On the outskirts of town stood an old monastery, dilapidating. The monastery had been built towards the end of the Middle Ages and was later used as a hospital and asylum, before it closed its doors in the mid-1980s and didn’t open them again for nearly fifteen years, because of outdated facilities, because of poor municipal finances, or so the official explanations went, but everyone who worked there knew that that was not the whole truth (and a half-truth is perhaps a lie): There was a pressure that hit...
When Chloe called me in the car that Wednesday on the way to Costco, my boyfriend Damian and I were arguing about whether or not we would be willing to swallow a goldfish for money. “You have no concept of how the real world works,” he said. “That’s pretty fucking pejorative,” I was saying, as my phone lit up with that stupid picture of Chloe’s stupid face, filtered to have giant eyes and little...
I'd been married six months when my husband died choking on an oyster. I was 23 and he was 27. I grew up by the ocean but hated the mineral-salt reek of seafood and wouldn't let him bring any into our home. While I was out with my friend Lily at what she called 'our local Polynesian discotheque,' he took the opportunity. He came from a long line of fishermen, so I understood he...
