Sebastian Malloy – Page 2

Panic Buying

My phone buzzes with a call while Hunter and I are in Grossett’s General Store, grabbing cheese sticks and pizza slices. I pull it out of my pocket and see that it’s Tina, in another time zone from us, three hours behind. “Hey,” I say, answering the call. “How’s tricks...

Cinnamon

There is a letter from Viola in the mailbox this morning, amongst the junk and the bills. It is too cold outside to read it at the top of the driveway, so I wait until I am settled in near the pellet stove. Dear Sebastian, I picked up Boone and...

New Year’s Resolutions

“I should have learned how to ice skate at some point,” Rivi says. “I’m sure I would have been a graceful gazelle on them.” “Plenty of ice gazelles in Maine,” I say. “You have to watch out for them when you’re driving at night. Totally wreck your car if you...

Black-Eyed Peas

“Happy New Year,” Viola says from the other end of the phone line. “I thought about calling you at midnight, but I figured you’d be asleep.” “Midnight my time, or yours?” I ask. Viola is in San Francisco, on the other side of the country from me. “Oh, mine, definitely.”...

The Donner Party

“What do you do around here for fun?” Rivi asks. “Sitting on the porch in Adirondacks during a snowstorm isn’t your idea of fun?” I say. “I mean, it’s nice,” she says, “but it’s not really exciting.” “You don’t move here for excitement,” Tina says. “You move here for the...

Things From the Archive

Old School

Ghost From the Archives

Salt Lake Matador

My phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out and see that it’s a FaceTime call coming through: Rivi. I swipe to accept it. “Rivi,” I say. “Sebastian.” The image is dark except for a sliver of blue, enough to dimly illuminate the right side of Rivi’s face, and...

Ghost From the Archives

Monkey Uber

Rivi stands at my living room window and looks out, tapping her fingers impatiently on the windowsill. “Let’s go let’s go let’s go let’s go!” I am sitting on the floor with my back against the wall, and eating an onion bagel. “I’m having my breakfast. You can wait five...

Ghost From the Archives

The Immediate Past

Sugar Kisses

Extreme close-up of stacked cubes of sugar, under low key lighting

My phone rings while I am out across the property, shoveling pathways in the snow through the chicken run. The chickens do not enjoy walking through snow, and will all just stand inside the doorway to their coop for the entire day if they don’t have a trail dug for them to follow. I suppose if my feet were a half an inch thick, I wouldn’t want to be walking through a foot and a half of snow, either. I pull off one of my gloves and take my phone out of my pocket. “Rivi,” I say when I answer…

A Flock of Dinosaurs

Portrait of a gray rooster with bright red comb, against a blurred green background.

The low this morning is 14 degrees. With the wind factored in, it’s a chilly 4 degrees outside when I bundle up and go to care for the chickens at the far south end of our property. We’ve had at least a foot and a half of snow in the past few days, so it’s safe to say that the morning is exciting. I admit to making the chickens wait until after I’ve had coffee. Being out in sub-freezing temperatures without caffeine is just too awful to even consider. When we bought this property, it came with a small horse…

Old School

Dear Rivi: I have been thinking a lot recently about how much more enjoyable the Internet was back in the old days. I know, I know: hardly an original observation. Still, it’s been very much on my mind. Remember when it took five minutes to download a photo? On dial-up? Remember when there wasn’t any streaming music, let alone streaming video? Remember when the way people communicated was generally all text-based, either in chat rooms or BBSs? I’m telling you, Rivi, we didn’t know how good we had it. So that brings me to where my head is at today.…

Election Night, Anxiety Night

Dear Rivi: And here we are again, teetering on the edge, like we did in 2020, and in 2016, and I’ll tell you something: I am over all of this bullshit. How dare Americans be so shitty. So racist. So fascist. It’s both sickening and disheartening, while at the same time being this really pointed reminder that people have to fight for progress every goddamn time, or risk sliding back into the dark ages. And yes, I know that it’s not all Americans who are shitty, but it’s honestly far too many of them that are, and it turns my…

Every Cat’s Got a Bit of an Asshole in Him

A large orange cat sitting in the open window of a house

The library in Winchester is open four days a week, and today is one of those days. We have come to escape the heat, and because we haven’t had the chance to visit the library yet, which is a crime in a civilized world. The building is small, no larger really than a fast food restaurant along the highway, but it’s got a charm that is unmistakable. It’s brick, for one thing, which makes it stand out in a town of mostly wooden buildings, and there’s an old cannon out front, pointed at the weed shop across the street (there…

Popeye as a Role Model

Interior of a general store, with wooden shelves full of candy on one side of the image, and wooden floors and walls for the building

We are out of butter and short on cream, so Hunter and I decide that a trip to the general store in town is in order. It’s too far to walk, but a half hour drive isn’t too bad, and there is still enough of the city people in us that we like to get out and about a little now and again, although I feel that’s a trait that is slowly dying out in us. The pollen is thick in the air here today, and we almost have to scrape it off the windshield of the car before we…

What’s In Your Head

In the mailbox this morning, we find an envelope addressed to us from our realtor, the one who had helped us to get this house in the woods in which we now live. Inside this envelope is a second, smaller envelope, like one that would come with a bouquet of flowers, and a folded sheet of paper. Hunter hands the second envelope to me while she reads the letter. “Claire says there’s a key in there,” she says. “Sure is,” I say, having unsealed the smaller envelope and tilted the key out into my palm. It’s an antique-looking thing, all…