The Elementals

by Michael McDowell

Luker’s opinion of the dead woman was that he had never seen her to better advantage than in her coffin.

There’s no point in advertising a circus when everybody hates the clown.”

she saw the marks of passing time’s casual violence.

to watch the evening phosphorescence rise.

Astronomers of old had thought that space was filled with a lambent ether through which the stars and planets swam; and Luker thought he moved now through just such an ether.