Maryn Boess
Stories (8/0)
What Child to the Hearthstone Returning
How does one go about invoking the proper atmosphere for the telling of a ghost tale? It's been so long since I've heard one myself: a real one, I mean. I've never heard a firsthand account from a source I could consider reliable, and I find this terribly, terribly sad. What's become of ghosts, fragile creatures that they are? Do they linger as long as they can, waiting to be seen, sensed, discovered -- then, at last abandoning hope, simply slip silently, sadly out of existence, dying a second death? Or is it a matter of there being nothing, really, to sense or discover in the first place: that scientific terminology and extrasensory perception aside, there is, after all, no such thing as a ghost?
By Maryn Boess11 months ago in Fiction
After
He was, as always, already waiting for her outside, inspecting the card rack at Carlos’s newsstand, on the sidewalk below his third-floor window. Still half a block away, she rolled the car through the wintry dark to a slow, silent stop, switched off the ignition, leaned back against the tweedy old seatback, smiled a little. So like him. The already-waiting-for-her part; the choosing something to give her if – when – she finally showed up. He always thought she arrived late, always chided her a little (just a little though) in his soft, grey-edged old-fashioned genteel way, like a slightly ironic tip of a slightly ironic hat. He never knew (or maybe he did and simply pretended not to), that she was never late but in fact made sure, each time, to get there early herself, just so she could watch him at a distance – a long smudge of a man in a long grey coat, moving a little restlessly back and forth in front of Carlos’s newsstand, looking at this, contemplating that, under the pretense of choosing something he could give her as an offering, really just giving his restless feet and fingers something to do while he waited.
By Maryn Boess11 months ago in Fiction
Nonpayment
It wasn’t so much the pinkness of her cell phone that he found annoying; it was that she seemed to like it that way. Well, why not? After all, she chose it, didn’t she? If she hadn’t liked pink for a cell phone why the hell would she have bought one in the first place?
By Maryn Boess2 years ago in Fiction
Elizabeth and the Rain
The grey rain misted the streets and trees like a fine cloud of age over the surface of a mirror. Elizabeth, pressing her nose to the rear window of the car, felt uneasy, disoriented: Mommy would be home today — Aunt Gail had said so last night, tucking the blankets around her on the cot in James' and Robert's room. “With your new baby brother,” she had added. And again, this morning, as Elizabeth stood on the bath mat with her pajama bottoms puddling around her feet, Aunt Gail had said, “The next bath will be your mother's problem. Thank God.” She'd laughed as she said it, and then slapped Elizabeth gently on the bottom. “Hurry up, kiddo,” she'd added. “The boys are ready for school and you're still a mess. Can't send you off into the world with orange juice on your belly.”
By Maryn Boess2 years ago in Fiction