by Jack Stratton | May 21, 2026 | Uncategorized
There is a nondescript wooden door at the end of one of the long marble hallways of the Main Branch of the New York Public Library that you can only enter if you have the right knock and the right word and a particular pin on your lapel. Knowledge of the “Private...
by Jack Stratton | May 21, 2026 | Uncategorized
The Proper Fingering is Essential When Attempting the Works of Johann Sebastian Bach VIBRATIONS are odd things. Alone in her room at fifteen, Charlotte played for herself. She played because no one was home and she could take the towel from over the strings and just...
by Jack Stratton | May 21, 2026 | Uncategorized
Shelby pressed “send,” then closed her eyes and prayed. She looked in the mirror again. The big mirror on the wall across from her bed was one of her few real luxuries, wide and tall and taking up most of the wall of her small bedroom. She liked sitting in the middle...
by Jack Stratton | May 21, 2026 | Uncategorized
The thing was, she was very young. Certainly legal, but still, I really should have been ashamed of myself. I was a thirty-year-old man, and she was eighteen. It started out so simply, though. She sent me a picture because I wrote something silly, like, “if a picture...
by Jack Stratton | May 21, 2026 | Uncategorized
We bought her on Bond Street. There was a little shop, above a haberdashery, with a large plate glass window with gold foil lettering on it, where they have a book full of people who want to be sold. The counter person was quite dashing in their three piece suit. They...
by Jack Stratton | May 21, 2026 | Uncategorized
Though his elaborate instruction seemed to imply otherwise, the prince was indeed a very light sleeper. Thus, the slight creaking of the bed usually roused him from his slumber in the morning. Nevertheless, he kept his eyes closed and did not reveal his awakening. As...