He was sitting in one of the booths at the Conqueror, tending a pint, something golden and silty, alone, his phone facedown on the sticky table, his gaze fixed on some invisible object in the middle distance. The door swung to behind me, shutting out an afternoon of implacably overcast sky, of unrelenting drizzle: I […]
I am not a horrible person, I murmur to myself in the basement at night when my family is at home—half my family. Voices of actors and actresses from a Cantonese drama drift down the stairs, mingling with the words in my head, the ones leaving my lips, as I sit with my legs folded […]
Our mothers were fearful that summer. They sewed rabbit skins into our clothes and threw the scraps from our haircuts into the fire. When they said I love you, it sounded like a warning. Meanwhile we swam in swollen creek beds and hemmed our hand-me-down dresses so they would ride high. We cast adoring looks […]
In the afternoon they went out for a ride. When they were young they used to ride for entire days, til they were sore and starving, stunned by the tawny and ochre hills, by the strength of their own bond and attraction. Right then, it was almost okay again: the cottonwood and vine maple gone […]
OBITUARY. At special behest, we mark this October 9th, 1832, the passing of one Abraham Farley, eighteen years of age, of late a hired hand in The Prospect of Pye, Smithfield. Farley was laid to rest in Blackshaw Cemetery and will be mourned by his mother and sister in York. “Come to me, all ye […]
Ppaka thinks he’s a frog. Every day he puts on a full-body frog kigurumi, the soft green hairs worn thin like an old beach towel, and opens his bar in Shinbashi. He’s got a few regulars, the ones who come for the little song-and-dance he does when he brings over the drinks, but they stay […]
Content Warning: Child Sexual Abuse and Sexual Violence. I The first one to die is the little girl. The executioner watches her from behind a curtain made of bobbin lace, delicate white threads interwoven in a fine translucent layer that, in normal circumstances, would not hide anyone. The child can’t be seen, not yet. She’s […]
His uncle Tom died after a series of long and painful illnesses, so he went back to the town in which he grew up. It was a big family, but with this death all of his father’s many siblings were now gone. He thought this was a good time to “reconnect,” though if you asked […]
Dorothy is thin, predominantly. Like most rich people in a certain age bracket, she wears fussy, preppy neutrals, and her hair is expensively coloured, though threadbare. Her pink scalp edges out from the corners of her up-do. When she smiles the soft tissue of her face shifts into unnatural shapes; I am able to trace […]
Obiajulu suns his microphone for the funeral at Amesi. The instrument has grown weightier as if his words form invisible skin layers around it. Its original black colour now fluctuates, pocked in places to reveal a dermis of steel. He likes the windscreen best. It rubs his lips at ceremonies. The grating caress flips Obiajulu’s […]
