“God damn it, Stanley!” Mary’s scream reverberated through the house. She sprinted back toward the kitchen, Dorothy’s footsteps pounding behind her. They barely had time to process the terror before it struck. A vise-like hand clamped over Mary’s mouth, silencing her scream. An iron grip encircled her frail torso, squeezing the air from her lungs. […]
The explosion shatters the night. The room shudders; windowpanes rattle like the chains of the damned. Another mortar attack in East Asia. The echo of screams, the gut-punch blast of a grenade rips Stanley from the depths of sleep. Another day of horrors. His eyes snap open, pupils dilated in the darkness, senses sharpened to […]
She died at home two days later. Her mother and father and brothers were with her. Hannah Madison, who was not present, would weep for days. Paul Hoffman insisted, his wife silent and unsteady and distraught, that his daughter be buried sans casket, deep in the ground in the manner she’d asked for. It took […]
A month later Vanessa Hoffman went back into the hospital. Old meds faltered and new medications were tried. She was connected to machines again and monitored twenty-four hours a day. Days became nights and nights became days and the hours ticked by and nurses were on and off duty and doctors came and went and […]