Abraham whistled home at dusk. Crickets sang in the brush, sagebrush sang in his breath. It was a mile from the grid road, where the school-bus dropped him, to the trailer he shared with his father.

His lunch pail banged his thigh with each step, heavy with collected stones and the carcass of the prairie falcon he had found in the schoolyard. It was past decomposition, the delicate bones exposed in a dusty framework seen through a nest of crumbling feathers. Continue reading →

If the good dreams were about soaring down the bright sky, borne on a warm breeze, the bad ones were the opposite: a cold, dark hole like a mouth gaping from above to devour him, just as he slipped into sleep. He’d had nightmares about the tunnel as long as he could remember. But the sun had been veiled in clouds for days, each morning the air was chillier, and now his house had collapsed again under the weight of cold rain. He crouched, shivering, just inside the tunnel’s vast, tubular length, watching leaf fragments swirl past in the gushing water. He had never dared to explore beyond the area visible from the entrance. If he could find the courage to go up, would the tunnel take him to the light above the clouds? Continue reading →

A lynch mob had surrounded one of the locals out near the east fence, Jake could see, and were now endeavouring to hold him still for long enough to wrap a noose around his neck. The noose was made from an old rope, worn and frayed–like the mob, it had been hastily adapted from something found lying idly on one of the farms that dotted this region. The mob, made up of less than a dozen of the local farmhands, taunted and teased the naked intruder who stood in their midst, cowering before them. Behind them loomed the twelve foot high, electrified fence which protected the settlement. A mound of soil beside the fence showed where something had burrowed beneath it, invading the territory here. Continue reading →

Like so many applicants, Amy discovered the job through someone else. A friend of her mother’s co-worker sent a link: Summer Position at Rosewood Historic Park. Candidates required a background in history, strong verbal skills, and a sense of loyalty, all of which Amy felt she possessed. During her interview, she told the story breathlessly: the flurry of emails (though I don’t pretend to understand such things), the way she’d circled the interview date twice on her calendar. Continue reading →