I’ve always loved the sea; the caress of waves, the scrunch of sand, the weightlessness in the water. Even as a little girl I’d tell all my secrets to it—my problems, my worries— whispering them into the blue where they’d disappear. Today, I walk barefoot, holding my jandals in one hand as the tide rubs […]
He looks out of the caravan window. Filthy night. The hour is late; freezing cold bed sheets make sleep impossible. A relentless, suffocating winter and the weight of the snow draws the world down around him. Three sugars, he thinks. He strikes a match and lights the little gas stove to make his cup of […]
Anna stood at the edge of the dock, watching the lake’s calm mirror, the water serene, untouched. Something in her refused to settle. The last time she and Milo were here, they’d fought. A slow-burn kind of fight, the kind where every word had its own hidden blade. She’d accused him of trying to control […]
Moonshine City still had that new building stink. Aya stared at the white lines in the parking lot as rain dotted the asphalt. These lines were the only traces left of MAPITA Mall, that charmingly run-down shopping center that had stood here for two decades before. Aya could practically hear the crackling carnival tune of […]
Calvin tried to enjoy the morning breeze coming in from the Indian Ocean. He tried to enjoy the view: the unblemished sky; the water that went from brochure-blue to turquoise to entirely clear as it neared the pier. It lapped at the stilts beneath and passed under his feet to move slowly through the shallows […]
He is a king, in cities. A king, or a duke, or an executive. A powerful man, in places other men inhabit. Power is reciprocal like that: he needs their recognition. Together they build an urban hierarchy, a pyramid that extends far above the closed system of their minds. Each charts their course, their competitors. […]
Lou is something between a conjoined twin and a haunting. He’s the reason we got the job at Maisie Millions’ Fairground Amazements when I–when we–quit school. Lou didn’t want to quit; our teacher, Miss Bell, even offered to find the school fees somehow, but I was impatient to make my own way in the world, […]
Sleek and dark as the forest night, the crow glided over the Appalachian ridges corrugating southwest Virginia. Wallens, Powell, Cumberland. Those were their human names, but for Old Crow they were Home. He flew early each morning, before the mountain witch got up, because he didn’t want to remind her he had the freedom of […]
Fat bodies float. Or at least that’s what Ethan Gaines reassures himself as he dips a toe off the swim ladder into the shallow end of the YMCA pool. The clock above him reads 8:16 p.m. He pauses to watch the glare of the facility’s fluorescents dance upon the surface of the water, bouncing reflections […]
A Thursday. Before sunrise Sain wrote the four words on the piece of paper she folded up and slipped into the band of her bra, then chivvied along until it was tucked into her right armpit. Then down the lane to meet the Kennick woman, to let the new foal out into the paddock for […]
