The Abbey of Saint Blaise hunkered on the edge of a bluff above the village at the edge of the Adirondacks, but one approached it from the flank along a roadway just out of sight of the gothic-grotesque monstrosity. There was one final bend of the road before the...
"Forgive me Father, for I have sinned." On the other end of the vid line I heard a small sigh. The view screen showed nothing but the grille pattern signifying the confidentiality of the confessional call-in line. Even so, I knew who waited on the other end. Father...
He has that look, you know, that perfect everything-in-the-right place look: the suit, the steel-rimmed glasses, the conservative tie, the neatly trimmed moustache, the gray, receding hairline and the slight paunch. Sitting next to him at the dentist's office, unable...
The act of vanishing from the face of the earth is not as romantic as it sounds. There are twenty-four hours in a day and ultimately there is one person from whom you can never entirely escape. The glimmer of satisfaction comes in knowing that surely, somewhere,...
RESEARCHER'S NOTE: As always, the names of all persons and places referenced have been changed to preserve anonymity. "Neal" is a heterosexual male, mid-30's. College education, divorced. No children. I admit I'm not the most masculine-looking fellow in the world....
Skip called me yellow because I wouldn't strip in the field for him. He wanted me to. They all did. "You're nothing but yellow, aren't you?" "I'm not." "Are too." He chased me across the field and I was panting. Panting is what I did over "Lady Chatterley" all that...
He oughtn't to have such thoughts, he scolded himself. Not about a girl young enough to be his granddaughter. Not that he suffered any sense of guilt; she didn't — couldn't — make him feel guilty. He supposed she regarded him as a harmless old guy, just another...
Before Lucrezia Borgia died, she made sure to have a priest at the ready. It was her eighth child and she was pretty sure she wasn't going to make it through this one. Having committed more sins than she could remember, including murder, incest and, well—too many to...
He awoke and he was lying next to it. It lay more as though dead than asleep, though in fact it was neither. It was offline. The dream was already beginning to fragment and fade. It was an important dream, he knew this, but it was slipping out of his reach in pieces....
"Silence: Writer thinking" The sign was taped to Marge Zymanski's front door, a nice door on a nice small house in a nice, quiet neighborhood in a nice small town. Marge herself sat at her PC, fingers on keyboard, having moments ago typed "Cock'll Do, Will You?" the...