This little story features a bottle of red wine with a forgettable name, my wife, our mutual best friend of 18 years — Chris, and my two sons — Cameron and Brad. Thank the good Lord for great friends, I slurred happily, and we all agreed and gulped down more wine. I look at my wife giggling at one of ...
Grease my hands with some cash, Jimmy. That was the only slurred, whiskey-inspired request I ever got from Donny; that happened a month ago. I probably shouldn’t have greased his hands. If I didn’t, 20 kids would’ve been alive. So Donny got his grease and he bought himself a gun, and now he is dead. He went down in a ...
It might be an ending or a beginning. I’ll find out for sure in a bit. I wrote what I felt and caressed my pistol, and placed it with a sense of exhilaration and trepidation against the side of my temple and —
All he did was stare at the fan revolving fast. He liked the cool wind caressing his baby face as he lay in his cot with his mother smiling down at him. As the days leeched into weeks, he continued staring at the fan turning blindingly fast. Happiness is this, he thought. The only thing that changed ever since he ...
Sad blue eyes were communicating a wistful farewell to all those who came to see her fight to live one more day. Tears coursed through her ravine of wrinkles and pooled into a tributary at the deep cleft in her chin. Janice whispered an earnest prayer to live just a little bit more so that she could appreciate the things ...
Your Mama and I met one cold day in Dublin, and I knew she loved Guinness. So I bought her one. I knew how she wanted to be kissed, and what ticked her off. I also knew she dreamed of having a daughter called Alice. Life was perfect, Alice. Simply because I could predict. Because I could jump forwards and ...
With a bespoke contoured handle that’s made to sit snugly in any hand, the Alethea Steak Knife that measures a convenient 7 1/2 inches was designed to carve through meat, sinew and bone cleanly, swiftly and more importantly — indiscriminately. Tonight (in Mr. Perera’s hand) it swished through a pretty fine chunk of rump steak that left a dribble of ...
It’s been 14 days since the food ran out; in another 2 days there will be no water. Dad said sometime ago that desperation leads people to do terribly desperate things. I probably shouldn’t have asked about dinner tonight, right after saying grace, while holding hands with Mum and Dad. I felt my Mum squeeze my hand a bit too ...
So this is what death looks like, Zilphia thought: blue-tinged lips; blood-matted hair; green eyes staring into space; a dislocated shoulder; and, a stab wound to the heart that has welled up with coagulated blood. The only source of life was a molecule of winged annoyance hovering near him portending an immediate invitation of decay. This body at the morgue ...
She remembered the times he used to leave her with a wink and a whisper: I can’t kiss your lips right now, darling; they are too dry. Maybe you shouldn’t eat so much salt; your lips are wrinkled so, and it won’t do your blood pressure any good. She watched him now with his incisors glistening and his eyes dancing ...
