Oliver following a suspicious smell, sound, or object to the bottom of it.
Something happened to the window in the night and I would like it on record that I noticed immediately. Before she was even properly awake. Before the coffee. I was the first one in the house to understand that the glass had changed. It wasn’t broken, exactly. I want to be precise about this because … Read more
It started with one knock. A single, deliberate sound, metal on metal, from inside the radiator in the back room — not the window, not the wall, the radiator itself, as if something had reached up from underneath the floor and rapped its knuckles against the pipe to get my attention. I was sitting nowhere … Read more
I was asleep against her side, which is where I am most nights now, when the wall above the dresser lit up and something long and pale slid across it sideways, stretched itself tall against the corner, and then was gone before I had even finished sitting up. I want to be fair to myself … Read more
There is an order to things when she comes home. I did not invent this order, I only noticed it, the way a scholar notices a pattern in old texts nobody else bothered to read closely. Keys first, into the dish by the door, a small metallic clatter that means she has stopped moving forward … Read more
I found it in the sunbeam by the window, the good one, the one that moves a little earlier across the floor now than it used to. At first I thought it was a hair of hers, one of the long dark ones that turn up everywhere and that I generally regard as litter. I … Read more
She sat down at the kitchen table tonight with a coat across her lap, a small plastic box I have never seen before, and a spool of black thread, and I understood immediately that something was wrong with the coat and she intended to fix it with a weapon. I want to describe the weapon … Read more
There was a thread sticking up from the arm of the couch this afternoon, pale against the darker fabric, no longer than a whisker, and I want it understood that I did not go looking for it. It found me. I was simply walking the length of the cushion the way I always do, checking … Read more
I saw the towel before I saw anything else. It was on the counter, draped over something round, and I want it noted that my reaction was not an overreaction. That towel has a history. That towel has, on more than one occasion, meant the end of my claws as I know them, delivered via … Read more
She opened the window in the back room first, which is not unusual, except that she kept going. The bedroom window. The one over the kitchen sink that sticks and has to be hit with the flat of her hand near the bottom. Even the narrow one in the hallway that I didn’t know opened … Read more
It rained all day today, the kind that doesn’t announce itself with thunder or drama, just starts sometime before I’m properly awake and keeps going without checking in. I noticed it first as a change in the light coming through the back room window — flatter, grayer, like someone had put a thin cloth over … Read more
