Agnes and True

A Canadian Literary Journal

The Inventory

by Jennifer Falkner

This room is as airless as all the others upstairs. The window is missing its screen but I yank it open anyway. There are no houses or strip malls outside, only trees and the absence of traffic noise. At least the evening air dilutes the smell. Earthy, almost fetid, reminding me of the white, pudding-like feces of my brother’s boa constrictor, his high school pet. I can hear Gabe moving around downstairs; he’s whistling and it reassures me, knowing he’s there.

Every time I push open a door or pull open a new drawer, I expect the old man to rebuke me, to jump out of nowhere and demand to know what the fuck I’m doing. I have even more of a sense of him now, from the stubble on the bathroom sink to the bathrobe hanging from the door, smelling of Vetiver and stale sweat. [Read More…]

All Souls

by John Delacourt

As soon as the streetlights came on, I began to prepare for All Souls. I came down to the hotel bar and ordered a glass of Greek wine. I tried, Mother, I just can’t drink the Polish. This will have to do as a kind of sacrament.

It is a strange little bar: half alpine cottage with its blonde wood tables, half village nightclub with a wall of smoked mirrors. And a karaoke machine, of course. God knows you get what you pay for, even in Krakow.

In my purse I have a glass vase with a candle inside. I have resigned myself to completing this rite. Still the dutiful daughter. [Read More…]

Christmas Safari

by Rosa Lea

At last! The master of ceremonies began concluding his darn long speech—never thought I’d hear the end of it.

“The Canadian Historical Literature Association and the South African Friends of History Society would again like to thank the winners of this year’s Best Historical Writing Award…”

He looked at us in the front row and continued on some more.

“A big hand, please, to three wonderful sisters—Mildred, Dorothy, and Rita—for their jointly written memoir about their [Read More…]

The White Wolf

by Gary Thomson

When Vera Kincaid and her husband Wallace first saw the wolves, she wanted to paint them whereas he was eager to shoot them.

They followed the ridge line about a hundred metres back from the farm house, partially concealed by basswood trees that stood bare against the autumn light. Five of them, Vera counted. Russet and grey, walking in single line. The artist’s brush in Vera’s hand trembled like a dry leaf. Wallace held his axe at waist height. He tensed [Read More…]

The Rockies

by Maya Sokolovski

Today is the last time for a long time that I will know a simple truth: All is well, and life is fine. The Rocky Mountains feel like home, like family. A chain of celestial islands bound together. Not a one alone or entire of itself. I climb up with my boyfriend and two friends. Every breath is ragged in the rarefied air. Each moment like a drop of honey in an acorn cup. At the height of spring, the sheer slopes sag with snow while sunlight strikes [Read More…]

Thoughtful Murders

by Jeannette Harvey

We are on a craggy bluff—two wind-blown women admiring the way the ocean boils and seethes on the rocks far below—when I take a quick step back to give Edna a shove over the precipice.

Sometimes I lurk in evening shadows across from her hairdressing salon. After she comes out and turns the key in the lock, I follow her into the thickening mist of the alley, take out the long-handled knife from beneath my coat, and— [Read More…]

Lost Boy

by Angie Ellis

She notices everything—the dimples on his knuckles, a replaced button on his collared shirt, his blond lashes. He lifts his eyes to her briefly, then down to his bowl and back up again; his little fingers curl around the spoon and hold it for long moments before drawing it to his mouth.

She reaches across the table and places her hand on his. [Read More…]

Burning Rubber

by Jennifer Marr

“Well, aren’t you turning into a little lady.” The doctor glances at my chest, then makes note of something on his pad. He turns to my mother. “Have you given any further thought to sterilization?”

“My husband and I wonder if maybe we should hold off until she gets her first period? See how we handle it?”

“In my opinion, it’s easier to get it over with now.” The doctor grabs my legs and stretches them out like a Thanksgiving wishbone. “She’s doing well. Gained some weight and is less stiff through the pelvis. [Read More…]

Mildred Mendelson

Naomi Lakritz by Naomi Lakritz

“How are we doing today?”

