Pastoralia
This morning is the morning I empty our Human Refuse bags and the trash bags and the bag from the bottom of the sleek metal hole where Janet puts her used feminine items. For this I get an extra sixty a month. Plus it’s always nice to get out of the cave. I knock on...
Eileen
My mother never packed lunches for me to take to school when I was growing up. I'd sit and stare down at my knees while the other children ate their sandwiches, my stomach empty and rumbling. As soon as I'd get home in the afternoon, I filled my belly with bread and...
The House of the Spirits
My wife didn't miss the refinements she had been accustomed to, and the day the shipment of furniture and household goods I had ordered to surprise her arrived at the door, all she said was how "lovely" it was. I myself had to figure out where everything should go;...
The Antidote to the Malady of Materialism
It is this mass of unclean world that we have superimposed on the clean world that we cannot bear. When I looked back, out of the clearness of the open evening, at this Littlehampton dark and amorphous like a bad eruption on the edge of the land, I was so sick I felt...
50 words – mountains
Jackson gazes out of the window through clouds, and catches a glimpse of the magnificent Andes dashing past like so many spooked animals. The next fifty days will change her life, eating fellow passengers and melted snow. But for now and with no great ceremony, the...