by Naomi K Lewis
info
read
I: Wolf!
WHO KNOWS WHO I was before the autumn I turned eight. Timmy to my mom, Timbelina to the lunchroom villain squad, Sir Timothy Brian F. the Fantabulous to future biographers. Then came my birthday, Mommy’s cake all sky blue with white marshmallow clouds and Superman flying fist forward, a week or two before the trees in our neighbourhood started to shed yellow and red leaves. And then came the Saturday I smashed down onto a raked-up pile of them and straight to observation.
I’d heated my forehead against the radiator that morning and clung to the bedframe claiming smallpox, but my mother said, get out get out, I have eight hundred canapés to make. So I dodged around knife-wielding Mommy in the kitchen and donned my red boots and redder cape, which billowed behind me as I skidded down into the gulley behind our cul-de-sac fast as fast though Maryland tick season was long over. Across the stream at the bottom in a single bound and I heaved myself up the other side, knees up, knees up, slipping on the rotting leaves and drying grass. Music was playing, but not the kind I wanted to hear.
“Swing low, sweet chariot ...”
My back-to-back neighbour, Kate Katie Kate Kate a.k.a. Katherine-Ann—yes, Bass, the one and only—bounced on the Batman-blue trampoline in her back yard, singing along with a record playing through the open back-porch door. “Coming for to carry me home ...” I liked it when she went up and her hair went tight like a plastic bowl on her head. Down and the hair rose into hedgehog bristles, her plaid shirt bloating out to show her belly button above black stretchy pants. The pants fastened round the bottoms of her pink-socked feet.
“Don’t go in,” she said as I marched up the porch’s steps. “Dad’s waxing Mommy’s bikini area.” I checked, my face up against the screen door. Dark shapes moved inside.
“And,” said Dr. Bass. “Aaand—”
Dr. Bass’s wife said a word we don’t say, one fast bad syllable.
log in for the rest of the story
(or to download the ebook)
about the author
NAOMI K. LEWIS lives, writes, edits and teaches in Calgary. Her story collection I Know Who You Remind Me Of was published in 2012, and she co-edited Shy: An Anthology (UAP, 2013) with Rona Altrows.
more stories
from the library
Suckers
by Kirsty Logan
[dot_recommends]
Steve has his own comic book store, a limitless supply of comic books, and all the time in the world to collect them. That should be enough. But eventually, everyone - even Steve - gets lonely. And when his time comes, he too has to learn that (eternal) life isn’t about what you spend it on - it’s about who you spend it with.
“Every time I read something by Kirsty, I think, ‘Damn her, I wish I’d written that.’ She is the kind of writer that you can’t help but read with teeth-crunching envy, broken-hearted admiration, and a realization that your own work is not half as good as you’d hoped it might be. Be forewarned writers and readers: you will never be the same.”
— Shanna Germain, finalist for the 2010 John Preston Short Fiction Award and nominee for the 2008 Pushcart Prize
buy this story:
In Our House
by the Sea
by Kirsty Logan
[dot_recommends]
Romance is candlelight on cheekbones, blurring gazes and the press of heels on strange sheets. But what happens a year later? You’re sharing bath towels and bickering over who forgot to buy a light bulb. There is beauty in a familiar hand on the nape of your neck. There is love in waking up under a shared blanket. This story is about the romance of domesticity.
“Kirsty is one of the best and brightest . . . when I read her stuff I feel like I could taste it, chew it, roll it around on my tongue, the language is so delicious and sturdy and musical. She also has a knack for getting relationships exactly right in her writing, whether between parent and child or lovers or friends.”
— Amber Sparks, Fiction Editor at Emprise Review
buy this story:
The Last Judgment
by Maria Meindl
[dot_recommends]
Charlotte is on the cusp of adolescence, and her world is being turned upside down. Unable to turn to her distant mother or absent father, she searches for guidance on the streets of downtown Toronto—and discovers God (or some version of Him) in the gutter.
“The Last Judgment is a story that penetrates into the heart of childhood sadness. Charlotte is without tools to fix what is broken, except for the incredible force of her will. The connections she makes between religion, parental failure, sexuality, and love make perfect sense because they are told in her bell-clear voice. This story is warm and tragic and, at moments, grimly funny.”
— Rebecca Rosenblum, author of Once and Road Trips
buy this story:
If You Waited Here, You Would
See Almost Everything
by Danny Goodman
[dot_recommends]
After Ray collapses on the sidewalk outside a New York coffee shop, the bittersweet vagaries of his long marriage come into focus, one heartbeat at a time. From his new vantage point, flat on his back, all their conflicts are laid out against a canvas of sky, contrasting miscommunications and infidelities against something slower, steadier, and ultimately much vaster than he ever realized.
buy this story:
Bright Lights on Broadway
by Dave Margoshes
[dot_recommends]
Having lived a long, eventful life, Charlie Weinheimer’s only regret is that he has no one to carry on after him. After a near-death experience, he resolves to find out whether a secret buried in his past is proof he has a legacy after all.
“Margoshes gives us the life of Charlie Weinheimer: quadruple bypass patient, widower whose children all die tragically young, but not a whiner. In his hospital bed at age seventy-seven, he’s seen it all, right? Well, maybe not. Watch as Margoshes calls upon his raconteur skills to thicken the plot.”
— David Carpenter, winner of the 2010 Saskatchewan Book Award for A Hunter’s Confession
buy this story:
Wolves
by Naomi K Lewis
[dot_recommends]
As a boy, Timmy (Sir Timothy Brian F. the Fantabulous) tells tall, tragic tales to get attention from the adults in his life - particular his busy mother and Dr. Bass, his nerdy-cool neighbour. As a young man, his escalating lies destroy his relationships, alienate his loved ones, and land him in hot water with police; but that doesn’t stop him from crying wolf again and again.
buy this story:
Laws of Flight
by Darren Greer
[dot_recommends]
An imaginative and resonant work of speculative literature from ReLit Award-winning author Darren Greer. Twin brothers, born on an oppressive family farm, discover a miraculous way to escape the dreariness of their lives, charting a course that promises equal measures of wonder and heartbreak.
buy this story:
What Endures
by Pauline Holdstock
[dot_recommends]
Inspired by true events, this story by Scotiabank Giller Prize-nominated author Pauline Holdstock tells of the incredible bond between a mother and daughter, and with gut-wrenching poignancy reminds us of the little things that make life worth living.
“Hers is the kind of prose you get lost in.”
— National Post on The Hunter and the Wild Girl
“Holdstock’s writing manages to be both heartbreakingly poetic and densely detailed ... sad passages, ghostlike recollections, written almost from the vantage point of the present, establish the book as a great work of fiction.”
— The Globe and Mail on Into the Heart of the Country, longlisted for the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize
“Holdstock, with a few deft strokes, pulls the reader into the tumultuous life of an alluring rabble of characters: painters, sculptors, patrons, fools, and slaves ... In Beyond Measure, she proves herself a master of pacing. Her lively, macabre plot trips lightly along in spite of its dark elements.”
— The Globe and Mail on Beyond Measure, finalist for the 2004 Giller Prize and the 2004 Commonwealth Writers' Prize
buy this story: