Oct 29: FULL MOON Mary could only leave the house on a full moon. The doctors said she had agoraphobia, but that was because they didn’t have a word for what she had. She had always thought it rather strange—that the inside of her mind was determined by words, rather than the other […]
Oct 28: CEMETERY The day was gray and depressing. The golden leaves had all fallen and been raked away, and the hills around the cemetery were dull as pot-metal from all the bare tree branches. One or two evergreens speckled the vista, but for the most part it was scenery in need of
Oct 27: MASK Whenever I get a diagnosis, I’m never really sure that it’s my diagnosis. I have what I have nicknamed Mystery Autoimmune Disease, or as my sarcasm-laden boyfriend likes to call it, “MAD Cow Disease.” I forgive him because he painted me a picture of a Holstein cow in a can-can dress
Oct 26: VOODOO Sam’s kitchen wasn’t one of those photogenic open restaurant kitchens. Au contraire. It was stained floor tiles and a gaping grate in the middle of the floor, battered heavy-guage pots hanging from blackened hooks, a walk-in baking oven with yellowed glass, a mixer with a bowl that could hold a couple
Oct 25: TRANSFORMATION I found it while going through an old newsgroup, looking for a copy of one of the first poems that I ever wrote. Rec.alt.tentacles, the newsgroup where all the cool kids hung out back in the day. Everyone pretended to be some sort of extra-dimensional being of godlike status. I
Oct 24: BONES, PART II (Haven’t read part I yet? It’s here.) It was time to face the airplane. Lakeisha’s son lay injured in a hospital in Hawaii. She had to go. Cars and trains would not do, of course, but Donte, in a delirium, had left her a message: The bone man
Oct 23: MAD SCIENTIST My best friend and I hadn’t talked for eleven years, after the accident. She said she was sorry, I said I’d never ride in a car that she was driving again, and she said if I didn’t trust her absolutely then I didn’t deserve her friendship, and I said,
Oct 22: JACK-O-LANTERN We carved the turnips and other roots with their eerie too-real faces, Against the spirits and fair folk, from their barrows now abroad. The demons and the devils set up their tricks in secret places, The sun was set and the witches and the warlocks shed facades. ’Twas time for
Oct 21: HORROR MOVIES John Pientka was a real rat-bastard of an older brother. He was the kind of kid who’d sneak up behind you and grab you just to make you jump. He’d pick on you just to get Mom to yell at you to shut up. He snapped bras, he smoked
Oct 20: FREAKSHOW/SIDESHOW October 10, 1899 Darling Cecilia, I pray this letter finds you well in Rochester, and that the doctors have already found a cure for what ails you. You know that I pray for you every night before I go to sleep and every morning when I wake up. I feel
