“Never look at a flame for so long that it becomes beautiful.” I was taught that mantra as a child in school, and again as a cadet in the fire academy, but I heard it from my father first. […]
When my Dad went missing I returned to Slakeby. The letter had been written in scrawl, no way to recognize who had contacted me, but I had no reason to doubt its authenticity. […]
Mariah came late to the woods, wobbling into the weak firelight on her newest legs. Bared by her jean shorts, each long tan thigh was ringed with a fine, crimped seam like an empanada. My parents always wanted me to be a model, she’d told me at orientation... […]
They were tied up together from the start: Dottie and that other place. That other place, that other eye. Charles didn’t like to think of it as a third eye, though that’s what it was. It wasn’t in his forehead, wasn’t in the center of his face at all. […]
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