Author Description

We all experience death and loss. We lose those we love. We cry, we sob, we mourn, and then we carry-on. Forever, long after the gaping wounds have scarred over, we bear the marks of the grim reaper's sickle deep within our souls. These stories give eloquent witness to that most private of pains. Our own death looms on the horizon; sometimes the final foe loiters ominously near, imminent like an impending storm; sometimes-happier times-this foe rests in the unconscious recesses of our minds, abiding there like some distant and nearly forgotten nightmare. At all times, death menaces us with its inescapable tentacles. This volume explores-neither fully embracing nor coyly evading-the mysterious forces that pull us toward finitude, toward life's inevitable demise. If you've confronted the glint of the grim reaper's eye or if you mourn for those who have paid the last full wages of mortal existence, this volume aches with you. These stories were written for you. William Walz's "Far From Home" narrates a deeply moving journey toward death, an elderly man's final return to the home of his youth. It contains, I do believe, some of the most stirring prose that has ever passed before human eyes. Michael Bitanga's "Last Call" records a conversation with the voice of death itself, the lead character bravely offering the inquiries that most of us ponder-but fear to vocalize. In "Shadow in Peripheral Vision," F I Shehadi boldly investigates that glimpse of something that we almost see from time to time. This presence, an image only vaguely caught in the corner of one eye, is our own death. Nothing is more senseless than war's orgy of death. Karen Scott's "Prayer for the Dying" mourns the meaningless losses and bloody gore of war in Scotland's kilt-clad past. Tom Stiner weeps with those who can neither accept nor deny the sudden loss of one so-loved. "If I'm Not Here When You Get Back, Call Me" opens with a note of throbbing pain, then crescendos with peaceful release. Few writin