Fiction

IT WAS 6:42 A.M., and I was sitting in the dark, waiting for the first fragment of dawn to put an end to that interminable night. When the first mustardy glow bounced off the neighbour’s window and rolled into the kitchen, it lifted from nothingness a pile of dirty dishes and reminded me of the…

MY FAMILY USED TO RENT a cottage at Sauble Beach every summer. It was a shack really, with uneven floors, drafty windows, and plumbing that sputtered, farted, and screeched every time the water was turned on. But to me it was paradise. I’d wake up every day to the smell of water and sand, with…

For Indigo V. THE DAY I STOPPED CRYING, my ex-wife, Kate, made a particularly cruel remark, immediately putting my resolve to the test. “Are you going to start crying?” she’d hissed when I’d told her about Dani’s name change. “You’re probably happy now anyway.” Dani was already in the truck, wedged between the twin babies…

ESTEPHANOUS WAS BORN midway through fall and each year he would mourn the transition to winter with a birthday cake and candles. This year he drove up the 400 towards Sudbury in a rental far too big for him and his wife Heidi, leaving behind the straight lines and jagged edges of Toronto’s concrete skyline.…

ONE SATURDAY, about two in the morning, I woke up to this scratching sound outside. Below the bedroom window and a little ways off, but not far. I sat up in bed and listened. Lindsay, still asleep next to me, evidently hadn’t heard it. The sound filtered through her puttered breathing, and through all the…

“YAKU!” MOM EXCLAIMED, a look of pure triumph radiating from her face. Her eyes had that delightful twinkle that I had not seen in months, if not years. Since I had moved her to The Plaza, an assisted-living facility in the Punchbowl neighbourhood of Honolulu, I’d never seen my mother looking so elated, so self-satisfied.…

ALTHOUGH SCHEDULED to depart that Sunday morning at 7:50, the passengers of Flight 1155 were not permitted to board the aircraft until 10:25, and since all had complied with the new security protocols at considerable inconvenience, arriving at the airport at least one hour ahead of the flight’s scheduled departure, the collective mood as they…

FAR AWAY IN THE SKY, above clouds and birds, the plane flew out of Ramya’s reach. Whenever Kartik and Sharanya shouted her name while rapping their rickety wooden window from the outside, Ramya knew they either had to fill pails from the well and milk the cows, or someone had seen them stealing coconuts from…

BEFORE THEY KILL HIM, HE WANTS SOME CHICKEN. The entire conversation, thirty-minutes of hell with her mother, boils down to this. Charlotte is on the treadmill when the first call comes in; she ignores it. She is a quarter of the way to 20k and this run, about two hours of her day, is the…

THE OSTRICH DIED ON A COLD, CLEAR EVENING in late November. It died in the barn, sometime before dinner. My youngest nephew made the important announcement from the doorway of the kitchen, with all the solemnity of a small town crier. “Dead!” He flapped a wet woollen mitten off his left hand. It slid across…