“I’m fine. However, I can’t answer for you. You’ll have to decide for yourself how you are. I’m no judge of that. What’s your name? I can’t read it. They make these name tags so tiny nowadays.”

“Kayleigh.”

“I cannot imagine a future populated by people named Kayleigh or Breanne or Jayden. [Read More…]

Angel Food & Rhinestones

CarolJonesby Carol Jones

The worst part of purging the contents of my parents’ house was that my parents weren’t dead. Gone but not yet dead, I repeated, forcing myself to tackle another box, another closet, another drawer.

My husband and I piled the things we wanted to keep in the living room, the things to sell in the family room, and the things to donate in the garage. Everything else would go in a dumpster after the yard sale. We triaged nearly a century of memories, more if we counted [Read More…]

Happily Ever After

mary-j-breenby Mary J. Breen

I can’t imagine how people can go on television and tell their stories to the whole blessed world. Like on Oprah, although she does seem like a nice person.

Today I watched a show called Abusive Husbands in the Military and The Wives Who Love Them. Couldn’t have been hard to find a couple of those. When it ended, I did something I should have done long ago: I took down the photo of Richard and me on our wedding day, and stuffed it into the piano bench [Read More…]

Army of You

Jason S. Ridlerby Jason S. Ridler

Dave,

I’m dispensing with formalities because it is my last day. Please, read all of what’s below. Some of it is old hat. But the truth is in the details. I want you to know the truth. To help stem the tide of what you unleashed. I’m reminded of my grandfather’s favourite saying, said every morning before he hunted for Soviet incursions with the Rangers, instant coffee in hand, not a wisp of steam. “Yesterday is ashes; tomorrow wood. Only today [Read More…]

Freedom’s Just Another Word

Colleen Andersonby Colleen Anderson

Jamie enters the glass-panelled Sanctuary, interspersed with shades of green; the door whisks closed behind her as she balances her matcha tea. She digs out keys for the simian rooms. Fleur watches as Jamie enters, but stays on her perch as the windows slide back. The chimp doesn’t take the offered apple.

She looks at Jamie’s face, the piercings and the tattoos. Fleur, her brown eyes precious stones amongst her glossy [Read More…]

Bloom

Brentby Brent van Staalduinen

Every time I see you in the spring, your hands are dark with the expensive soil you till into those waiting flower beds. It comes in big yellow bags and never sits for long—within days the shovel and wheelbarrow are out for your annual spring performance, you the director, your husband the reluctant player. But today, it’s just you. The hem of the black dress you wore to the service is hiked up, and your knees are as muddy as your hands. [Read More…]

In the Shade of the Sunshine Superette

Thomsonby Gary Thomson

The Chester Billings parkette gathered Clara Knox and her friends many summer afternoons when the companions were between engagements. That was Louella Dickens’ term — engagements — for part time work that paid little, and ended soon after it began. Clara was watching two gulls squabble around an overfull rubbish bin. She bristled when Richie O’Brien nodded towards her cigarets. “Give us a smoke, Clara? I’ll pay you back next weekend.” When pigs wear bow ties, Clara thought. To extend her smoking needs over several days, [Read More…]

Somewhere Warm, With No Snow

hdebling_photoby Heather Debling

Barbara pointed to the chicken she wanted. It would have bothered her once: the wholeness of the meat, the unplucked skin, the head lolling about, the wattle—if she looked at it hard enough, long enough—still seeming to shudder. But after her trip, she would find what was once normal to be unnatural, her stomach turning at all the headless little chicks lined up in a row at the grocery store, cling-wrap worn like a second skin, tight hospital corners to hold in the juices. [Read More…]

Out Picking

by Isobel Cunningham

“Berry picking is for ladies.”  My very macho Inuk student, Josipee, told me that. I had heard the kids talking about flying to another village north of Kuujjuak to pick with their families.  I asked if he was going and he put me firmly in my place. He was used to the old burdens of kindly contempt, weary tolerance and amusement that the students must pick up with each new white teacher who comes to Adult Ed. There I was and I had to learn.

