Our Hideous Progeny

by C.E. McGill

if there exists a way to respond to condolences that does not feel like ripping open the stitches of a wound with one’s teeth, I have not yet found it.

— MARY SHELLEY, Frankenstein THEY SAY THAT shame can be a living thing. That it gnaws at you, lives in you, lives with you; that it makes you hard and withered, wearing you away day by day until nothing remains.

it seemed, was the park in front of the Palace that summer afternoon. Bright-skirted ladies and their lace parasols covered the

Mr Jamsetjee’s posture bore the mark of a man who believed he had failed;

Why should it be ridiculous, to imagine such a thing for ourselves?

Clémentine

She did not even know how to forgive herself.