Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Cemeteries of the Heart and Other Stories
    Cemeteries of the Heart and Other Stories
    Cemeteries of the Heart and Other Stories
    Ebook129 pages1 hour

    Cemeteries of the Heart and Other Stories

    By Grant Palmquist

    3.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    In a distant future, Stan works at a dead-end job, handcuffed to his desk, forbidden to look out the window. His life seems hopeless till he meets Meredith, a coworker who harbors secrets about this world and the next, secrets that could make his life worth living . . .

    Thus begins Cemeteries of the Heart and Other Stories, eight mind-bending tales of madness. In “Aphelion,” we meet a man who receives strange messages through his laptop, messages that turn him into a creative genius and make time disappear; in “Parting Sorrows,” an old man has a fling with a sexy young girl he meets online, but there’s something strange about her; in “Flaming Butterfly,” a young man is abducted and forced into another world, where he becomes a slave.

    In Cemeteries of the Heart and Other Stories, Grant Palmquist explores that elusive part of the mind where reality and insanity meet. These surreal, unsettling tales will leave their mark on you—permanently.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGrant Palmquist
    Release dateMay 3, 2012
    ISBN9781476230481
    Cemeteries of the Heart and Other Stories
    Author

    Grant Palmquist

    Grant Palmquist is the author of the science-fiction novel Azure and four horror novels: A Song After Dark, Permanent Winter, Dirge, and The Seer. His short stories have appeared in Chizine, Dogmatika, and Underground Voices.

    Read more from Grant Palmquist

    Related to Cemeteries of the Heart and Other Stories

    Related ebooks

    Occult & Supernatural For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Righteous

      Jan 22, 2019

      Righteous
      8 min read

    • Article

      Penny

      Jul 2, 2020

      Penny
      6 min read

    • Article

      Begin Again

      Jun 14, 2022

      My grandfather came to live with me. There was nowhere else for him to go. What had happened to all his children? Death, decay, exile—I hardly know. My own parents died of pain. But I must not be too gloomy, at the beginning, or you will leave me, an

      6 min read

    • Article

      Heavy Heart

      Feb 5, 2022

      Heavy Heart
      6 min read

    • Article

      Proverbs Of A Faceless Time

      Dec 1, 2023

      Proverbs Of A Faceless Time
      9 min read

    • Article

      ANGER Mismanagement

      Feb 9, 2020

      Mr Stable has asked me to pick up his drycleaning, as he’s going to ‘babysit’ at his ex-wife’s apartment, while she attends a tango class. “Maybe she’ll find a new love?” I’m a sucker for happy endings, so I can’t help hoping that his ex-wife will fi

      3 min read

    • Article

      Why I Don’t Write

      Mar 7, 2019

      Why I Don’t Write
      6 min read

    • Article

      Nugrybauti

      Apr 24, 2019

      Nugrybauti
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Juggler’s Wife

      Jun 9, 2020

      The situation in itself is not unique. There was a man who hated his job and wanted a new one. There was a man who was sick of his boring job and wanted an exciting job instead. This man was depressed, but he saw a way out. He thought this way out wa

      24 min read

    • Article

      Pleasure Palace

      Sep 1, 2022

      Pleasure Palace
      15 min read

    • Article

      We Don't Talk About That Here

      Nov 4, 2021

      We Don't Talk About That Here
      4 min read

    • Article

      Parakeet

      May 29, 2020

      Parakeet
      11 min read

    • Article

      A Hard Man To Forget

      Jan 8, 2024

      A Hard Man To Forget
      4 min read

    • Article

      Too BAD

      Aug 30, 2022

      Too BAD
      6 min read

    • Article

      Chop-chop

      Feb 6, 2020

      Chop-chop
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Ceremony

      Sep 6, 2022

      It was something. Out of nowhere, I didn’t give a shit about anything for like a month. Like nothing. I mean yeah, there’d been plenty of times where I didn’t give a shit about something. Oh that thing? Yeah, fuck that thing. I did it all the time. M

