RIVER STYX ONLINE
FICTION
The Last Thursday of the Century
As winter nears its end, the sky acts like a lunatic, its behavior mirroring the chaos of Iranian lives preparing for Nowruz. When you think that spring has arrived, snow appears outside the window, causing confusion between Nowruz and Christmas. One can only hope that an evening thunderstorm doesn’t kill the newly planted violets. Perhaps the sky is reflecting on the past year; Saturday thinking about summer, Wednesday evoking the memories of autumn. Maybe it’s showing its sense of humor in preparation for the upcoming Nowruz. Either way, the old adage rings true: “The sky goes crazy before Nowruz,” making it difficult to predict what the afternoon will bring based on the morning.
Strays
There was something in the way the kid worked, as if pushing around stacks of pressure-treated two by sixes in the heat wasn’t actually hard, as if the wood weighed nothing at all, as if gravity chose not to assail him while it pressed down on everyone else. The kid had shown up on island two weeks ago, at the start of August, and ever since, Thad had been watching the boy.