Mingo County War

You heard in the valley us coal miners is hard people? You don’t know the half of it. Before the union come to Mingo, the company sent up a bunch of hooligans from Baldwin-Felts, rough men toting guns and blackjacks. They aimed to keep out the union. See, they wanted to leave the coal price…

Drowned Kitten

She sets the steaming mug before me. “Soon set you to rights,” she says. “You’ll see.” My hands are shaking so badly I don’t trust them to lift the tea to my lips. Instead, I bend to sip, pursing my lips against the heat. “There’s a good girl,” she says. “Get some nice tea in…

Follow Car

The whole room tilted at a steep angle. I’d noticed the corner of the double-wide was crushed like a beer can. I guess the office was a salvage job,  one that’d fallen off a flatbed. I stared across the slanting desk at last year’s calendar tacked to the warped paneling. “Eleven bucks an hour for forty…

Pity’s Sake

I stare at the snow. “The yard almost looks nice,” I say before realizing there’s nobody to hear the conversation. Habits of a lifetime are not easily broken. His shoes stand by the door, right where he stepped out of them. The fever and coughing kept getting worse, so we decided on the hospital as…

Serpiente Oculta

His pupils so dilated that his eyes are shining black with a thin corona of brown iris. They seem to be a cave into which I will tumble. My body shakes with an urge to flee, close the door behind me, drive to the airport and forget all of this. Yet the eyes compel me. “Yes,” I hear myself saying. “I wish to hear it.”