DeadlySauce

Nathaniel Carlson stood in his kitchen waiting for the kettle. He could hear the stairs creak and his mother's slippers shuffle as she descended slowly, pausing occasionally to steady herself. "Tea's almost ready, Ma," he called out. "I'll get your pills for you." The shuffling continued through the living room, followed by a slow squeak and rebound of her rocking recliner as she settled in for the day. Nate poured the water over a breakfast tea bag in the same cup he filled every day. He poured some more over instant oatmeal, the same apple cinnamon flavor he ate as a child, and took the tea into his mother. Setting the tea down on the

August hung heavy like a wet wool blanket, smothering minds and sapping  energy. Jacob's family had moved south earlier that year to escape snow and got air as thick as pea soup instead. He sat mindlessly picking at a fresh scab on his elbow, while swinging his legs to keep his grandmother's wicker rocking chair in motion. He looked towards the sound of pages turning and watched his sister read a dense hardcover while she twirled a thick lock of hair at the nape of her neck.  Jacob and his older sister, Christine, had spent those last few weeks of summer on the screened-in porch downing glasses of sugar and food coloring for the sake of their

Samuel Legette sat in his worn recliner, facing out the window of his apartment. When he first moved in, he had gotten a pretty good deal because of the lack of privacy--his living room window lined up perfectly with a window in the apartment building next door. The alleyway that separated the two buildings was all of a few yards, which meant that occupants on either side could pretty much read the titles on each other's bookshelves. It was even worse at night when the backlit scenes became television programs for the neighbors. Nearly everyone had something covering their windows, but not Sam. He had no need for privacy and plenty of need fo

The 2:45 whipped past and it was all he could do to keep his cap from taking flight. As the train slowed, the young man adjusted his tie and brushed the dust off of his jacket. Then there was the squealing metal and the eruption of people, as though the gates of Hell had broken, which flooded the platform. The young man waited. A red hat, held firmly against a fair-haired young woman by a porcelain hand, floated towards him. Anticipating the young woman's embrace, the young man was startled by a grasped shoulder from a warm-blooded figure behind him. He spun around to find an older man in a tattered suit holding an equally ragged cup. "Hey b

It's a bit unsettling. That first night you don't fall asleep for even a minute. You learn that the sun comes up so much earlier than you thought for this time of the year. And you also learn that time changes speed when it's dark. Somewhere around 3 o'clock you realize that you aren't going to sleep, so you occupy yourself with something. A book. A movie. Old TV show re-runs. And suddenly it's 6:30 or 7 o'clock and the rest of the world is awake and you don't feel tired, but you still feel strange, as though you witnessed a period of time that was all your own. Almost like a vacation. But you still have to shower and make yourself presentabl