The cricket bat cracks first at the base of your neck, then across your chest. Another smashes into your back, and that’s the one that sends you hurling to the ground. You cannot believe that they continue to mock you, this gang of boys, as if bashing you to pieces were not enough to prove their cruelty. Now, you are spat upon and, though you cannot see what’s happening behind you, you feel a hot wet stream splattering you, drenching your hair. This is your final degradation. “Dead girl head! Dead girl head!” They scream, push each other, and laugh, kicking at what’s left of you. You take it all in, but give nothing back. “Hey there! Stop that!”…
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If asked, I’d probably say I’m a cat person. They suit my personality with their independent, even indifferent attitudes. I also like fish. But even as I say this I have one dog asleep at my feet and another curled up next to me in my chair. They’re not my first dogs, but the first in a very long time. The first was Bitsy. And I almost don’t even count her. She was a present from my parents, a companion in case I was lonely when my sister started kindergarten. Bitsy and I….well we weren’t close. She wasn’t one of those dogs, like Nana, that assumed the position of child guardian. More like “don’t leave me alone with that child or I can’t be…
It was 8.00 p.m. in Houston, and Martin should have been landing back home in Chicago by now. What the hell, no one would be waiting. Anna had taken everyone with her in the divorce – their two younger kids and Bounder, their Golden Retriever. He stared out Room 1207’s glass wall, as the girl came out of the bathroom. “What do you call that color?” he asked her, pointing to the sky. He recognized it was the same color as the walls in the family room, in the house where he used to live. Mostly, though, he was trying to distract himself, to keep from staring at her too intensely, too hard. She was breathtaking in her youth. He’d forgotten what that…
Tutus at a church bazaar