“I don’t know. I am not finish yet.” But as Max spoke, he was already beginning to realize he had made a mistake, allowed himself to get carried away by the fascinating possibilities of the assignment, the irresistible what if of it, and had written things too personal for him to show anyone. He had written you were the only one I knew how to talk to and I am sometimes so lonely. He had really been imagining her reading it, somehow, somewhere—perhaps as he wrote it, some astral form of her staring over his shoulder, smiling sentimentally as his pen scratched across the page. It was a mawkish, absurd fantasy and he felt a withering embarrassment to think he had given in to it so completely.
I've been reading Joe Hill's 20th Century Ghosts at the moment - a rather brilliant short story collection which explores the real intimacies of the absurd and the supernatural in situations that run a little too close to reality. Abraham's Boys is a hard short about two brothers who are confronted with a bitter, unpleasant truth about their father. It's ultimately about the loss of innocence and damaged boys entering desperate situation. It's heart breaking and horrifying and just quite excellent. You can read Abraham's Boys over at Fifty-Two Stories.
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