      5 min read

    • Article

      Good Bones

      Mar 19, 2020

      Good Bones
      18 min read

    • Article

      Timespiral

      Feb 1, 2020

      Timespiral
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Big, Immovable I

      May 10, 2022

      “It just doesn’t make any sense,” Daphne said from behind her cigarette. “Of all the people in the world, I’m me.” Disinfectant, and the reek of the canteen food laid out on the table, brought back memories of school dinners and dread. Daph wore her

      17 min read

    • Article

      Excerpt

      Dec 12, 2019

      He was an angry man, and he was an ugly man, and he was tall, and he was pacing. Not much space for it in the new home, just a few rooms lined up in a row, underneath a series of slow-moving ceiling fans, an array of antique clocks ticking on one wal

      4 min read

    • Article

      Dead Good Job

      May 11, 2023

      Dead Good Job
      3 min read

    • Article

      A Little About Why

      Jun 1, 2023

      A Little About Why
      15 min read

    • Article

      After “The End”

      Oct 10, 2022

      I walked down the road with a hunched back and a wet cigarette in my mouth—the fire had died a while back. My hands were tucked into the pockets of my jacket, and my hair fell over my face, limiting my sight. But I wasn’t really seeing where I was go

      10 min read

    • Article

      Whose Life Is It

      Dec 10, 2023

      “What the hell?” Danny jumped up and tore out of the kitchen where he’d been reading his mail and enjoying a quiet lunch with his sister, Elaine. Startled, she looked up from the newspaper. “Danny?” He ran through the foyer, out the front door, and t

      7 min read

    • Article

      The After

      Jun 10, 2023

      He is sitting opposite me, staring blankly like a dead fish. Stone eyes. Cobalt and lifeless. Pale gray skin, dripping scales. I imagine him hauled out of the water and dumped on the riverbank, gasping for breath. Just as he deserves. I only agreed t

      13 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Cemeteries of the Heart and Other Stories

    3.5/5

    16 ratings8 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      Read the first story "Cemeteries of the Heart" which is set in a futuristic dystopian world where people are shackled to their desks at work and don't have any concept of fun. Well written and made me sad.
      The second was "Lullaby" which is about a guy who loses his wife to childbirth. Another sad piece.
      "Parting sorrows" was about a girl with serious daddy issues and a lonely old guy. Seriously creeptastic!
      "Aphelion"-weird!
      "Burn Victims"- a girl without a nose and a guy without an arm find each other.
      "Flaming Butterflies"-is about a man who didn't live his life to the fullest and paid for it.
      "Stanley" knows Sabrina is perfect for him and he'll do anything to get her to actually exist!
      "Taenia solium",the pork tapeworm, will take over the human race!

