Fiction
I had come into the hospital as I came into the world—twitching, foaming, groaning. I was almost brain-dead, they said, yet here I was, good as reborn.
But here I am, and here you are, and once you’ve heard the whole story, it’s your job to decide: Am I the crazy one, or is it all of you?
Someone’s died. I know this because of vague posts on Facebook. It can’t be anyone I know very well, or I’d have texts or phone calls or, well, something.
They’ve formed a barricade.
Mountain goats stand shoulder to shoulder across the narrow two-lane. They appear unbothered by the idling of my car’s engine, content to simply stand and chew dry grass sprouted between asphalt cracks.
At first you don’t. You hold back. Finally she says, “What, you’re afraid I’ll break? You’re afraid it’s contagious?”
I knew years ago that the paternal gene was missing. I should not, would not, be relied on by other humans, especially small, defenseless ones
Paul once thought that the talent and ambition that had propelled him into graduate school as the first Negro PhD in pharmacology would keep propelling him, perhaps into a chairmanship at a prestigious Negro university. But life and history took over…
Yarrow doesn’t say much aside from being strange but that’s less him and more his parents, if he even has those. He doesn’t seem like the type to come from a womb.