Alison McCabe's "Heirloom" deftly trades in contrasts. Over the course of a few hundred words, the diction evolves from the colloquial to the lyrical, and the strangest of details—a cat toy mistaken for a rodent, a son-in-law's name long forgotten—are also the story's most humorous. We recently emailed McCabe to ask about her work, about how she approaches the drafting process, and about how she manages to move so dramatically in time and in tone in such a short work. Nate Brown: “Heirloom” … [Read more...] about Online Fiction Interview: Alison McCabe
Heirloom
Heirloom
Vermin everywhere, the old man said, and so he could not eat, didn’t matter if it was bread pudding, or his MumMum’s corn meal mush, or Tastykake butterscotch krimpets. Didn’t matter how toothsome, the old man couldn’t stomach it, not with all the mice. Too often he’d pick them up and toss them into the compost bin. And on top of that, the mice weren’t mice, but cat toys stitched of felt, feather, knotted yarn. “Catch o’ the day,” he said to his daughter and the gentleman whose name he no … [Read more...] about Heirloom