      A good collection of stories that'll creep you out in the right way and you'll finish it in no time.
    • 4/5
      This collection of eight short horror stories is dark but very imaginative. I enjoyed reading them.
    • 4/5
      This collection of stories are all about what your heart desires most. Each story takes unique look at this very question. Mr. Palmquist is a creative and imaginative mind. The stories were haunting, rich, bold, and unique making this book a real page turner. I invite you to discover this for yourself in Cemeteries of the Heart and Other Stories.
    • 4/5
      A good collection of well developed original short stories. There are plenty of twists and turns in the stories. As in all collections, some stories are better than others. The ending of some stories are left to your imagination. I would recommend this book to all adult readers.
    • 3/5
      This author gets an A+ in originality. This book is a collection of short stories, horror stories, though not of ghosts and goblins. His writing reminded me of Amanda Lawrence Auverigne. The first story takes place in a dystopian society. Two of the stories include characters with physical deformities, and all of the stories feature an act of violence, some more obvious than others.I personally did not enjoy this book, but I think that it was well-written and creative. I would recommend it to adults and young adults, but not to middle-grade readers.
    • 4/5
      Wow!!!! I was blown away by this book of short stories by a very talented writer! I have read almost everything from this author and he is an up and comer for sure! I couldn't put this book down and read it in two nights! I really liked the flow of the short stories in this book and found the majority of them to be very solid! The horror in these stories was excellent. I found my self scared, disturbed, grossed out, shocked, laughing, cheering, and saying to myself...wow! I am definitely a Grant Palmquist fan for life!
    • 3/5
      Several short stories based on the humanly desire of the want and need for love and acceptance in life. Overall the stories had respectable ideas but a need to work out certain details and endings throughout.Cemeteries of the Heart – A tyrannical world with nothing to live for forces two people to come together and take action over their circumstance. The story is a bit unbelievable with random killings and rapes on the street. I think that in a tyrannical state that would not happen because in that state it is all about control over the citizens and when citizens take law into their own hands the outcome would be the same as the end of the story. Lullaby – A woman gives birth to a deformed child and dies in the process. The father of the child is left with the burden of raising a child but is haunted by his dead wife who wants him to kill the child. The child appears to be somewhat of a demon but there is no definitive answer to know what the child truly is. Who is after him and why? More substantial detail on where this story is headed and for what purpose is needed.Parting Sorrows – A story about a daddy’s girl who will do anything to keep her father with her even for a short time despite the cost. It would have been nice to have more information as to what happened to her father and how the transformation takes place between the two men. The anticipation of the story is sensed and gripping. Aphelion - A strange computer pop up leads a man on a journey that will take him back to an act he committed when he was younger and a settlement that he will not forget. A good idea but not clear as to what the computer pop up and the video that was made has to do with the sin that was committed years ago. Burn Victims - Two people who long for love but never seem to find it because of their deformity eventually find each other. The title is misleading because from the description of the characters I don’t know that either one is a burn victim or if they are there is no definitive description of them being as such. The story is predictable but complete.Flaming Butterfly - A man who has squandered his life is taken away by force to live in a place performing slave labor. If you are a productive citizen you can have a wonderful life, but if you are idle and selfish beware of what may come. The timing was off on this story; there was no sense in lapse of time and no point really to what the slaves were doing. What was the purpose of them being slaves other than that was their punishment.Stanley - A recluse man with a fetish for taking photographs of women’s torsos decides to take things a step further when an image of a woman he has fantasized about begins appearing to him. Opportunity presents itself and he takes advantage of the situation. The story could have had more depth to it with a more vivid feeling of anticipation. I wanted to feel afraid for the girl but there was no connection. Taenia solium - This story started out with potential but got sidetracked along the way. The story was not smooth in its transitions and the beginning strays far from the end.
    • 4/5
      It’s not just cemeteries of the heart. It’s hostels of the heart, rehab centers of the heart, hospitals of the heart. These are fantastical tales on the snares of love and sex – and the need and, in one tale, the well-nigh commandment to connect with fellow humans in intimate ways. They are also often tales on how circumstances and our innate natures frustrate that connection.Palmquist knows how to keep your interest even if he doesn’t always know how to adequately end his stories. He almost never diagrams an ending out for you. They’re usually ambiguous, elliptical, and require some thought. And, in a couple of instances, I don’t think the endings work even after contemplation.He’s also given to some stylistic tics. Windows are often “yellow squares”. Guns are usually 9 mms. Texas, usually Houston, is the frequent setting.The title story is set in one of those horrific extrapolations of our present day, ludicrous and implausible, and there to make an emotional point via metaphor and not provide realism. In a future Houston of such rampant street violence that the hero routinely sees rapes and killings every day on his work commute, Palmquist’s work hell has the hero literally shackled to his desk where, if he looks out the window or flags from his duties (randomly creating tax code, a satirical bit I found very amusing), his masked boss flogs him. Deserted by his wife and son, he, in the tradition of dystopian stories, becomes the lover of a co-worker.“Lullaby” was one of my favorite stories. Its hero must cope with being newly widowed – by the deformed son his wife died giving birth to. He begins to think the child has defects of the soul as severe as those of his body. Constant appearances by his dead wife suggesting he just kill the kid don’t help. Or, maybe, stress has rendered him paranoid and crazy.I think I understand what’s really going on in “Parting Sorrows”. The story certainly conveyed the loneliness and desperation of its 60 year-old narrator who goes to meet the 22 year-old woman he has been conducting an online affair with. The ending is horrific in images and action, if not entirely clear in motives and cause and effect. Still, I liked this one too.“Aphelion” has a narrator who is having fugue moments after he sees a popup on his computer screen, a popup a complete stranger in a bar says shows him pleasuring himself while being strangled by a man. The plot hinges on, for me, an effective conceit, but I think the ending is marred by an unnecessary coda, making it the most unsatisfying story here.“Burn Victims” is another story of desperately seeking love and companionship, here a man and a woman each in their own ways mutilated. It has its own fantastical elements but a resolution much different than the other stories.“Flaming Butterfly” seems, perhaps, a tale of existential terror or, more precisely, existential judgment by unknown forces. The protagonist is dragged out of his bed one day, told his life makes no contribution to life on Earth, and then dragged through a portal where he works as a shackled field hand. I’m not sure I quite understood the ending, but the image, themes, and idea behind the story will definitely stick with me and make this another high point of the collection.The narrator of “Stanley” claims that a childhood with his beautiful sister sucking away all attention has left him unable to relate to women. (Or so he sees it. He may not be the most reliable narrator regarding his sister. This book features several narrators with questionable powers of reporting and explanation.) To compensate, he takes pictures of women in public – but only from their kneecaps to neck – and constructs fantasy faces and personalities for them. He starts seeing one of these fantasy constructs in person.In a book of mostly horror stories, “Taenia Solium” is the most straightforward. As you would expect from the title (which refers to a type of tapeworm that infects humans), it’s about parasitism and also effective.There a higher than average number of memorable stories in this collection despite some problematic endings. If I was going to quickly convey a sense of Palmquist’s work, it would be a Thomas Ligotti style writer cut with a modern sensibility of specific settings and realism which concentrates on the need, recognized or not, to have others in our lives.

