'The Pit' by Kristine Ong Muslim

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'For the third time, I told the dispatcher over the phone that I'd buried my father's body right under the spot where I'd put the barbecue grill, and that I thought it was time they took it out of the ground, gave it proper burial.'

So begins a tale of American small town horror in Uncertainties IV. Stephen King would make it a novella, in all likelihood, but here we have a very short, punchy tale with a (possibly) unreliable narrator who has certainly Done Something Terrible. But why? Here there are at least two possibilities, very well evoked in just three pages. 

Kristine Ong Muslim makes the short-short story into a work of dark art, here. More opinions from me about this excellent anthology soon.

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