“Caroline Benton was a pointy woman; tall, all elbows and knees. Even her lips appeared to be crisp at the edges. Her tongue was a skewer you’d want to avoid.” Albert often fantasized himself reciting these words as part of her eulogy. He smiled. It was his truth after all. But his mother remained stubbornly alive and breathing fire in a posh region of Cleveland Heights.

“It’s a tragedy to lose a child,” said Caroline at his funeral, “even a viper like Albert.”

Recently retired, Marian Brooks is just beginning to write short fiction. She graduated from the U of P (BA English Lit) and Villanova University (MS Counseling). Marian worked as a psychotherapist for twenty years and as a research assistant for the past fifteen.

Larry was the leading anthropologist at the Museum of Natural History. He was also the chief designer of dioramas at the Neanderthal exhibit that depicted them preparing to kill a wild boar, tending a fire, or painting on a cave wall. He was highly regarded as the principal authority on how Neanderthals lived. His colleagues marveled at his unique insight and that he seemed so connected to Neanderthal society.

Larry, a private and unassuming man, preferred his meat rare, collected art by Picasso, and used a woodstove to keep warm in the winter. Whenever a thunderstorm rumbled down the valley where he lived, he would disconnect the power to his home and strip to his underwear. Then he would sit, curled into a ball in a corner of his bedroom, and quietly wait for the storm to pass.

Jon Beight lives and works in Western New York. He has been published in Red Fez, Apocrypha and Abstractions, Spilling Ink Review, Feathertale, and elsewhere.