And I Do Not Forgive You: Stories and Other Revenges

by Amber Sparks

the clotted cream of moonlight. Her mother, in the way of most fairy-tale mothers: dead. Her father, in the way of most fairy-tale fathers: dreadfully flawed.

This fairy tale, in the way of most fairy tales: a warning disguised as a wish.

perhaps the father felt himself entitled to all the world’s beautiful women, even his blood relations. This too is not uncommon, in fairy tales or otherwise.

(Imagine Cary Grant’s housekeeper in To Catch a Thief—the one who strangled Nazis with her bare hands—and you have something of the idea.)

(And who, by the way, decided fairies were dainty? Spenser, perhaps?

She can close her nose to smells, a trick she learned years ago around ladies and gentlemen wearing too much scent,

We make her brother drive us there in his new truck, which we have to pay him ten bucks to do because he’s an entrepreneur, which means he doesn’t do anything for free.

Hey, I say to Ms. Lisa, my fave librarian. She’s read basically every book in the world and looks like a movie star, but she only dates women. I think that’s pretty brilliant, but in a town like this one, that makes men mad.

Everything feels like a memory already. Everything feels like it’s happening for the last time.

APOPHENIA. The human tendency to seek patterns in random nature, where there are no patterns to be found.

anyone who reads Ayn Rand, or attempts to read Ayn Rand, will be forcibly ejected from the proceedings.

anyone plays or sings “Candle in the Wind,” I will extra haunt them.

easily shocked conservative family has always been concerned about my fidelity to gender.

She loves him, and he loves her, in part because of affection, in part because of muscle memory, in part because of their shared personal possessions.

They love each other about as much as people who adore things can love other people.

He only has enough kindness for one person. He supposes that’s what love means to him.

He buys twenty identical sweaters from Barneys and never picks up the box from the front stoop. The same gray wool cardigan shows up on men and boys throughout the neighborhood that winter.