The Novella Life of Illuscia Nester Himawari

Up until last December I’d worked for over ten years in Disability Benefits Compliance. My job was, essentially, periodically checking in on people around our region who were receiving state disability benefits to make sure that they were being honest about their disability, they were complying with medical recommendations to mitigate or treat the disability, and that there were no other irregularities with regards their care or the benefits they received. Usually the in-house visits were fairly short—most of the real information was coming from forms filled out by their treating doctors and a review of their current medical records, as you can’t rely on self-reporting when it comes to these things. Still, occasionally you would find someone who needed more help than they were getting or that you could prove was being dishonest just to get free money. It wasn’t exactly a fun job, but I at least felt like I was performing a necessary (if bor...

  “Ms. Marks, can you come in here?” I looked up to see Mr. Jackson standing at the doorway to his office, and I could already tell from his expression that it was bad news. Standing up, I made an effort to not favor my bad leg. To not limp as I walked over to him and entered the room. To not look weak. Expendable. Sitting down in one of his guest chairs, I tried to keep my face neutral as he took his position behind the desk. “What can I do for you, Mr. Jackson?” He smiled awkwardly. “Tony, please. Everyone can just call me Tony.” Clearing his throat, he looked at some point above me and kept ploughing ahead. “Ellie, we’ve been real happy with the work you’ve been doing here and I know I’d talked to you in the past about making it a full-time position…but, well, I’ve talked to our numbers guys and it’s just not in the budget for right now.” He glanced at me before looking away again. “It’s not the salary, so much. ...

  Due to the recent closing of all Tattersall corporate offices in North America, a number of previously classified documents have made their way out into the wild. This is one of those documents. Tattersall Security—Forensic Audit of security footage from “Park N’ Go” parking garage. Request Source: N, Murphy. Client # CV-20425, limited contract Request Date: 12/4/2012 Footage Date and Time: 10/20/2012 between 20:00 and 22:00 Narrative Summary At the outset, it should be noted that this video footage was originally received on a set of three (3) USB drives from the client. We were given assurance that this footage had come directly from the original drive and had not been altered or tampered with in any way. Our own technical analysis has found no indications of alterations to the files themselves, nor any signs of digital or other tampering/alteration with the video and audio content from the way i...

When I first saw the old woman, I thought it was a Halloween costume. It was only the 30th and we were in a grocery store parking lot, but I had already started seeing people dressed up for parties, festivals, and just because. And she looked so odd . Her feet and legs were what I noticed first, of course. Barefoot and spindle-legged, she was wrapped from sole to upper shin in what I assumed was thick medical gauze. It was as though she had started wrapping herself to look like a mummy and then either ran out of material or energy. But then I saw how she was bent over, her thin grey eyebrows furrowed and a crooked cigarette dangling from her lips as she studied the ground around the back of her car. She wasn’t playing dress up, and clearly she was looking for something, whether real or imagined. I hated the thought—it was judgmental. Just because she looked to be in her eighties, it didn’t mean she was senile. Maybe she had dropped...

  I was born on October 27, 2001, eighteen years ago today. I was brought into this world in one of the delivery rooms at Empire General Hospital, my grandparents standing close by in a waiting room as my mother struggled alone in her labor. It wasn’t supposed to be that way, of course—her alone with doctors and nurses who didn't really know her or care. My father had planned to be there as well, holding her hand and talking to her as I was being born. But three days earlier, on October 24th, he had disappeared. The ghost of my father haunted my entire childhood. I could feel him when I looked into my mother’s sad and weary eyes or when my grandmother stopped talking when I walked into the room. I was reminded of it every fall when my mother would go out on the weekends to hand out fliers and talk to all the local agencies to see if there had been any new word. Because my father was never found--truth be told, he could be h...

    Nine years ago I had a car accident. It was around October 16th or 17th in 2010…whatever, it was late at night on a Sunday, I remember that. Because as I drove down the winding dark road that would take me past Empire and the handful of smaller towns that lay between me and my bed, I was talking to myself, saying how stupid I had been to come all this way for Jeffery’s Halloween party, especially when I had work the next day. My cousin Jeffery is a good guy, and he’s always been a good friend to me. But he’s also always had it easy—his part of the family is wealthy, and his idea of work is telecommuting from home a couple of days a week while goofing off the rest of the time. He doesn’t live in the real world, and so when he wants to throw an elaborate Halloween party, he not only does it in the middle of the month, but he does it on a Sunday when he should know a lot of people he invites are going to have to drive a long way. ...

  “Swapsies, no takeabacks!” That was what my little brother Dylan used to always call out when I traded candy with him, especially around Halloween. He was six on our last Halloween together—old enough for me to take him trick-or-treating alone and for him to really appreciate it. I still remember that last time well all these years later. One reason for that is because even at nine I appreciated that I was lucky to have such a sweet little brother. Old enough for me to baby him, but close enough to my own age to have fun with him too, we had always been close since he was born. Another reason was that the following year, two weeks before Halloween in 2005, Dylan died in his sleep. They told us it was a congenital heart defect that had never been caught, and that most likely he had just…stopped. Breathing in and out those soft sleep breaths I used to listen to when we had shared a room just a year earlier, and then moment...