She took no pleasure in sunny days;how a shadow fell on pavement,an eddy of dust on a desolate corner,the reek of hot asphalt in an empty parking lot.All were reminders—most of all the sun,beaming on the Midwestern landscape.It had burned in the sky as glaring andrelentless as a Cyclops that day in the desert. Smell …
Tilting her head back, my mother peers into the bathroom mirror and puts on her lipstick in three deft moves – quick strokes left and right for the bow and a sweep across the bottom lip to finish. She tears off a single square of toilet paper and folds it in half to blot her …
The sky was a deep, inky blue studded with stars. There was no moon, so no moonlight, which was all to the good. I had business to take care of, best conducted under cover of darkness. I loaded up the trunk of the car with the goods. My Honda Civic was what they called “reliable …
On a hot Sunday afternoon in July my father is out in the backyard listening to a baseball game on the radio. The announcer’s voice drones in the thick summer air, punctuated by the occasional crack of a bat amidst the relentless din of the crowd in the bleachers. If the White Sox win, it …
Susan K. Maciolek’s story “Crayon” appears in Midwestern Gothic Issue 8, out now. How long have you been writing?My father brought home scrap paper from the office when I was in grade school and I started filling the blank sides with drawings and stories. To this day I can’t throw away a blank sheet of paper, it …
Late November – gray, cold, grim. The radio blared Christmas music between bulletins about a fire at a grade school. A report on the number of bodies, kids and nuns who died in the fire, was followed by “The Chipmunk Song.” That silly novelty tune suddenly seemed like a dirge. Published in Blink Ink, 2011 …
Three little Mexican girls in frilly white dresses run up and down the hallway in their sock feet, trilling in delight. They slide on the shiny linoleum floors laid out like a checker board, sail past crash carts and drinking fountains with black hair flying, skirts billowing, and ribbon sashes floating behind. Pink rose petals …