I was thrilled when some ladies invited me to pick berries with them. It was Friday night at The Lounge. Once I figured out the meaning of, “Are you loungin’ it?” I was happy to tag along with the principal and a few of my middle-aged students. They were women who hung faint hopes on the “retraining” project of which I was a blind and blundering part. [Read More…]

Why Do People Tell Me Things?

by John Jeffire

Good god, not this morning. Not now, not now, not now. Move, move, move. C’mon, kids.

“C’mon, Scotty, you need to finish that cereal. Tosha, you need to eat something. Both of you, let’s go, you’re gonna miss the bus.”

Of all days to drag their feet. Mr. Nichols from corporate is in town for his walk-through, and Sunny has to nail it. She hadn’t gotten home until after eleven the last four nights, staying almost two hours after close to stock shelves, making sure all items were signed, spacing racks for customers—everything perfect. And what did she find when she got home? Both kids still up, the sink full of filthy dishes, the stove slopped over with baked [Read More…]

The Witness Room

by Edythe Anstey Hanen

Carrie’s hand trembles on the doorknob. Stark letters are etched into rusting copper on the sign above the door. The Witness Room. She opens the door, walks into the unfolding pageant, with its motherlode of unmined possibilities. The sorrow of near-possibilities. The ragged sadness of the never-possible.

Mama Sue is dead.

She smells the lilies first, sweet and cloying. Heady, though not smelling of death as she imagines they might. Tall crystal vases hold roses the colour of clotted cream, rust and gold lilies, baby’s breath. Soft candlelight throws flickering shadows [Read More…]

Fort Mac

by Thomas Wharton

This was years before the fire they called the Beast burned up half the town and the money hose slowed from a gush to a trickle. Back then I drove one of those mammoth trucks that haul the raw ore out of the excavation pits. We were removing the forest in neat rectangular chunks, like date squares from a pan. Peeling away a soggy carpet of muskeg to scoop out what had been steeping here for a hundred million years, the sour black honey of time. [Read More…]

Fresh Oil, Loose Stone

by Heather Rolland

The tar spreader lumbered up the hill, spraying a thin film of blackness on all in its path: road bed, weeds, and the occasional careless worker’s feet or Gatorade bottle. The dump truck’s gates clanged, followed by the shush of gravel, flowing like water out the back and onto the waiting tar. Raked and rolled and rolled again, inch by inch, mile by mile, the rutted old dirt road received its makeover. Julia watched [Read More…]

A Needle Pulling Thread

by J.R. Johnson

Luani scanned the new Symphony Hall with an appreciative eye. After five years of refurbishment, untold cost overruns, and the inevitable discussion of whether art was worth it (in such perilous times), the building was finally complete.

Golden Quebec beech panelling angled through the hall to maximize acoustic reflection; high balcony walls curved like [Read More…]

Coconut Oil

by Sonal Champsee

“Your Ammaji is coming tonight,” said Mom. “Your grandmother.” She’d been counting down the days for me.

I was excited because I’d learned all about grandmothers in school. We were doing a unit on family trees. I had a green, construction paper tree—the trunk split into two branches, and then each branch split into two more. Eight branches. In the middle, where everything came together, was me. I was happy there was no room for my brother Amit on this tree. It was mine and mine alone. [Read More…]

Twelve Days

Karin Aurinoby Karin Aurino

I have this perfect life—a perfect husband, three happy children, a beautiful home in the City of Angels—even the neighbours are nice. So why am I hiding in my bedroom? Because everything that was good, has somehow turned bad. So I’ll stay upstairs. Problem solved.

