‘Lilith’
— Melissa Mesku
The last time I communicated with her was two days before her disappearance.
Melissa Ragsly’s beautiful and devastating short story, ‘Lilith,’ appeared earlier this month. The disparate motifs she employs—an unsettling disappearance, sisterhood, hockey, faith in numbers—all weave together to produce the kind of tight writing we typically only see in screenplays and murder mysteries. Not a line goes to waste.
There is a discrepancy of 89 minutes.
89 minutes.
8 + 9 = 17
1 + 7 = 8
8 = infinity.
Ragsly’s storytelling is equally sharp in her other works of fiction, regardless of length or the status of the journals in which they’re published. Still, it’s fitting this piece came home to roost at Pigeon Pages, which has quietly but consistently been publishing tightly written, remarkable stories since they started late last year.