I belong, as a contributing member, to a talented group of writers who are responsible for A Muse Bouche Review, a literary newsletter. It gives me a chance to write something new each month around a given theme, which I’m enjoying. The theme for June, 2024 is Eavesdropper and my contribution this month is a short story titled In the Attic. Small parts of it are autobiographical…see if you can figure out which parts. Here’s how it starts:

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Mom and dad didn’t freak out until the third kid disappeared. The first one, a little girl, happened on the far west side, nowhere near us. The second one was a boy in the next city over, even farther away. The third one, though, was a kid from our neighborhood, a seven year old boy named Gusty. His name’s really Augustino, but everyone calls him Gusty. We all know him. My brother Jimmy goes to school with him. He lives right here in the Hawthorne Park Estates, same as us.

Hawthorne Park Estates sounds all fancy, but it’s so not. Just a bunch of one-story apartments connected side-by-side around courtyards that are more crabgrass and dirt than grass, and there’s six courtyards altogether, plus a pool that’s closed half the time because the water keeps turning green. I’m making it sound horrible, but it’s not a bad place to live. There’s a ton of kids that live here, so there’s always someone to play with. In the summer we would leave the apartment in the morning and not come back until supper time, and mom and dad never worried about anything happening to us. At least not until Gusty disappeared.

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To read the entire story, and all the other pieces from this talented crew, check out the June A Muse Bouche Review, available here:

https://mailchi.mp/19cb947f450d/a-muse-bouche-review-plots-parties-17768264?e=46f6fd2a9e