by Emily Hitchcock, Publishing Director | Apr 22, 2014 | Best of Ohio Short Stories, Complete Stories
Charles and Maggie lived deep in the hills of Kentucky. They had an old tractor and an orange ATV and a cellar stocked with smoked meats and canned vegetables, so they rarely worried about the distance to town—a gas pump, a country kitchen and a church. The snows,...
by Emily Hitchcock, Publishing Director | Apr 18, 2014 | Best of Ohio Short Stories, Complete Stories
It’s awful as hell to see a set of flashing lights off in the distance and know immediately that they’re coming for someone who shares your last name. I was barely even out of the driveway, on the way to school just before dawn broke when I saw them: red and blue...
by Emily Hitchcock, Publishing Director | Apr 15, 2014 | Best of Ohio Short Stories, Complete Stories
I’m on the phone with Henri, his Gallic voice strangled with emotion, and his news strikes me like ice water on naked flesh. “It’s Grant,” Henri says to me. “He’s slipping in and out. The doctors can’t be sure about anything. Godammit, Herb, I can barely get a...
by Emily Hitchcock, Publishing Director | Apr 11, 2014 | Best of Ohio Short Stories, Complete Stories
We are bringing in the wheat. In the more remote areas of southwest England, it is still some years before the advent of the combine harvester. The rust-mottled red tractor chugs slowly around the perimeter of the field, puffing clouds of pungent blue exhaust and...
by Emily Hitchcock, Publishing Director | Apr 8, 2014 | Best of Ohio Short Stories, Complete Stories
The paranormal investigators arrived at our house the same day I was scheduled for an abortion at the East Columbus Planned Parenthood. Two of them were men and one was a woman with a purple birthmark near her right ear that looked like a burn. The heavyset man wore a...
by Emily Hitchcock, Publishing Director | Apr 4, 2014 | Best of Ohio Short Stories, Complete Stories
Dying, by itself, wasn’t particularly inconvenient. The amnesia that went with it, however, was. It was precise, like the memories had been cut away with a knife. There were no fragments or images like the leftover pieces of a particularly vivid dream. The...
