hic vigilans somniat
...and as I go among the patrons checking to see if they need anything, an old black man speaks up: “I’m just glad to have a place to come where I am welcome for who I am and no one’s judging me for my past.” His fellow ex-convicts nod in agreement and I feel a wave of satisfaction knowing that my… Continue reading dive bar
...and as the throng pushes by the windows, I see an old friend being moved along by the crowd. Close by her, I can see—and only I can see—her husband walks at her side as though guiding and protecting her. Her husband, three months dead now, catches my eye . . . smiles, waves. They move past a post, out… Continue reading siv & dave
...and as my wife heads up to bed I think to myself that I should probably clean out the car. It’s a mess, after all. The backseat is littered with rubbish from our trip to the beach. While I’m working I hear a familiar voice call to me from the darkened driveway “Hello Mister Camp!” — genial and comfortable, my neighbor,… Continue reading neighborly
Crowded afternoon at the store, lots of activity and customers. A guy gets my attention, excited to be buying the massive brass singing bowl we got from Tibet. I am excited for him as well, since it’s several thousand dollars. Not a bad way to end the day. I get cornered behind the counter by a difficult customer, raising hell over… Continue reading the end
I hear the door opens as she enters, the floorboards creak as she approaches the bedside, feel her palms on my shoulder as she shakes me awake. “You have to wake up, you have to wake up, you have to wake up…” Insistent, urgency in her voice. I twitch, struggling against the paralytic bonds of sleep. When I open my eyes, I am alone… Continue reading alarm
Arguing with two women to whom I am both somehow married. One is younger and very ambitious, middle eastern descent. She is furious with me, holding onto some misconception that I am preventing her from pursuing her career. Furious at the accusation, I point out how my first marriage was nothing but supportive of my wife’s efforts, even to the… Continue reading argument
In the night, as I move through a crowded back street, I get a message from someone who used to be a friend but is now, after much time and distance, nothing more than a vague acquaintance. “I need your help.” A few minutes later I walk into a one-room bar that barely qualifies as a place of business, let alone… Continue reading friend in need
Last night at 3AM the alarm clock on my wife’s nightstand went off, without any cause or reason. My wife never uses the clock for anything other than to tell time. It’s been sitting there for years. No one had been in our room, no one had any reason to fiddle with it or set an alarm... but it went… Continue reading alarm
Dozing on the couch this morning... ....I come into the room and see a baseball cap suspended in the air at about waist height, nothing apparently holding it up. It is not frozen in place, immobile — rather, it drifts and bobs slightly, like a magician’s trick. I reach out to grab it, try to push it down, but something… Continue reading unseen
Message from my wife this morning... Just another day at The Last House.
The theater is crowded with people, waiting for the play to begin. My wife and I sit and wait, looking through the program and studying posters for past productions lining the walls. When the show begins, I am transfixed. I’ve seen Macbeth a few times before, but this is just amazing. The witches scene is easily one of the most unsettling,… Continue reading by the pricking
Here’s an e‑mail i sent to my wife this morning, slowly starting to put together a plan to exorcise the entity that currently occupying our house... What I know (or think I know) about the entity in our house... It is not human. It never was human. It is a conscious, aware entity. It is negative. It is drawn to insecurity, anxiety, and fear. It… Continue reading pest control
Talking with my wife today about recent events, particularly those involving our daughter. Making plans for when the exorcism should be performed, discussing when she might be able take our daughter out of the house for an hour or two. So I can work. She remarks that we should time it with the next full moon phase. Personally, I don’t necessarily… Continue reading nemesis
“She says she saw something in the back stairwell,” my wife tells me. Our daughter is eight years old and not prone to flights of fancy or making things up. Also, we have been very careful to not let her overhear any of our conversations about what is going on here at home. When I talk to my daughter, this is what… Continue reading not a bat
My wife, her best friend, and I decide to drop acid for the first time. We lay back on the couch and each of us take the squishy pink pill and chew slowly. I only eat half of mine. I’m worried about what might happen if I take a whole one. In time, I stand up and feel my balance shift and… Continue reading Winterly
“You were crying in your sleep last night,” my wife said this morning. “I was?” “You were whimpering. It went on for a while. I couldn’t get you to wake up.” I remembered then. I remembered waking up, her hand on my shoulder. I remember hearing myself crying in the dark. But I don’t remember why.
Napping this afternoon on the couch, I dream... ...we’re sitting at the dining room table, my wife and I. I hear someone call “Tom” from the back hallway. I turn to see something there, down at the bottom of the steps — small and pale, almost like a child. “Don’t look!” my wife says just as it rushes up towards me... ...awaken with… Continue reading forearms
When I get home after work, my youngest daughter meets me at the door. I’m late and phoned ahead to say they should start dinner without me. A plate of half-eaten food waits at my wife’s place at the same able. But she is nowhere to be seen. “Mama went upstairs,” our daughter tells me. After a few minutes, my wife comes… Continue reading a fall
My daughter an I are in my office when my wife calls from the TV room. I hear her but it doesn’t register until she calls again, a rising note of alarm in her voice. “What’s wrong?” She is pale, intense. I can’t tell if she’s angry or something else. “I just heard...” She stops, starts again. “Someone just knocked on the… Continue reading hard knocks
...and my wife’s face contorts in pain, her brow furrowed. I ask her what’s wrong but, before she can answer, a wave of distortion ripples through the air like a mirage. “Something’s happened.” I look out the window and see a mushroom cloud rising in the distance. The television fills in the rest of the details: Every major city in… Continue reading beginning of the end
...lying in bed this morning, I woke to the sound of the bedroom door opening. I hear my wife slowly close the door behind her. I hear her footsteps on the floorboards, approaching my side of the bed. I cannot move, cannot open my eyes. I feel a fingertip on my arm, just inside the hinge of my elbow. The footsteps move away.… Continue reading a sad girl
“Will you check the tub in a minute?” My wife comes into the room, a little cross. We are getting our daughter ready for bed. “What’s wrong?” “There was almost no water in the tub and it was cold.” “Really?” She repeats this again. Unspoken is the rebuke — or, perhaps, the fear — that something odd has happened. It was full,… Continue reading bath time
We’re in the back bedroom, my wife and I. Fucking. It’s hard sometimes to find the time, the moment. Children, work, day-to-day life — these things conspire and distract and exhaust. But we find the time, when we can. We find the moments, synchronized, together. And it is good. Perhaps it is too brief, too short. But we know each… Continue reading the short
Inside the house, people are starting to panic. The sky outside is dark and green, the wind bending the trees to almost impossible angles. We can hear the sirens and, in a house this old, there is no safe place . . . every room has windows, the elderly frame flexes and creaks in the wind just like the trees… Continue reading a tornado, two corpses, and a leather sofa
Reported by my wife: A few days ago she and our daughter were in the back stairwell, getting ready to go for a walk. Once she got our daughter into her shoes, my wife sat down to put her own on. While she was doing this, our daughter went down the three steps to the back door. My wife could hear her… Continue reading little girls
