Malik had worked in hospitality all of his adult life. He was a seasoned pro. He’d seen celebrities, and politicians pass through the lobbies of the hotels where he’d worked. He’d seen ambulance crews rush out dying guests on gurneys, and once, a pregnant woman’s water broke as she was checking in. From drunken rowdy […]
In the late afternoon of August 18th, 20—, as he reclined comfortably on his upstairs bed, Wentworth Thomas—Dr. Thomas to students at his university, Wen to his colleagues and friends, Wennie to no one but his wife Marguerite, who really should have been home by now—set on the nightstand the book he had been perusing, […]
The truck was fucked, but Richard worked on it anyway. Sleeves rolled, oil up to his elbows, he cranked a wrench in the rusted engine block and swore at the part’s stubbornness to come out. The open hood shielded him from the sun’s glare, but it baked him from the waist up, and that didn’t […]
The shadow that wears his mother’s teeth appears at the window again. Noah, the shadow whispers from between lipless jaws, or maybe it is only the winter wind murmuring against the glass. Noah burrows deeper under his covers, hugging his teddy bear for protection and warmth. The chill has peeled back his skin and crept […]
Every day he digs the same grave, and every day he leaves it untouched, a grave as deep as himself. And he digs. He digs. He digs. He will keep digging until his work is done, and it might take years—too many years. The dead call him memory-eater, thief of warmth, consumer of the past, […]
They fought so fiercely that final time that Orghethah almost severed three of his legs, and Unnefthal retaliated by beating her stomach so hard the carapace fractured. When it was over she crouched in the middle of her home and glared up at him, the pain in her body an elixir of rage. Wincing, she […]
Every so often, there’s a chance for reversal. For a thread pulled to drag things backwards. For the drowned places to rise. For the dead to walk again. To breathe air rather than water. Sometimes, there’s a chance. Adie Kane came home last week—just as she has done once a year for a decade of […]
“All wolves are not of the same sort.” —Charles Perrault Friends, beware gentle wolves. Never stray from the path. If you’d listened to your mother, little girl, you wouldn’t have been eaten. I wouldn’t be hunting him now in the forest. Josef, stay, my father said, old and fearful by the fire. Let the woods […]
When you told your husband you loved the rain, a secret you whispered at the end of your wedding vows, rather than leaning in to kiss you, he looked as though he wanted to strike you. It was he who taught you to fear storms and it was he who brought you to the town […]
She was drowning, gasping brine down her raw and waterlogged throat, so I took her. And why not? This is all you know me for. I take children. I bring them to my cave beneath the sea, I tuck them inside, and I eat them. You know why I do it. My own children stolen. […]
