“Hey, Mom!” Oskar called out as he entered the house. “Am I adopted?” Juliana had been dreading this day. She knew it would come, but she was hoping it would be after Oskar was a little older. He was a senior in high school, but still she hoped a few more years could pass before that question had to be answered. She had known for many years that the other children were teasing him for being... different. It wasn’t just th...

It was about two in the morning. I was having trouble sleeping because I kept having really weird dreams. Considering my very strange imagination, a dream has to be really out of the ordinary for me to consider it weird, but these dreams were definitely weird. Then Danny Boy appeared– not in my dream—but alongside my bed. He was standing well over two meters tall and glaring down at me. I could feel his eyes boring into m...

Every room in the house is lit. There are lights outside shining on the house. Even the trees are wound with lights so there are no shadows. My grandmother is totally nuts about Halloween. And no, I don’t mean that she gets everything decorated and hands out candy to all the mini-extortionists who jubilantly cry out, “Trick or Treat!” She leaves that to me, standing with a small table at the end of the walkway so the litt...