Randall left work early again, feeling ill. Nothing definitive, a general fatigue, a general malaise—that was the word, although he’d never used it before. If he’d stayed in his chair another minute it would have required an army to get him out. He didn’t know where he belonged, but he didn’t belong there. The bus […]
To Whom It May Concern: I’m writing to inform you that I have recently moved into ____ House. I apologize for being circumspect about the name. I should probably just spit it out to make all of this easier, but what with copyright laws being as they are, it feels safer if I leave that […]
On this island we like to die slowly. Generationally. At the other side of the counter, Mamá stirs sancocho with the candlelight drawing tenderness onto her features. “I am lucky to have you,” she says, “Mi tesoro.” It is, really, all she ever says anymore. It worries her, the soundlessness when we go out. There […]
As she’s done every morning for the past ten years, Bobbie sits on the living room couch, watches Forensic Files, and eats protein powder. Her father’s face puckers sour when he watches her eat the white mix straight from the plastic tub with a spoon, but Bobbie eats it industriously, happily. She just wants her […]
Propped against the bathroom door, clutching an old guitar, Hanna sings Charlie another lullaby. Go to sleep, Charlie. He’s awake in there, still. The black beetles that come from under the bathroom door are his messengers. They walk ponderous circuits, antennae trembling, moving jerkily like windup toys. Sleep, Charlie, sleep. The guitar is held together […]
Mam sets aside the petticoat she’s hemming, makes a note in the piecework book, and unpicks the sleepy stitches in Maeve’s sampler. “Try again.” She passes the scrap of hessian back to her daughter, sighs. “Needlework teaches the virtues of patience, silence, and control.” Virtues. Maeve stabs new thread through the eye of her needle. […]
There’s this bowling ball. Its proper name is the Maxo Polyester Swirl Bowling Ball, 14lbs. That’s what you would search for online, if you wanted one. Only, you won’t find it online. And you won’t find it in a bowling supplies shop—not that they really exist anymore—or a sports and leisure store, or anywhere. Maxo […]
Though it’s a long time since I’ve lived in a house, I still have memories about what that used to be like which work on me constantly, mainly subconsciously. When I dream, I open a door into a composite domicile cobbled together from bits and pieces of all the houses my parents passed through during […]
A garden is a beautiful place to die. It was the only beautiful thing about Clara’s death, which otherwise was a bullet and a broken chest, blood spilling over everything, the red scent of iron. Had he been there, he might have vomited. Only might, because the revulsion he felt for death had lessened a […]
Markos Koszjan sits alone on Halloween night and watches himself on the heavy wood-sided TV. On the screen, he is a darkened monolith, his black suit an empty doorway that sucks up all the light, tapering from his broad shoulders to his waist, naturally narrow and cinched tighter by an unseen girdle. At the ends […]
