I suppose this answers the question about the existence of a human soul. By all rights I know I should be gone. At least I hope so. I should have listened to the preacher more closely. Learned what I had to learn so that when I finally pass from this torment, I know my soul is going somewhere.

When I was eight, I had a bout of chicken pox coupled with pneumonia. I was told afterward that I came very close to dying. All I remember was the pain, itching, and feeling like my chest was going to implode every minute of every day for what seemed like years. I was convinced it would never end. I was too young to understand death, so I couldn’t even wish for that. All I had was the feeling of burning and freezing, shivering and sweating, my skin crawling under the warm sheets, and the muffled sounds of people talking. The tone of their voice told me it was serious, but I had no framework to understand what was happening, so all I had was panic and pain. (more…)

Tibby remembered the words out loud.

“Shoot them in the head the radio transmission said. That was when there were still radio transmissions to be heard.”

Tibby lifted the rifle to her shoulder. She got the AA battery in her sights. She pulled the trigger and removed it from on top the mailbox at the end of the driveway. (more…)

She knows the taste of nails,
a clutch of them in her mouth
like a dressmaker’s pins.
The flavor of iron is comforting,
something she can wield. (more…)

We first played this game as children
some three thousand miles south of here,
clattering out of screen porches
and down back steps onto cushioning grass.
Here my thick boots snap the snow like bone.
Freeze, somebody would yell, and we’d halt,
our traitorous hearts still pounding their drums.
There is no pulse on the tundra but mine.

(more…)

Dr. Eckhardt sat up straight and arched his lower back trying to work out the knots. He removed his glasses and rubbed his eye before replacing them. How many hours had it been? Not that it mattered. He had not been home in a month. With no windows in the long, narrow tile covered room, time was measured from case file to case file.

The florescent light above him flickered, went black for a moment, and then came to life. (more…)