I’m walking into the quickening blizzardas if into a hunter’s dream— the flint arrow through my chest keenerthan earthly desire. Wherever I went teeth followed me, relentless as the shadowof the doe-eyed boy I thought I couldn’t live without. Long ago, lovemade all gestures of flowering possible on earth. Now I’m tired of livingon the …
Three months before my husband and I married, we moved to a house on the route of a ghost tour. It didn’t stop outside our door, but one block away was a haunted graveyard and a house that when photographed had white orbs hovering outside its upper windows. The tour guides wore long black coats …
1 I ask them what they think about. Truly, whatever’s on your mind. Write it down. Anonymously. The mundane. The trivial. The serious. The sublime. Work, one writes. Sleep. Dexter. My best friend’s cystic fibrosis. Stress, says another. Responsibility. Israel. Career. Money, another says. Sandwiches. Parties. Girlfriends. Being an asshole, someone writes, and following, in …
My wife, LauraBeth, and I bought our first house in 2006, in the New Jersey suburbs. I was twenty-four and she was twenty-three. We had money for a down payment because her mother had died and left behind some insurance money. We purchased the house for $175,000, at what I later learned was an obscene …
Little is known about the history of fog. But it is water—billions of microscopic droplets suspended above the earth—and it comes eight ways. Hovering close to the ground, it is the most common, radiation fog. Floating above the lowest points in Appalachia, it is valley fog. Fog drawn inland from the Pacific, or the San …
My boyfriend had no interest in scaring me until I began working with the Devil Boy. After that, he—my boyfriend, not the Devil Boy—paid careful attention to me, planning and executing little jolts. Frightening me became a sort of art. He started small, with silly, generic gestures at first, anything that would elicit a reaction: …
The dog seller hawks mangy curs across from me at the flea market. Misty brings me a cherry slushie like she’s a woman who takes care of her man. Don’t think I don’t notice she makes a big show of it for mister dog seller. The son of a bitch wears clean overalls. He’s bigger …
