Dying Habits

by Gavin McCall

A man comes home late at night, his arms full of groceries. He sets the bags on the kitchen table and begins cooking – chicken casserole, chop salad and scalloped potatoes. Even though it’s late, he sings as he cooks. He doesn’t need to be quiet; there is no one to wake in the house and he knows this. When the casserole is done he sits alone at the table set for four. Then he goes to bed, leaving the table set for the people he used to cook for a lifetime ago.

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Gavin McCall was born on a farm on the Big Island of Hawaii, but has spent the majority of his writing career in Honolulu, where he just received his Master’s Degree in creative writing from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He won the 2008 Sudden Fiction Award, which included publication in Hawaii Review, and his work has been or will be featured in Boston Literary Magazine, Nimble, Lesser Flamingo and Paradigm.