Short Stories
Drought
When the house is finished, death follows. That is what Nanabaa would say. No glass in the windows and no paint on the walls, but stacks of cash hidden around the house – under sandy mattresses and in broken cupboards – enough to build the house twice over.
My Stepdad Wants me to Dance for Him
My stepdad wants me to dance for him. I don’t much like dancin’. When we’re havin’ dinner, me Ma and him, he’s all the time lookin’ at me; watchin’ me as he spoons his food into his mouth real slow.
“Dance for me,” he says after dinner.
Grand National
Walker walked with a limp. His clothes were dirty, his face heavy and dark with grime, his teeth crooked and yellow. He carried a plastic bag and, though he stooped, he held with great effort his chest up towards the sky.
The Bread-maker
The bread-maker was afraid. Red-faced and wheezing, sweat dripped down his brow. He looked to the piano, the only object in the small room besides the oven, and he rushed to it, crashing into it in a terrible din of chords. Before he had time to hide, as it seemed that he had planned, the door swung open. A small man in a grey suit entered.
Stove
A boy watched as his mother pushed the stove to where the water ran.
“When he comes,” she said, “he’ll come here to wash and i’ll push the stove so it burns him. You’re to run then, do you hear?”
Transit
How can we understand something that is in transit? We watch people pass as though they are ghosts on their way someplace else, and yet we see them return over and over.
