It hadn’t rained in close to seven weeks the night I met you. The rain-barrels were down to the last silty dregs, the skies stubborn in their pale blue clarity. I wasn’t even certain the car would start; it chugged to life on the third attempt, emitting a choked gurgle like a throat full of […]
There wasn’t much for us boys of that little fishing village to do but fish. Wake, fish, eat, fish, sleep, fish, rinse and repeat. It was one endless cycle of sea-worn canoes and heavy nets and stinking fish. But it was the life we were used to, and we were content with it; we knew […]
Lisa is in the passenger seat and we are somehow, inevitably, on our way to Leyford. She stabs the stop button on the tape deck, grinds her cigarette into my pristine ashtray and lets rip as the London streets become motorway. “What is it about music by dead guys? Why do we obsess about people […]
The plan was this: resign from work, fly to Vegas on her tourist visa, stay with family, and wait for an H1B sponsor to hire her. “And how’s that working out for you?” Alejandra asked. “Well, I’m here, aren’t I?” Ruby said. “So not good.” She sighed. “I’ve been applying to jobs online for months […]
It was the prairie dogs’s own stupid fault. Can an animal kill itself? Trevor was pretty sure this one just had. Trevor could have been a hawk, or a dog off its leash, or even a car, and the prairie dog would be just as dead, and it would have been just as unintentional. Just […]
Peter wakes up in the darkness in an empty bed. He’s knocked the sheets off again, and he lies there naked, imagining that he has been prepared for surgery. He doesn’t know what they can do for him, but he needs someone to do something. But even in dream and imagination the doctors never come. […]
Growing up in Dieu-le-Sauveur, my friends and I told stories about ghosts—the Starving Man, the Sleeping Girl, and the House at the End of the Street. The summer I was twelve, I saw my first ghost for real. That was the summer my little brother Gen disappeared. The first official day of summer, the day […]
My brother is waiting for me in the cold; didn’t bother him then, doesn’t bother him now, even with the wind snatching billowing steam from right under my nose. Me? I get the cold, and the cold gets me. The fingertips that I don’t feel against my gloves, even when clenched into fists and pressed […]
“Be careful, little man, I don’t want you falling in.” The canal was shallow at the bank where they stood but still deep enough to worry about, Helen thought. And four or five feet deep in the middle; plenty reason enough to insist Charlie wore his lifejacket at all times on deck. Standing here on […]
Stab here with index before you tuck into foul feast. x Hour at which the blind see, when night unfurls her wing and goes out, silent as shaft of moonlight. Hour of the witches’ feeding; on primal pain, on corrupt love, on toothless cherub child. Circle the table crone, with your face uncovered. Lay the […]
