The Writing of Dion Overtoun
Nobody brought their boats out to Land’s End, not anymore. A long, long time ago, Dot’s family had built a lighthouse on one of the islands there, and a temple to the gods of invention and progress. Nowadays, the lighthouse was derelict, the glass all shattered out and the brazier long cold. The sea had […]
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And so you continue in this world where you are the only moving, changing thing. The sky stretches blue-on-blue, the stormclouds paralyzed the moment before bursting, patches of sky all the more vivid for the contrast. Trees are frozen jerked to one side by the wind, and the cars on the street have been empty […]
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Things at the house were in disarray after Victor’s meltdown. Father made plans to send him on a health retreat to a summer home in Marseilles, Justine and Ernest and William panicked. Henry took it upon himself to visit Victor every day to suss out the cause of his collapse. Everyone asked Lily what had […]
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I was given a bullet with my name on it by the man who killed my father, a year to the day he was executed. There was no powder in it, of course, because the commander was not the sort of man to give away a tool that could be used to kill him. My […]
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Sunlight glared off the only boat in the mountain lake. A few yards away was the island that might have saved the passengers, maybe even the captain if they were especially quick and steel-nerved. As it was, the boaters who’d been brash enough to dare the water thirty minutes ago huddled on deck, unable to […]
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Years and specifics blurred together for him. It was a symptom of location, the flat scrubland punctuated only by oil pumps and their entourage of rangy cattle. Grass that grew up dead and yellow, snapped like matchsticks under the boots of the people who lived here. Why any sane human being, let along a few […]
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I came up behind him on silent feet. Or maybe not? I wasn’t listening to my own footsteps, it was too far gone for that, too deep, all I could really hear was the beating heart. Awash in raw, unfiltered sensation like a sea of boiling glass. Grating on my skin and fire in my […]
Read MoreCajoling gave way to pleading which, in its time, evolved into something just short of blackmail. Ronnie wasn’t surprised that it got so bad. She hoped at first it wouldn’t, that eventually, Bill would get tired of pounding his head against the stone wall of her denial and just let it die. He had pretended […]
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My mother and I had a vacation together after I published ‘Drosera.’ We roadtripped from Central Texas to Santa Fe, then up through the Colorado Rockies back to Texas. It was nice, and I have a lot of good stories from it. We were up high in the Rockies. The roads there are pretty […]
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Midnight came and went sometime when I was sleeping, slipped right past me while I dreamed. My blankets were heavy and wrapped tight around me, the way they ought to be, and the house was quiet. The only thing moving was time, rolling over all with irresistibly gentle steadiness. O (the roommate you’ll recall from […]
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