Leona stared, unseeing, at the small grungy duplex. Her eyes fixed upon the fading gray door and penetrated through the walls to her past. That night so long ago came rushing back like a tidal flood and nearly drowned her once again in the pain of it all. She could see the others—homies, out for a good time and looking for themselves. They couldn’t abandon her fast enough when the cops showed up. Continue reading “Become New”
She felt the blood trickle down her leg and the scent of raw earth whispered in her face. Pine needles pricked at her hands and agonizing pain shot through her knee.
Racing through the dark woods at breakneck speed with tears raining down her cheeks, Lana hadn’t seen the patch of rocks.
Trip, fall, and she smashed her knee on one of the jagged boulders.
A sob escaped her lips, followed by a primal scream that rose up from her gut and rang through the air, muffled in the forest like a wild thing trapped in a cage. Continue reading “How Far the Light”
I raised my hands up above my head as I stared down the business end of the .45.
Come on. Are you kidding me? I just wanted to make a deposit!
The hand that held it trembled and I looked up into the kid’s eyes, the only part of his face that showed through the black ski mask he wore.
What I saw there wasn’t what I would have expected to see in the eyes of an armed bank robber. Continue reading “Do You Believe?”
Whitney L. Schwartz 