An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below.  The man’s hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord.  A rope closely encircled his neck.  It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and Read More …

Tinkers George Washington Crosby began to hallucinate eight days before he died. From the rented hospital bed, placed in the middle of his own living room, he saw insects running in and out of imaginary cracks in the ceiling plaster. The panes in the windows, once snugly pointed and glazed, stood loose in their sashes. Read More …

Not a Jot More I was listening to the second of Bach’s cello suites when Dante started emptying his bladder on the Oriental rug. The headphones must have obscured his faint bark but truth be told, he’d given me the usual warning look and I didn’t move fast enough. &nbsp I went to the back Read More …

Ferret Love The ferret woman has a boyfriend, but that doesn’t worry me. He’ll go away eventually, that’s the way of all things. I’m very patient. I am. &nbsp It was last spring, early, when I fell in love with the ferret woman. The first beautiful day, exquisite whirlybird of a sunny blue day, and Read More …

The Hole One day I noticed a hole in my shoe — a Timberland loafer I’d had for two years. This hole was in the widest part of the left shoe: a small opening, maybe 1/4 inch. For some reason, I placed my hand in the shoe, and stuck my finger through the hole. &nbsp Read More …

Paranoia Twinge My heart rate was slightly elevated. My hands felt strange. I experienced a bit of a tremble. There was a twinge of paranoia, and a feeling that I was forgetting something. I hadn’t yet taken the drug, but I was about to. &nbsp There were sixty glass vials in a white cardboard box Read More …

Mistletoe A house really needs to be lived in. It is not just a question of preserving the physical fabric – heating it to keep out the damp and so on – but also a question of keeping what for want of a better word I have to call the spiritual life of the house Read More …

Rose and Cross Now, with six decades on this planet behind me, I’ve let go of so many self-limiting ideas. But in 1995 I was forty, an age that, it seemed to me at the time, should have meant mature self-assuredness and material success, neither of which I possessed. On paper, it all looked good: Read More …

Stories in a Clouded Mirror Message in a bottle &nbsp Valentine Basilevich Glass, native of Vyborg, accountant in the bureau of administration of the Leningrad Parks of Culture and Rest, led a number of unrelated lives. Whereas most people were trapped by the web of Soviet bureaucracy, he reveled in its complexity and quirkiness, finding Read More …

The Woman in the White Impala The 1 mg. tablet of clonazepam needs thirty minutes to kick in so I take that first. Then I put on a polyester shirt and my tan leisure suit, and load up the VCR. As soon as the room begins the gentle stretch and sway that says the tiny Read More …