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Aftermath: Stories of Secrets and Consequences
When you step onto an escalator at a shopping mall, somewhere in your subconscious you know certain things are going to happen. You will pass static displays of merchandise, inhale the scent of indoor tropical plants, and reach a particular floor untroubled by your ride on the moving stairs. Forget about certainties when you read the stories in this volume. The escalator might suddenly stop, causing your heart to lurch because the person behind you is someone you haven’t seen since a disaster twenty-five years before. Or the stairs might change direction, carrying you back to a time of such family strife you lost your voice. There is the possibility that nothing will move, that you will be stuck where you are with people you’ve harmed by your good intentions. Or the railing you’re gripping will slip away when your father appears on the opposite staircase holding the charms you’ve stolen for his ritual to avenge you.
The theme of this volume is secrets, those things that are intentionally withheld, not widely known, or not understood. But the stories are about more than that. They are about ordinary events—a bus ride, a walk to the cinema, a business conference—where people are unexpectedly forced to confront experiences and relationships they thought were buried. They are about what happens when men and women hold back truths not only from one another, but from themselves. They are about children and adults so desperate to maintain a pretense, they don’t recognize the dangerous truths others keep hidden.
The people in these stories ride the errant escalator until they come to what George Oppen so beautifully describes in his poem, “Image of the Engine”:
There hovers in that moment, wraith-like and like a plume of steam, an aftermath,
A still and quiet angel of knowledge and of comprehension.
Step onto the escalator. Enjoy the ride.
—Rayne Debski, Editor
The theme of this volume is secrets, those things that are intentionally withheld, not widely known, or not understood. But the stories are about more than that. They are about ordinary events—a bus ride, a walk to the cinema, a business conference—where people are unexpectedly forced to confront experiences and relationships they thought were buried. They are about what happens when men and women hold back truths not only from one another, but from themselves. They are about children and adults so desperate to maintain a pretense, they don’t recognize the dangerous truths others keep hidden.
The people in these stories ride the errant escalator until they come to what George Oppen so beautifully describes in his poem, “Image of the Engine”:
There hovers in that moment, wraith-like and like a plume of steam, an aftermath,
A still and quiet angel of knowledge and of comprehension.
Step onto the escalator. Enjoy the ride.
—Rayne Debski, Editor
342 pages, Paperback
First published December 4, 2012
129 people want to read
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