OC Blabber
Crownsville, Maryland, November 1996 The Shop The sign at the gate was hand-painted on a board nailed to two posts. It said HUZZAH, and under that, in smaller letters, LARP WEEK: NO DAY PASSES, CHECK IN AT LOGISTICS, and under that, smaller again and newer, someone had added in...
Atlantic City, November 1996 The Boardwalk They came over the causeway at eleven with the bay black on both sides and the whole city lit up ahead of them like somebody had spilled a jewelry box on the edge of the ocean. Hazel slowed down to look at it. She...
Washington, D.C., November 1996 The First Night Hazel rode with one hand off the grip from Baltimore onward, pointing at things. She pointed at a sign that said WASHINGTON 34. She pointed at a water tower painted like a peach, which turned out to be somewhere else entirely, and...
Philadelphia. 3rd October 1996. The building was wearing a hat. That was the first thing she noticed, standing across Spruce Street at a quarter to eleven with the envelopes inside her coat. Thirty-odd storeys of pale brick going up and up, and then at the very top somebody had...
The Lessons Alderley Edge, Cheshire. 1919 to 1938. Cradle song Holly Bank. March 1919. The first thing she knows is a voice. She does not know it is a voice. She knows nothing yet. She is eleven days old, in a cot in the night nursery at the top of...
The First Kill March 2021 I lost count of the seconds that night. I want that written down first, because it is the only time it has happened, and because I have never forgiven it. --- His name was Colin Maraj. I knew it for nine days before I met...
Tuesday, 20:47 The bike had been easy. That was the part Danny kept coming back to. A gas station camera on NW 7th, two blocks from where Kevin Duarte's car had been found with the keys still in it. Timestamp 03:10. Grainy, the way all gas station footage is grainy,...
The Meeting Seven Pomegranates The shop was still open at 22:15, which was the first thing Isabel had been told about it and the first thing she confirmed. A narrow door between a closed phone repair store and a laundromat that never seemed to close either, a hand-painted sign...
The First Night September 2020 The text had come on Monday at 04:51. I'm with Sara. I'll be home Thursday night. Destiny had read it lying in bed with the phone an inch from her face, the AC unit rattling in the window, and she had read it four more...
