The Novella Life of Illuscia Nester Himawari

    I’ve never believed in imaginary friends, but I still had one growing up. His name was Benji, and much like his existence, his name wasn’t my choice. You see, when I got to be about six years old, my mother disappeared and my father went through a real rough time. He slept a lot, cried when he thought I couldn’t hear, and lost thirty pounds from sadness and worry. Then one day, when I came inside for dinner, I saw a third plate at the table. For one bright moment, I thought that Mama had found her way back to us after nearly a year. I asked and saw my father's face crumple slightly. No, he replied thickly. That plate was for my friend Benji. When I asked who Benji was, my father acted surprised. He explained that Benji was my invisible best friend who would always be there for me. Who would never leave my side. I was seven by then, and while still a little kid, I was well past believing in invisible playmates. But I was

I sat with two friends, in the picture window of a quaint restaurant just off the corner of the town-square.. The food and the company were both especially good that day. As we talked, my attention was drawn outside, across the street. There, walking into town, was a man who appeared to be carrying all his worldly goods on his back. He was carrying, a well-worn sign that read, 'I will work for food.'  My heart sank. I brought him to the attention of my friends and noticed that others around us had stopped eating to focus on him.. Heads moved in a mixture of sadness and disbelief. We continued with our meal, but his image lingered in my mind. We finished our meal and went our separate ways.. I had errands to do and quickly set out to accomplish them. I glanced toward the town square, looking somewhat halfheartedly for the strange visitor. I was fearful, knowing that seeing him again would call some response. I drove through town and saw nothing of him I made

    Last year I finished a four-year residency as part of becoming an emergency medical specialist (aka an ER doctor). Working in a metropolitan hospital, I had seen a lot of crazy things over time—shootings, stabbings, freak accidents and mysterious illnesses, to name a few—but the patient I remember the most was Martha Jennings. Martha had come in originally after police had been called to her home due to noise complaints from neighbors. When the officers arrived, they had found her frantically moving to and fro between a cellar door and a backed-up truck filled with sheets of metal and wood. According to one cop I spoke to later, she had been wringing with sweat as she yanked an eight-foot sheet of plywood off the truck bed and began dragging it toward the doorway that led underneath the house. She’d barely looked up at the officers’ arrival, but when they offered to help her carry it down, she accepted gratefully. The cellar was i

  When you approach the pub known as the Midnight Hind, you would be forgiven for thinking it is abandoned, or at the least, closed. It only operates between dusk and dawn, and the ancient leaded glass of its cross-hatched windows are so pregnant with swirling colors that, in the moonlight, they take on the dead-eyed opalescence of an oil slick. Opening the door, most blink at the contrast between the still darkness without and the riot of light and sound within. People talking and arguing, playing cards at corner tables, and gathering around the small stage where an odd little band plays. But none of that was why I’d entered that place. I had come to play the Bar Game. You sit at the far end of the bar facing the other player, the span of polished wood in front of you deeply etched with white lines and runes. Among these carvings, several rows of silver nails have been hammered halfway deep, and when you are bade to slide your hand i

    We call it a dewclaw. It’s how you know you’re one of us. I…ah, I see. And when you say ‘we’ call it a dewclaw… I mean me and Mama and Daddy. And Uncle Freddy and Aunt Sandra. And, well, our whole family. So…they all talk about that as being a dewclaw? Yep. It’s like what my dog Roscoe has, only bigger. That’s how Mama first told it to me. Okay. So now, who else comes around your ranch? Other than your Mama and Daddy and Uncle Freddy and Aunt Sandra. Hmm. That’s mainly it except for Jonathan. That’s Uncle Freddy and Aunt Sandra’s son. He used to play with me when we were little, but he’s all grown up now. And he don’t come around no more anyway. That’s Jonathan…Peterson? Yep. That’s him. Why doesn’t he come around any more? I dunno…Maybe because he got mad last time. He saw me after the docking and he started crying and cursing and stuff. He said it wasn’t right

    To many, sin is just an idea. A religious or spiritual concept meant to describe an act or the condition of one’s soul. To others, it is something more real and tangible—it has a weight and substance to it like the gravitational pull of some distant black star. For me, it was just a word. I had been raised in a strictly religious family in the middle of nowhere Oklahoma, so it was a word I was intimately familiar with, but one which held little meaning for me other than stirring up fuzzy memories of fiery sermons and harsh admonitions when I’d done something my parents found to be “sinful”. I wasn’t religious or spiritual myself, and if I had a soul, I imagined it must be a dim and shabby thing that I was getting little use out of. When I went to visit my best friend Melanie the summer before our senior year of college, I’d had no idea I would be attending a funeral. My first indication was the line of cars filling her family’s