From my fiction
Photo by Craig VanDerSchaegen
The phone begins to ring unexpectedly, in the weird sound British phones make: two sharp short rings and then a pause that makes me think it will stop. But it doesn’t. It keeps going.
“Aren’t you going to answer?” Miss Lillian says.
“Look underneath the phone,” Derek says to me in a low voice. “She probably hid a two-way microphone in there.”
Miss Lillian puts both hands on her hips. “No, sir. I did not hide anything anywhere.”
I pick up the phone gingerly and press the button to put the caller on speaker. “Hello. Who is this?”
I don’t know what to expect. Either a real ghost—angry and confused about what’s happening, with a tenuous grip on time—or someone pretending to be a ghost.
Fake ghosts are easy to spot. They’re too creepy, too unlike actual dead people.
The male voice on the other end of the line doesn’t sound confused. He’s overly formal and irritated, like a Downton Abbey butler talking to an unwanted guest. “With whom am I speaking?”
“You called here,” I say. “I’m not telling you my name until you identify yourself.”
“Oh, heavens,” the voice says. “Don’t waste my time. You’re the medium. You should know exactly why I’m calling.” — From OZARK PARANORMAL
It's a little-known fact that hippos are braver than lions. Female hippos, especially.
They'll fight to the death.
I plunge my hand into my pocket and pull out my jade hippo figurine. When I get nervous, I stroke her smooth back and pat her ears. I’m nervous now, standing in an antiques store, staring at a silver ring with a swirly N.
N for Nina, my name. And for some old lady who just croaked. It’s that kind of antique store—the kind that sells junk from a hundred dead grandmas.
Monogrammed rings don’t make me nervous. Stealing does. My fingers hurt and my breath quickens.
- From THE CRIMINAL GENE
Lydia has a fascination with typeface, and she is pained whenever she meets someone who doesn’t appreciate the importance of fonts, of Garamond and Cloister, Perpetua and Bulmer, the names themselves striking her listeners mute. At night, she apprentices with a printer, and at parties Kim finds her, back to the wall, beer in hand, lecturing one of her blond boys about leads, slugs, quads, and spaces. If the boy looks bored or doesn’t seem sufficiently enamored of typeface, she sends him home. I don’t sleep with idiots, she says.
- From "The Importance of Dead Girls"
“I like to steal small.
A little ceramic vase in the dollar store. A sparkly hairband from the pharmacy. Cheap things I can say I bought with my allowance.
The items I steal are like abandoned cats in a shelter waiting for an owner. One of them mews at you in a certain way, purrs at just the right moment, or rubs its head against your hand, and you know it’s coming home with you.”