All short stories published on The Quick and the Dead are linked below. Happy reading!
-
This is the last post for now of my unfinished stories. I think all the characters I’ve shared here have a bigger story to tell. I hope you’ve enjoyed wondering what else might happen to them. Katherine Amelia Herrington has a mantra that she says everyday as she brushes her hair. She stares at her Continue reading
-
This is the second of three short scenes from stories that aren’t fully written. Some of these scenes are part of a larger work that remains unfinished and some of them are from tales that haven’t come to me…yet. “Lydia Agnes,” the shepherd called. I snapped by head up, fully at attention, though I had Continue reading
-
Days came and went. Months came and went. Summer came and went. The start of school came and went. Thanksgiving, and then Christmas, came and went. Steven and I heard nothing from David and Marian. Despite invitations to barbeques, birthdays, holidays and celebrations. Their silence was a cold stone in my belly. I blamed myself Continue reading
-
I crumpled yet another sheet of paper into a ball, tossing it into the garbage along with the dozen others already there. Whenever I got going, there was always too much to say, and the letter ended up being too long and convoluted to make any sense to the reader. It needed to be clear. Continue reading
-
Canada is not like how I thought it would be. It’s better than I had heard. It’s better than I ever imagined. Mira, Simon and I spent four months in refugee housing. It was an apartment block filled with women and their kids, or kids living with an assigned guardian from the Canadian government, men Continue reading
-
I wrote everything out for Maddie. No code. She would need to understand everything as it was. Just like Gran did for me when I first joined the network. I hid this letter in the basket under the bathroom where I keep my menstrual supplies. Mark would never look there. It reminds him how different Continue reading
-
The worst part of recruiting anyone new to the network of letter writers was the uncertainty. It was always lurking in the shadow of your surety, waiting to pop out of the darkness and scream that you were wrong. It whispered to you that it wasn’t worth the risk, that it would be better to Continue reading
-
I’ve leaving on the next shipment. There are two placements remaining. If you need to get something to Africa, send it by airmail. There won’t be another opportunity until the guard changes in the old capital. Be on your best behavior. I folded Gilda’s letter tightly and stashed it into my bra. I picked up Continue reading
-
I drop the letter to Gilda in the normal way. There is an old brick in the stone wall behind the post office that wiggles loose. I always fold the letter three times, tuck it to the right of the brick, then shove the brick back in place. I check the brick every few days. Continue reading
-
We don’t talk about the women in the stocks. Not openly on the streets. Not openly in our homes. Not openly in the most intimate of settings with our spouses. It’s never safe to talk about them, and how they got there, because if we ever discuss, it could be seen as questioning. We can Continue reading
The Quick and the Dead 