The Novella Life of Illuscia Nester Himawari

    My name is Sam Singer, and while I usually introduce myself as a small-town reporter for the Habitsville Gazette, or the guy who has narrowly avoided all sorts. of slow and agonizing deaths, today I bear a title that is far more challenging than anything I’ve faced before. Today, I am a babysitter. My niece is in town staying with me while my sister and her husband take the first vacation they’ve had since Ellie was born five years ago. And since I live, work, eat, and watch mindless TV alone, I was kind of excited to have some company. Even if that company is five years old, and not much of a conversationalist. So, there we were, in my apartment living room, watching something called “Teddy’s Big Day,” which as far as I could tell was a program devoted to showing a large cartoon bear walking through a grocery store and making smart food decisions. Ellie was sitting on the floor in front of me, eyes glued to the screen, eating every bit of it up. Sure, I didn’t love the sh...

My name is Samuel Singer, and I only have one ear. I’ve written before about how I lost it in a previous article—it’s a mysterious tale of intrigue, mystery, and religious mania—but that isn’t what has brought my pen to paper today. How I lost my ear, however strange the circumstances, isn’t important right now. What’s important is how it came back. It happened quite literally overnight. It had been months with the ear gone, and I had gotten used to the way the world sounded, only using one earbud at a time, and the strange smoothness of my head against a pillow. I actually preferred to lay on the earless side. It was pretty comfortable. Usually, it takes me a bit to fall asleep. I’ve seen some… things during my time as a journalist for my local newspaper, the Habitsville Gazette—things that like to make a reappearance in my memory when I close my eyes at night. But that particular evening, I felt different. Peaceful. And s...

    When I first saw it, I thought I simply needed a cup of coffee. I had been to a wedding the night before, my old school friend Angie was getting hitched, and to be honest, I hit the open bar a little too hard, especially when I had plans to finish a story early the next day. Though they are rarely read, the Habitsville Gazette articles don’t write themselves, and my boss would have my neck if he gets another ‘sorry I’m late’ e-mail from his least punctual small-town reporter, Sam Singer. That’s me. So I went to the Sage Diner. I like the Sage because it’s a hidden gem, tucked between a laundromat and a tattoo parlor. The coffee machine in my apartment had been broken for a while now, and though I had ordered a new one, it had yet to be delivered—so getting my caffeine fix required an outside excursion. I opened the door with a quaint little jingle, and took my usual seat in the back corner, away from the scattered elder...

    I’ve been writing about my hometown for a while now, and though many of you may know the name Samuel Singer, and have roamed the streets of Habitsville vicariously through my stories, there’s one special spot in town that I’ve never written about. The cemetery. It’s a little cliché, don’t you think? Of all the horror sand oddities that exist in Habitsville in broad daylight, it seems like overkill to go looking for trouble in a place already so haunted by death. Besides, dying in Habitsville and having a body to be buried—well, that made you one of the lucky ones. The only visitors the cemetery saw was the occasional mourner placing flowers on a headstone, or, this time of year, groups of giggling teens ducking through the scattered trees. There were signs posted telling the latter to keep out, but, being kids, they never did. They’d leave behind beer bottles and candy wrappers, the groundkeepers would clean them up in...