Fiction

Inside New Mt. Zion church, in front of the pulpit, lay the body of a man I’d never known nor seen a day in my life.

They’re all the same, really, Mari thinks as she straightens her stiff, white coat and brushes a stray auburn hair back into her claw clip.

The morning air felt thick with secrecy, and the forest beyond the porch beckoned Jack into its pulsing green heart.

Red splashed against Presley's face, staining her clothes and caking in her hair. She grabbed her brush again and hurled the paint through the air with a guttural scream – the drops separating from the brush and splattering on the paper.

As the ocean wind blew over the marsh, Brennan began to regret leaving his umbrella at home.

This is the last time I’ll ever come here.

I remember the first time I saw them, and I think I almost passed out.

Like a quarter thrown into a fountain for good luck, the full moon shone bright against the fog-and-cloud marbled October sky.

When I left in June, the last item I tucked away in the car was a tomato seedling--one of the near hundred that had sprung out of the earth unprompted during the weeks before. We hadn’t sown new seeds, yet they sprouted, ready to try again after last year’s failed harvest.

Squatting in the soil with my 13-year-old, we plucked them from the old plant bed, taking caution to not tear the roots that would anchor them where they now belonged in the garden.