He had never celebrated Halloween before. That was, of course, understandable since he had been created on a damp Tuesday in Prague in 1601. He’d spent most of the intervening centuries in cellars. His creator had consulted two primary texts in forming him: Yarmolinsky’s History of the Ashkenazy and Rabbi Eleazar’s Commentary on the Sefer […]
Fenster Loomis, an eight-going-on-nine-year-old boy, loved playing in the cemetery. In school, he had been struggling to read, but now he was enjoying much success at perusing the tombstones, grave markers, and monuments in the old graveyard. It helped build his math skills as well; with the subtraction of the dates of birth from the […]
On All Hallows Eve, people at Murphy’s Tavern were having a pint of ale and enjoyed telling tales about how they came close to disaster at the hands of the Phantom of the Hollow. Their talk evoked shivers in some folk despite the warmth of the tavern. Some half-believed their friends’ tales. The Phantom was […]
Unless one is wealthy there is no use in being a charming fellow. Romance is the privilege of the rich, not the profession of the unemployed. The poor should be practical and prosaic. It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating. These are the great truths of modern life which Hughie […]
The little girl came into her papa’s study, as she always did Saturday morning before breakfast, and asked for a story. He tried to beg off that morning, for he was very busy, but she would not let him. So he began: “Well, once there was a little pig–“ She put her hand over his […]
One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. […]
BANG! BANG! BANG! Molly was distracted from the pot of chili she always seemed to be preparing by the clamorous clatter at her kitchen door. Licking the spoon with which she had been stirring the concoction, she replaced it on the spoon rest and stepped to the door. Opening it wide, she was unsurprised to […]
A long time ago, when there was no internet or smartphones, a young Iranian man lived with his grandparents in a small town in India—or as Iranians call it, Hindustan. Parsa had been raised by his grandma Molood and grandpa Jamal since he was two, after his parents died in a plane crash on a […]