When Susan was seven, they were only nubs. Her mother, Marge, took her to the pediatrician. He performed a biopsy. He sent her to a specialist. The specialist deemed the growth benign, though unusual, and recommended monitoring and periodic tests. Marge took her to more specialists. They did every kind of blood work and scan in their arsenal, and tried some new ones. Two projections of keratin and proteins that were not cutaneous was the first assessment. It was like saying to someone with flu symptoms, “your nose is running, and you seem to have a cough.” [Read more…] about Cleopatra, Scheherazade, & the Deerchild
secrets
Ordinary Wizardry
Lesson: First
“There are only two types of magic, Mr. Lauds. The magic of perception and the magic of dexterity.” The man who had spoken these words pulled on his pipe without moving his lips. He sat in a Queen Anne chair with feet flat on the floor in a coiled posture, as though he might launch like a spring. Yet he vaguely caressed a bronzed pocket watch, in a day when you didn’t see them much, as though he was two people, one also quite relaxed. It was not the type of watch you carried as an affectation – it was dented and darkly oxidized, and his hand did not turn it over and again, flipping the lid open and closed like a pocket lighter. His fingers moved on it gently, as though it were a pendulum of concentration extended from the pivot point of his otherwise still body. He had just finished lighting a pipe. That prop is not enough, then – he is a man who thinks about more than one thing at a time. [Read more…] about Ordinary Wizardry
Talking Your Way into Dodge
Our garden grows ripe and strong, even if the soil is bare,
around the head of Mrs. Long, that Daddy had left lying there. [Read more…] about Talking Your Way into Dodge
What Doesn’t Eat You
Tommy knew there was a monster in the bathtub. You could have told Tommy that the bathtub didn’t *exist* more easily than getting him to give up his belief in the monster. The monster wasn’t just real, it was hungry, it was mean, and it wanted Tommy. Tommy was sure of it, more sure than a seven year old could be sure of anything. His parents tried cutting off television. They tried taking away his comic books. They tried a therapist. The therapist said his belief in monsters was natural and would pass. It didn’t. [Read more…] about What Doesn’t Eat You
Eagles’ Wings and Unicorns
When my sister and I would go the Carnival Circus, we couldn’t tell our Dad, of course. “No jobs,” is what my Uncle Kevin used to say, whenever you’d ask him why we only had a few restaurants in town, and why we had to drive to Olderville to get groceries since the Piggly Wiggly shut down, and why the amusement park that would open just before Lent and close down in time for the Fall semester was lost to rust and vandalism and a sea of litter and weeds. The place was restricted – you couldn’t just waltz in, or you’d get the deputy called on you and get your name in the local paper, which was a big deal in a town of only 2900 people (they stopped lowering the number on the sign so people wouldn’t get depressed, after Molly Ames had jumped off Croger Creek Bridge early one morning). [Read more…] about Eagles’ Wings and Unicorns
Hide Your Hydra
A many headed thing – that’s what Dad had called it. He had to call it a ‘thing’. That’s what you do when there’s no known phyla, even in cryptozoology. People get that a unicorn, if they existed, would be a kind of horse. Bigfoot – that’d be a primate. But what the Hell do you call a 24-headed thing with albino fur and no eyes, with canine teeth, that lives under water? A nightmare, that’s what you’d call it, and that’s what I thought it was. Dad sleeping in the boat again. [Read more…] about Hide Your Hydra
Personal Growth
The dog grew larger every day. Sam thought it would stop, once it got to his knees. He thought it would surely stop when it reached his chest, and he had to keep it in the back yard, and feed it a whole bag of food every day. When it reached his shoulders, he began to doubt, and wondered what would happen if the neighbors saw. By then it was eating two bags. His parents left him enough money in the account – they might stay in Europe an extra few weeks if the notion took them, especially if they decided on Italy. When the dog was taller than him, and could look over the fence while still on all fours, he knew it wasn’t going to stop. It would grow and grow until it was bigger than the whole world, and then what would it eat? It would eat Sam maybe, if he didn’t feed it enough. [Read more…] about Personal Growth
Breaking Bone
A tongue is the most dangerous thing next to love. The Christians warn of the tongue devouring the speaker. The Hebrews say the steady, gentle pressure of a tongue breaks bone. And none of this comforted Jerald Parker, whose tongue was enormous by any standard estimation. When Jerry opened his mouth, girls cringed, so most of the time he didn’t. He was twenty three years old and had never been with a woman whose company he hadn’t paid for. Jerry had learned shyness from a young age – that was his Uncle, Roger, who had gotten him a “21st birthday roll” which Jerry had expected to be something you ate in place of cake, maybe with a couple of candles on it – one of those wax pairs of numerals representing his coming of age. [Read more…] about Breaking Bone
Following Fortune (part 1)
In the darkest grove of a forest where no light ever shines, the air is always chill, even in August, and no path of root or rock or footfall is ever straight, there is a winding tree. They call it a winding tree, those that say they’ve seen it, because it’s turned like the twist of a rope, spiraling upward like a snake charmer’s trick, toward a blackened sky. But the tree isn’t the thing that interests little Lyn Fuller. Lyn wants to know where the staircase leads. [Read more…] about Following Fortune (part 1)