Fiction

 

 

Stoned
the first chapter from the novel by Jill Hoffman

I.  I am a kind of burr; I shall stick.

(Lucio, Measure for Measure)

1. Mad Diamond

When I was young, I almost always had a headache. It was like a curse in a fairytale.

"When your prince comes, he will take them away," my mother said, putting a steaming washcloth on my forehead.

Now I think it was from rain, or my period. But then, knowing I had a tension headache would make me tense. I would wake up in the morning with a vague throbbing, and three days later it had turned into a migraine. My head would beat like two hearts.  Read Story

 

Room
by Margo Berdeshevsky

It was locked, they had a locked room, that no one else knew or would. Not her husband, not his wife, not his little girl with her costly, hand-stitched Rapunzel green velvet gown, sausage curls, rhinestone crown. Not the woman's medicinal smelling son with his thin black beard, who liked to hurt his own hands. All their stories stayed out of the room.

No tragedies. They had no friends. Only each other and a room and a bed and their love.   Read Story