You are a crow in Klang, and you wake up trembling again. The sun is rising, but the sky is still gray. You stir in your nest of twigs, looking out at the Ng house just across the road. You flap your wings, and your brothers and sisters and friends and neighbors start waking up […]
The dawn is just uncurling from itself, leaning towards a hot dry season day. Egoabia watches as grains of sand jet out of her son’s eyes and ears: jagged, cavern clay. Ude’s body deflates, slowly, slowly as if his skin were a covering merely cradling all the things he embodies. A small wind blooms in […]
I know what you will say. You will say to me, Arseny, there are enough real monsters in this world—why do you make your own? But before I begin, before you make your judgments, like the others, before you tsk-tsk-tsk our failures and tell me what you would have done, there are some things that […]
When Yipp came to the village and took the five girls set to turn seventeen during that year’s River Harvest Ihmani found herself awoken by a sea of wails. Tumbling from her covers she hurried to the front door where she found her parents already outside amongst the gathering group of mothers and fathers. A […]
My father told me that there must not be fear in our village. Whether we are born as girls or boys or whomever we may choose to be and become, we must overcome our fears. I had yet to turn fifteen, but it matters not to my father, nothing ever did except for his face, […]
Suffolk, 1557 O Domine! Such was the cry in Abacuck’s heart up on the roof of St Mary’s. Save us. The steeple above was all the answer he needed, a dark, judgemental finger. Treacherous his path was, slippery as the tiles under his boots, the removal of which the rector had charged him with that […]
Helen has a bloody smile. When she opens her mouth, I see vindication, crowned in laurel, the copper fumes on her breath whispering the memento mori in my ear. We were right. I was right. The blank spaces on the walls, this crappy couch creaking beneath my back—victories. I might be a casualty, but we’ll […]
Maxine Bailey RE: Hey To: Rebecca Lytton 31 March 2023 Hi Hon, Country retreat for One: Day 1! The property (which you so cleverly managed to remind me of, and just in time, too), consists of a manor house at the apex of the driveway, with a parking bay to one side. On the other […]
It is amazing how some things never change. Where we grow older, crawling from youth into adulthood and all its attendant responsibilities, some things remain unfazed, unbothered by passing years—perhaps even existing out of time—as though its sole purpose is to anchor you to a particular moment, a particular memory, a particular place. As I […]
There is beauty in fundamental things, and nothing is more fundamental than destruction. I could watch a forest burn, or a field, or a house, for hours. I can still smell the smoke. It’s taken residence in my nasal passages, and I can’t get it out. I liked setting fires when I was little, and […]