    Book preview

    Cemeteries of the Heart and Other Stories - Grant Palmquist

    Cemeteries of the Heart and Other Stories

    by Grant Palmquist

    Copyright 2012 by Grant Palmquist. All rights reserved.

    First Smashwords Edition: April 2012

    Cover Design: Jeroen Ten Berge

    LICENSE NOTES

    All rights reserved. This eBook is licensed for the personal enjoyment of the original purchaser only. This eBook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this eBook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

    DISCLAIMER

    The characters and events portrayed in this book are a work of fiction or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

    Table of Contents

    Dedication

    Cemeteries of the Heart

    Lullaby

    Parting Sorrows

    Aphelion

    Burn Victims

    Flaming Butterfly

    Stanley

    Taenia Solium

    About the Author

    Other Works by Grant Palmquist

    Excerpt from Permanent Winter

    Dedication

    for my parents

    Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.

    William Shakespeare

    Hamlet

    Cemeteries of the Heart

    That day, on his way home from another eighteen-hour shift, Stan saw a woman stabbed to death in an alley, a man on his knees begging for his life before the barrel of a 9mm and heard a building explode about a mile away from his tiny apartment. He kept his head down, as he always did, hoping the next victim wasn’t himself.

    When he arrived at home, his son was asleep on the couch with one leg curled under the other, his hands behind his head. His wife was sitting in the kitchen, a dim lamp lighting her slender figure. She held a cup in her hands and turned it round and round. Her eyes had become almost like holes that he could see through, dark rings beneath them. She never slept, always waited up for him. But why did she wait up for him? They never talked, just sat there in the dark, eating dinner or sipping coffee, the unsaid words between them speaking volumes. But tonight he sensed she had something to say, that all these restless nights had built to words inside her that had to be said.

    He set his hand on her shoulder and she angled her head to the side, rubbing her warm cheek against his knuckles. Did she still love him after all these years, after what the world had turned into? People could say what they wanted, that love transcended all, that you ruled your destiny with your mind, but he had one of the best jobs going—tax lawyer—and could barely make ends meet. The rest of the world was out there starving, killing each other, robbing each other.

    I think maybe you should quit your job, she said.