Downstairs, my husband will be drinking a glass of wine while making dinner. It’s his turn to cook and he’ll be half into that bottle already. He’ll pour me a glass of red like he does every night. Fine wine—one of the first things we invested in when we started [Read More…]

No Fairy-Tale Ending

Hege Lepriby Hege Anita Jakobsen Lepri

The lights in the interrogation room had been dimmed, making the laminate table look almost like real wood. She wasn’t quite sure when that had happened. Probably they’d done it in tiny increments so she wouldn’t notice. They knew how to transform a situation here.

It was the good cop’s turn if her calculations were right. She was thirsty but hopeful that the detective would bring water, maybe even coffee. She didn’t need to worry about the coffee [Read More…]

Birds of Paradise

lisa-morriss-andrewsby Lisa Morriss-Andrews

Mother calls out for my oldest sister, Miranda. Her voice bleats into the sterile silence like a lost child, startled from a nightmare. Death is a nightmare . . . for my mother. An extraordinary and unexpected event. “How terrible . . . how could this possibly happen!” she would exclaim, each time someone strayed from the fold of the living.

The living are in the fold outside of the hospital’s ICU right now. As they go about their day-to-day business, most are [Read More…]

Tromba

Frederick Seneseby Frederick Senese

In that country, they don’t bury the dead. They pile the bodies on a criss-cross platform of logs and sticks out in the forest, so the flies can eat. The life drips off the bones until what remains is pure, pristine, perfect. Bleached ribcages scoured by the wind, seashell skulls washed by the rain.

Every seven years the People wrap the bones in fresh linen and parade them through the village. In this way the dead can watch the ongoing trials of the living from afar, and know the comfort and consolation of distance. [Read More…]

The Witches on Floor Fifteen

BrianRoweby Brian Rowe

The little witch sucks on a lollipop, her lips and chin covered in a pumpkin shade of orange, as she peers inside the hospital room. A tall black hat covers her hair, and her brown silk dress has a large vampire cape that stretches down to her shoes. She holds a small bucket shaped like candy corn.I wave to her from the dark, gloomy corner; and she waves back. Her upbeat smile gives this room a needed ounce of cheer. [Read More…]

Wormwood and Strawberries

Susan Hroncekby Susan Hroncek

They said the old woman ate children, but I never believed it.

Children disappeared; it’s just something that happened. Some wandered too close to the steel mills or the lake. Others were snatched from the park or on the way home from school. And some simply ran away. Anything to escape the taunting, the fists, the pollution that painted the sky orange and coated our world in coal-black dust. [Read More…]

The Red Kite

Paula Dunningby Paula Dunning

Rachel is driving the riding mower back and forth across the lawn, the first mowing of the season. It’s springtime-cool—she’s wearing a light jacket, and a bright red scarf holds back her greying curls—but the midday sun is warm on her back. As she backs up to manoeuver around the hawthorn bush, she glances across the expanse of green to the house, where the rose bushes beside the deck are just putting out leaves. When she and Tom moved onto this farm [Read More…]

Frostbite

Helen Rossiterby Helen Rossiter

There is a moment between sleep and wakefulness when anything is possible. You know in that fraction of a second, before your brain clicks into gear, that you are flying or dancing with the stars, or that you are alone in a dark cavern. It’s a fragment of time when the impossible and the implausible might frighten or amuse, but don’t strike you as odd.

So it was when I touched the hand beside mine and thought with a joy I hadn’t felt for months, this is my husband’s hand. [Read More…]

All Souls

by John Delacourt As soon as the streetlights came on, I began to prepare for All Souls. I came down to the hotel bar and ordered a glass of Greek wine. I tried, Mother, I just can’t drink the Polish. This will have to do as a kind of … [Read more]

Why Do People Tell Me Things?

by John Jeffire Good god, not this morning. Not now, not now, not now. Move, move, move. C’mon, kids. “C’mon, Scotty, you need to finish that cereal. Tosha, you need to eat something. Both of you, let’s go, you’re gonna miss the bus.” Of all days … [Read more]