Happen Like That

“He was dying in South Boston because it was November and he’d always known it would happen like that.”
- Alone, Lisa Gardner

Just... Everything

StorytellingRavens
“She wondered what Elliot had told them, and whether it was worth returning to school with an assumed limp and only the vaguest explanation of her absence: something about having fallen out of one of the trees at the back and broken her whole body, “You know…just everything.”
- White is For Witching, Helen Oyeyemi

Speech

Susan & her 5d

“What I mean is, each act of speech stands on the belief that someone will hear.”
- White Is For Witching, Helen Oyeyemi

Started Listening

Felicity Green Photography

“As he drove, Abe recalled that his grandfather always told him that any man who took the time to listen would be amazed at all he could discover without even trying. A truly observant individual could lie down beside the river and hear where the fish were swimming; why, the trout would practically give directions to any man who was willing to study them. And because his grandfather was the best fisherman in town, and had always given out good advice, Abe started listening then and there. He thought about the dark mark on the boy’s forehead, a bruise the color of wild iris, and he decided that for once in his life he’d pay attention. He’d take note of what this drowned boy had to say.”
- The River King, Alice Hoffman

The Earth Beneath My Feet

Miranda Silver is in Dover, in the ground beneath her mother's house.

Her throat is blocked with a slice of apple

(to stop her speaking the words that may betray her)

her ears are filled with earth

(to keep her from hearing sounds that will confuse her)

her eyes are closed, but

her heart thrums hard like hummingbird wings.

- White Is For Witching, Helen Oyeyemi

Blowing off the Sea

Christina Richards

“The long, drawn-out process of being undermined by inertia had made him unsure of anything anymore. He had brief interludes of absolute clarity, usually when he was on the beach or sitting among the dunes sheltering him from the biting cold winds blowing off the sea, and it sometimes seemed to him the whole thing was pointless.” - The Man Who Smiled, Henning Mankell

Artificial Limb

“I feel as if part of my soul has been replaced by an artificial limb,” he wrote. It still doesn’t do what I want it to do. Sometimes, in my darkest moments, I’m afraid it might never again obey me, but I haven’t given up hope altogether.”
- The Man Who Smiled, Henning Mankell

Instead of Words

"But instead of a helping hand, Patterson saw the branch of a pear tree and the buzzing of bees jumping from bloom to bloom. He tried to explain this to the voices he heard, but instead of words blood flowed from his mouth."
- Wicked City, Ace Atkins

Lonely, Wild Places

"Cody doesn't say a word. Just looks at her, then he snaps his cue in two, tosses the pieces onto the table. Picks up his hat and walks out. I see something in his eyes as he leaves, something in the shadows under that low brim. The desert's in there and the timberlands. All the lonely, wild places where he roams--not because anyone makes him, but because he claims he wants to."
- Someplace To Be Flying, Charles de Lint

The Living

Photographer Unknown

“It may be true that marjoram sprinkled onto the earth helps the dead sleep in peace, but it does nothing at all for the living. The living can pick wild garlic and place pots of clover on their windowsills and still not be able to rest. They can cut down a larch and huddle around it on a cold winter night as it burns and smokes for hours, down at the Point, where the fire ignites the black sky, yet continue to be afraid of the dark.”
- Second Nature, Alice Hoffman

All of This

“This was what he had to get away from. All of this. Mothers chiseling money from weans, cold rooms, waiting for knockbacks. He wanted toast and warm and pink and hair on pillows. He wanted family members who cried when one of them was taken away. Kindness.”
- Still Midnight, Denise Mina

Trouble

Jonathan Mannion

“Lately I’ve had trouble with this sort of thing (indecisiveness—along with drinking too much and fucking around and crossing the street and driving cars and thinking about pulling children from the paths of trains and Chinese deliverymen).”
- Hollowpoint, Rob Reuland

Resonances

Photographer Unknown

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Just a stray memory,” he said. “There are a lot of very bizarre resonances kicking around inside my head.”
- Wire In The Blood, Val McDermid

Suicide, New Work City - Lou Chapman

"Absolutely," I say for no other reason than to shut him up. I'm tired. I'm tired of the dead. I'm tired of the living. I'm tired of this mean-looking motherfucker with the finger like a gun. I'm tired of the dead girl's mother, who won't talk to me about the man who killed her daughter. I'm tired of the sun and the heat and these streets."

- Hollow Point, Rob Reulaund

The Blues

Susanna Shap

“The blues make a rough blanket, like the ones they give you in the orphanage. But they keep out the cold. I shoved a cassette into the tape player without looking, waiting for the dark streets to take hold of me and pull me in, waiting to get back to myself.”
- Strega, Andrew Vachss

Nothing

“Besides, nothing is falling apart,” I say, fully aware how risky it is to say things like that out loud. “That I know of.”
- Origin, Diana Abu-Jaber

Disaster

Erica Laszlo

“Our hips ground together, like the kind of teenagers I at least had never been. Scandalous people: she’d get pregnant, he’s had to work in a gas station the rest of his life. Of course they would, you couldn’t dance like this and not have a life of disaster. Dancing with him like this I was a girl with no prospects.”
- Spending, Mary Gordon

No Good

Brooklyn Street Art

"Milo realized, not for the first time, that he was no good at living."
- The Tourist, Olen Steinhaur

Dire

"Quentin was pretty sure that if he stood very still for a few seconds everything would snap back to normal. He wondered if he was undergoing some dire neurological event. He looked cautiously back over his shoulder."
- The Magicians, Lev Grossman

The Dark Side of Everything

Chat Noir

"Finally, there was no way of getting around it; there was a wedding to attend, after all. A wedding where Maddy would once again be the sidekick, the bad little sister who couldn't follow rules, who even as a grown woman was afraid of ridiculous things, thunderstorms and mice, traffic jams and airplanes. She would most likely be made to wear a horrible dress of some dreadful synthetic fabric while her sister glowed in white silk and satin. Second-rate, second-best, the dark side of everything. She never believed men who told her she was beautiful and shies away from friendships. She did her work and kept to herself, the sort of woman who could stand idly by while children removed a butterfly's wings or buried a toad in the mud."
- The Third Angel, Alice Hoffman