"Watermark"

"THE BACK EXIT of the high school opens like a vault door into one of the steep hills surrounding town. The moist air hits your skin like a cold facial. Perhaps the town’s forefathers hadn’t expected the place to grow until it pressed into the hillside, or perhaps they intended on claustrophobia to keep everyone in check, as if the dampness wouldn’t do the trick. The town endures endless drenching downpours. Brooks overflow roadways. Streams cut deep ravines into rocky cliffs..."

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1st Place, Narrative Short Fiction Competition, Narrative Magazine Fall 2007

An Opening

The drawer smelled rancid. I dug into the narrow void, past where I could see. I hated losing things, and didn’t do it often, but somehow over the last few years I’d misplaced a box of my grandfather’s things that I’d found in his bedside table after he passed away. Its contents were gone as well, dispersed over the house by the kids during one of their various phases of fascination with Mommy and Daddy’s stuff. Of all the items the box contained, one stuck in my memory—a cardboard pheasant about three inches long and a quarter of an inch thick, the smooth, colorfully printed image laminated to the cardboard almost too detailed for the age of the other objects in the box....

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Thing of Beauty

A shout out to Limestone's 30th Anniversary Edition, where "Thing of Beauty" was printed this past spring, and the tremendously supportive people behind its publication at the University of Kentucky.

My mama’s been knocking me around all morning with her do this and do that, get me this and take it over there, get your hands out of your damn hair or we’ll be pulling it from the deviled eggs kind of way.

“Ain’t no time like the present,” she says with her arm out, waiting for me to hand over the mayonnaise from the fridge. She recognizes I’ve got no interest in learning what she knows, but she just won’t give up that fight.

Limestone has become The New Limestone Review, so I’m working on a new link to this one…

The Putin Resurrections

"I’d heard the rumor that Putin was bringing people’s fathers back to life. It seemed the stuff of urban myth, some superhero lore cooked up by Putin and his minions to incite awe. Then I got a notice to appear at the Greenville County Health Department..."

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Love, Life, Loss

"Rachel’s steps falter as she and Daniel cross Hester Street. It’s after midnight and the city appears evacuated. Galleries and window displays alive only hours ago are hidden behind varied patterns of metal grating..."

From "Drunk Monkeys," September 14, 2014

Reawakening

Time to reawaken a few stories that have been published (and received recognition) over the last few years, working forward chronologically. New stories and novels and information, meaningful and not so meaningful, bombard us everyday. Ultimately, the works of the past lie buried beneath. It's in our own hands, thanks to today's many media outlets, to keep the spirit of our writing alive.

Hope you stop and read a bit along the way.

Ree