The sad clown dressed in all black sits on the highest shelf. Although unsettling, the clown has an almost familiar, calming presence in the store. Every day, as June clocks in for her evening shift, she glances upwards towards the symbolic clown before walking to the register. Not two minutes later the clown appears on the desk. Her eyes dart at the stranger before her as he slides her a twenty s...

The key they’d given me still fit in the lock, but the house no longer feels like home. As I step into the dilapidated house and close the door behind me, I’m sixteen again. The heavy grief that has a permanent home in my chest is temporarily replaced with a young sense of familiarity, togetherness, and joy - feelings I haven’t greeted in over 20 years. I gently place the single house key in the s...

Birds circled overhead as we graze at our picnic lunch. I start to wonder if those ravens are here for more, like me, considering this will be my dates last meal. I glanced at my neatly folded cloth napkin disguising my father’s hunting knife which was one of the few items he left behind after the accident. “I’m ready for cake!” My date exclaims as he reaches across the blanket. I whip my hand up,...

The dress I’m wearing is from my dead mother. She killed herself when I was 12 and this is all I have left of her after the fire took everything else away. The blue silk around my waist reminds me of the piercing shade in her eyes whenever she wore it. Now that I’ve made a new life in this small town, I don’t want to be known as the Mother Killer anymore....