The warden’s prowess with pastry had improved much over the years. It was all we heard the old inmates talk about. They talked about it the way old men on the outside talked about wars everyone else had forgotten.…
The situation could not stand. Perhaps if our prison had always been brutal, we could have endured, but there’s a special challenge in going from eating éclairs to being peeled. And there was not just the trouble of the…
The beatings continued, but once we slipped word to the guards of the baker’s vow, they did not worsen. By Saturday, we had adjusted to the new normal. Sunday was the sabbath, and anyway the guards must have had…
On Monday morning, the warden revealed his most ambitious showstopper yet. It had nothing to do with almonds, so those who had claimed to smell frangipane last week were called jackasses. The warden brought a tower of éclairs that…
The warden’s prowess with pastry had improved much over the years. It was all we heard the old inmates talk about. They talked about it the way old men on the outside talked about wars everyone else had forgotten.…
Ethan Chatagnier’s Author’s Note is busy proving. It will publish on Friday, June 28.
ETHAN CHATAGNIER is the author of the short story collection Warnings from the Future (Acre Books, 2018). His short fiction has appeared in literary journals including The Georgia Review, Glimmer Train, Kenyon Review Online, New England Review, Five Points, Michigan Quarterly Review, Barrelhouse, Witness, The Cincinnati Review, and Ascent. His story stories have been awarded a Pushcart Prize and listed as notable in the Million Writers Award. He lives in Fresno, California with his family.
