The Half That You See by Rebecca Rowland (best summer reads .TXT) 📕

funeral parlor. She imagined him underground, rotting. Or dug up and taken, his casket left smashed on the street. Hands pawing at his body, lifting it out of the satin-lined interior.

She just made it to the trash can in time to retch, hot coffee sluicing its way back up and out. Too much thought of death, of strangers watching her windows, of her father, dead only a year.

David’s soft snores floated in from the bedroom and she seethed. She wanted to run her nails down his docile, stupid face, leaving bloody furrows. She wanted to punish him for his complacency, for her own. They should have called the cops, told someone. He should have remembered her fucking father died a year ago. She should have waited for the cops.

It’s never too late. She dug around in her purse and pulled out her phone, watching the bedroom door for any sign of David stirring. There was none.

“911, what is your emergency?” The operator chimed in.

Outside the window, the man in black was back on the sidewalk. Standing in the same spot as if he’d never left. Only now, there was another man about five feet down the pavement looking up in the same way, dressed the same. Heart in her throat she pressed herself against the wall, hoping she was hidden from the window.

“Ma’am? Hello?” the operator called out, sounding a hundred miles away.

Helene was whispering without realizing it, her heart in her throat. “Yes, I would like to report something I saw today. Pilling St. It was a coffin.”

“A coffin?”

“Yes, right out on the street. Empty. Freshly dug up. Piled with some trash. That’s all. Thank you.” She hung up, pushing the phone away from her on the table. She risked a peek out the window, and to her horror, the two men were now three. Each standing the same way, same dark skin, same black clothes, same still pose looking up at her. They reminded her of black birds. Crows. Heckle and Jeckle. A murder of crows perched in wait. Why was it called a murder? Not a group or a flock; a murder.

She looked toward the bedroom, knowing David slept on. How could he not sense her distress? How could they have a future if he was deaf to her feelings, her fears, her father’s death? The danger emanating from the men on the street? She pressed her cheek to the window sill, and yes, she could see the street. Now, there were four men. Four men, all in black, so dark they were little more than silhouettes cut out of poster board. All standing still and staring up at her window. She couldn’t see any eyes, but she knew they could see her.  She debated running to the bedroom or calling out to David. She was soaked with stinking sweat.

“Circle of life,” David had said to her in the funeral home, while she wept and held her dead father’s cold hand. David then clapped her shoulder like a little league coach before stepping outside for a fucking cigarette, leaving her all alone.

While he was technically with her now, albeit sleeping, she felt just as alone. She watched with increasing distress as a fifth man appeared on the street, mirroring the pose of the other four. Five dark strangers gazed up, like birds on a wire, the strange cock of their heads, the stillness.

Watching her. Wanting her to see them, wanting her to know they were there.

Helene, scared, tired of feeling tired, and of feeling so sad, in a moment of bravery, or perhaps defeat, stepped full into the window and stared down at them. Six of them, then seven, then eight. The ninth stood in the center of the street looking up at her, and the tenth was on her side of the street, staring straight up to see her.

She never saw them approach, or move, but between one blink and another, they were there, and then there were more. She watched them watch her. The sky lightening but they stayed pitch black. She thought of that sunbaked coffin, hinges so hot she’d probably have burned herself touching them. Lonely out there on that street. Lonely in the ground, too. She pictured David, asleep and useless. Lonely in their apartment as well.

The sadness, and the loneliness, caused tears to run free down her face. The shame of being afraid of her neighborhood, of secretly thinking certain hateful people had a point…and maybe if they dressed different, and made their neighborhoods nice, maybe if they didn’t have so many babies. Maybe then she wouldn’t be dragging her feet to find another job, maybe then she wouldn’t be aching for the manicured tidy suburbs of her youth. Maybe if she spent a little more time trying to get “to know” people, to let down her guard, be more open to understanding. Too many maybes, and they all felt too late.

She pushed the buzzer, unlocking the door.

Better to just let it all happen the way it was lined up to. She was so tired and this whole year had been a blur of grief. Perhaps seeing that coffin was the end point. The door downstairs opened, and then there were footsteps up the steps.

“Not everyone is out to get you, Helene,” she heard her father say, so close as if whispered in her ear. The knob to her door turned.

Not everyone is out to get you, Helene.

It opened.

Raven O’Clock

Holley Cornetto

The first time Jeff entered the cabin, he wasn’t sure how he got there. Everything seemed so distorted that he wondered if he were dreaming. It was cold and dark, with snow flurries drifting through the sky. In the moonlight, the forest surrounded the cabin with a glittering fairy tale embrace. Beautiful, but ominous.

He walked in the front door. Had he knocked? He couldn’t remember. The last thing he did remember was Zack’s face. He must have been dreaming, because Zack had been covered in blood, pointing an accusing