    He sat beside her, folding his hands in his lap. How will we eat? Where will we live?

    We can move to the northeast side of Houston, and you can get a twelve-hour shift and make more money.

    They pay more and have better hours because living there is a death warrant, he thought. I wouldn’t even know what to do with the free time. Plus, there’s more crime over there than here. You think this is bad? He raised a hand, waving it over the dingy, windowless apartment. You obviously haven’t been to the Northeast.

    She shrugged, tears pooling in her eyes. I don’t care. I barely even know you anymore. I don’t know what you do all day. You come home and we just sit here, acting like strangers.

    "That’s everyone’s life. Nobody has it easy. I want to stay here. If you saw the things I see every day, the madness in the streets, you wouldn’t be saying you want to move somewhere that’s even worse."

    I have seen it, she said. I’ve been going out.

    What do you mean? We agreed that you never leave, that I take the risk of leaving this place so that we can have, at the very least, food and shelter.

    She tilted her head back and took a deep breath. I saw a woman raped in the middle of the street today.

    What if you had been that woman?

    I took a knife with me.

    Chances are the man had a gun, he said. Never leave here again unless I’m with you.

    I want a different life.

    Everyone does.

    I’m dying inside. I can barely get out of bed anymore.

    He shook his head. I wish things were different, I really do. I wish we could buy a house, move to one of the zoned areas, but I’m not a politician. I don’t have that kind of power.

    We’re better than this.

    I know. He lowered his head. It shamed him to be this powerless over his family’s destiny, to watch like a bystander as things got worse and worse. The politicians in their shiny suits promised everything, but day by day things deteriorated, and all he could think to do was keep working, keep making just enough money to eat, to live one more day.

    ~ * * * ~

    He listened to the sound of fingers pecking keyboards. All his coworkers kept their heads down, the cuffs round their wrists jangling with each small movement.

    He looked out the window. Plumes of smoke rose in the distance, followed by the flickering of a gigantic flame that licked the purple-grey sky. He could almost smell the soot sifting through the air when a hand slapped him on the back of the head. His boss stood over him, dressed in black, a latex mask covering his face but for his nose and mouth.

    What are you doing? he said.

    I was just taking a break, sir, Stan said.

    We have no time for breaks. I catch you again and you’re fired.

    At lunchtime the secretary came around and unshackled his wrists and he took the elevator downstairs and walked outside. He listened to the distant gunshots, looked at the chemical clouds. Down the street a man was being beaten to death by a gang of three when suddenly an armored cop car screeched round the corner and smashed into one of the gang members. He flew over the car and landed on the blacktop with a thud. The tinted passenger window rolled down and a shotgun appeared. The other two men went running, but the shotgun fired and captured them in their escape and they raised their arms in an almost prayer-like way before falling to their knees. The cop got out of the car, covered in armor, wearing a bulletproof helmet, walked over to the bodies and shot two more rounds into each of them, then looked at Stan as if to size him up, to see if he was a part of it. Stan lowered his eyes and took the last bite of his peanut-butter sandwich and went back inside, gooseflesh pimpling his arms.

    When he arrived at his desk, the boss was sitting atop it, his legs crossed, holding the iron bracelets in his hand.

    You’re late, he said.

    Sorry, there was some commotion outside.

    You know what happens when you’re late.

    Yes, sir.

    He lowered his head and the boss shackled his ankles and led him to the pillory room. Blinking red lights hung from the walls. Stan removed his shirt and put his hands and head in the device and shut his eyes hard. He heard the snap of the whip behind him, then felt it breaking the stinging skin of his back, felt the rivers of blood running over his spine. When it was over, a strange calm descended upon him.

    The boss unshackled him and led him on a leash back to his desk. The other employees kept their heads down. He wanted to cry out, to tell them if they banned together that they could defeat this place, bring it down. But where would it lead them? What would they do?

    ~ * * * ~

    On his way home that night he stopped in an alley and took the .45 from his briefcase. He walked up and down the sidewalk, pressing the pistol against his thigh, hoping

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1