Twelve Stories

Steve Almond

They found me lying in gravel, a fragment paler than the quarry around.

Mornings I spent strolling the undergrowth with Marie. She was a dreamy Sussex girl, unfixed from time. She carried a pink parasol against the Cenozoic sun, swung her throat about in laughter, the white scissor of her knickers. My jaw held happiness in its hinge, each tooth filed to the historic. We played the chase of sloppy hominids, the taste of fruit and loose breath, everything offered utmost.

A second skull pulled from the socket of sediment, a female specimen.

Boughed under ancient trees, I reached for Marie, prim and pink, and she for me, rib along rib, the gaps dissolving. We lifted our bodies and laid them lengthwise, the tender nibbling of mandibles, after such slow culmination as we knew.

Evidence suggests the merging of three species into a single composite.

Oh the calumny! The blackening claims of men with hoaxed spirits and carbon brains! Do not waste your breath defending the evident, your sweet breath, Marie, the dear balm rubbed against veracity’s predators. What is history but a vault of musty wishes and scoundrel proofs? Let the dark rain of doubt blot our bones one by one. I still  held you.

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Steve Almond is the author of two story collections, My Life in Heavy Metal and The Evil B.B. Chow, the non-fiction book Candyfreak, and the novel Which Brings Me to You, co-written with Julianna Baggott. He lives outside Boston with his wife and baby daughter Josephine, who can and will kick your ass with cuteness.  His website is www.stevenalmond.com.