Hans usually enjoyed road trips, especially late at night in the snow. He liked the quiet hush of the engine, the shush of the tyres on the wet streets. Father played the radio low, little more than a murmur. Something local with lots of talking. A comforting sound. Hans could doze in the back of […]
In the morning, I hang out my skins to dry. I watch them, soft and paper-thin, draped on the drying rack: the older ones have become almost translucent, they cast a pinkish glow on the floor. The latest acquisitions, still thicker and barely worn, remind me of satin—in everything but the experience of putting them […]
Katrina’s father started taking her skin when she was thirteen. “Research,” she told me when I poked at the gauze wrapped around her forearm and then took another bite of her sandwich. Mrs. Papillo shot a look our way and frowned, a witchy finger pointing to the red card at the head of our lunch […]
The jinn came to Madiha just before dawn. She sat frozen, covers pulled up to her chin with trembling hands. The jinn stared at her with insectoid black eyes that were much too big for its small, angled face. Thin lips, flat nose, papery skin stretched taut. Its legs ended in black hooves. And then […]
Two lines of Death on a mirror. No one could mistake it for something as mundane as cocaine. Death is blood red and the experience depends on the user—what they’ve eaten, how much they weigh, how many hours of shut-eye the night before, some kind of crazy biochemical magic or madness that defies explanation. Drowning, […]
“They say its eyelids have gone down another meter,” Abi said, her voice echoing in the stairwell. “It’s just a matter of time. Maybe in three years, it’ll finally close its eyes and stop giving us nightmares.” “Are you looking at Bakunawatch again?” Mimi asked, the balloon squeaking in her hands. Abi raised her cell […]
Denton explains: it starts a few billion years ago when the Earth swallows a moon or a planet or an asteroid. Something immense. They know it was immense, and they know, a little bit, what it was made of. They know it happened because of the Earth’s magnetic field or the aurora borealis or something. […]
Tentzin urged his yak up the mountain before dawn, high above the prayer flags and incense cauldrons of the staging grounds. It was spring, but too early for funerals to be conducted. Those who died over the winter would need to be brought up the mountain soon, or the weather would get too warm. He […]
To pass the wet hours crammed in his bottle, Aitch counts cylinders. Tonight, only those he can actually see get tallied: not the darkened hurricane lamp dangling on its chain, not the perforated lid screwed tight on his jar. With some effort Aitch can tilt his head back, turn it side to side, but down […]
The first time my husband tells me he loves me, I am already dead. He does not know I am in the house, tucked away in the sickly sweet smell of the honeysuckle he’s carried into our bedroom. His mother told him all his life it was his favorite, and so he believed her and […]
