Laura Melvin
Writing from British Columbia, Canada.
Laura Melvin
Writing from British Columbia, Canada.
Writing from British Columbia, Canada.
Writing from British Columbia, Canada.
_60 seconds._
That’s all the text message says. I don’t recognize the number. When I reply with a _‘?’_, I see _Message Failed_ in tiny red letters. I try again, and the same _Message Failed_ alert appears.
Leaning against the kitchen counter, I debate sending a third time. The message bothers me. _60 seconds? What does that mean? Who is this? Wrong number? Spam?_ Questions roll through my mi...
The silver tea service, polished to a high sheen, glinted in the sunlight streaming through the large bay windows. The value of the teapot alone would have paid our rent for a month. A woman in a simple black uniform leaned over the low mahogany table, pouring amber liquid in a steady unbroken stream into two dainty teacups. She prepared each cup with milk and sugar - though I hadn’t specified how...
David O’Neil sat at his desk at the front of classroom, pretending to read the book in his hand with one eye while keeping the other eye on his students as they finished the chapter he’d asked them to read. It was a few minutes until the lunch bell and he was thinking longingly about the turkey sandwich waiting for him in the teacher’s lounge fridge.
Voices murmured as some students finished the ...
Richard sat across from the young woman at the old farmhouse table he kept in the back room of his shop. He watched intently as she carefully pulled the glass dropper out of one of the bottles in front of her and brought it to her nose. Her nose crinkled slightly and she pulled the dropper away.
“The scent is quite concentrated,” Richard said. “You only need to bring it a few inches from your nos...
*continued from Matilda and Hopper Pt. 1*
Matilda slept fitfully. Hopper watched from his bed as she shifted on the mattress, her body trying to get comfortable even while her mind was locked in dream. He lay comfortably in his own bed set on top of a tall table directly under the east facing window. While some humans might force their gremlins to sleep in a crate lined with linens like a mere pe...
“… feeling like this spiritual awakening, you know? Now that I’m not eating any of that processed crap, I really feel like it’s opened up my receptiveness to energy. Like, I’m more in-tune with the universe, right. And that’s what they don’t want, you know. The government. They don’t want us actualizing to our true energetic selves because then we’ll realize that we don’t need them and their bulls...
I stand in the tall grass of the front yard. It’s high enough to brush my knees, the ends brown and tipped with flowers and seeds. At one time, this was the nicest yard on the block. He would cut it once, sometimes twice, a week and the fine fescue grass never got more than two inches tall. It was a luscious, green carpet. The envy of the neighbourhood. Once I arrived, though, that quickly changed...
Matilda crouched to get a closer look at the scene in front of her. She was careful not to disturb anything on the dirt floor, hopefully leaving only bootprints. Hopper, her gremlin, climbed out of the leather satchel at her side and perched on her shoulder. He took a deep inhale through his nose.
“Poison,” he murmured in her ear.
She nodded, noticing the sickly sweet scent in the air. Her eyes ...