – Sylvie’s lake now – stretched out before them, dark and still except for the glittering, gaudy reflection of the house – Sylvie’s house – in the water. Shortly after Kat arrived from Studio City Sylvie had…
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The Old West Brick Road
Lee lost Faith the moment she touched her open-toed shoe to the Old West Brick Road. A gibbering fit, a stranger in a sedan. Witnesses saw her run into the Eldridge but she never came out. Not in an hour, a day, a week. In rare moments of honesty he admitted he lost her before…
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Wild Hunt, Part I
The old black dog examined the newcomers with caution. The one her own size, young and beautiful and stupid with ostentatious flecks of gold woven throughout her fur and the white socks that turned humans into mewling puppies, smelled her sickness and barked a challenge. The old black dog was infirm but not stupid, and…
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Drone
He has no name and no past. This is not a cheap device to build unearned narrative tension, but a literal and genuine truth. Intoxicated by the beckoning brightness of ceanothus and daylilies he has drifted from his fellows and their afternoon ritual and is now irremediably lost. He may experience a vague unease or…
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Happier Times
Stocking feet hushed against marble and the gun a cool weight in his pocket, Anton crept down the hall, indistinct thumps and shuffles meeting his ears as he approached the study. The heavy door opened a bare inch at a time on its silent, oiled hinges, releasing a puzzling blast of toluene. He put his…
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