Tag: Guest-Edited by Dawn Raffel

They’d been chosen for their stoic, no-nonsense demeanors. They weren’t happy to be dead, and they’d all been taken quickly, violently, and much too young. None of them were much for conversation, but they found things to say to each other as they drove to and from assignments.

See how quickly a story complicates.

I am playing the shepherd’s game with the Shepherdess far underground, by the secret lake, beneath a cyclorama on which, suitable to the evening hour, the blue of afternoon is deepening to plum, while, one by one, stars appear according to a lighting scheme designed by the hotel’s Electrician. When in the world, he lit the stage for Max Reinhart and other directors of German Expressionism. “Life is an illusion,” I tell the Shepherdess, my hand rummaging in her blouse.

After a year, Phillip said they should try again. He told Muriel what she already knew—that such problems were all too common with first pregnancies. Pressing her hand, he repeated everything the doctors had told them.