41 works
Five of them. Cloths over their faces. Only the eyes showing.A hand caught my collar before I saw the fist coming.Then fists. Asphalt. My own breath, ragged and strange in my ears. A kick to my ribs. A knee driven into my spine. A word…
Read More →The kids in our group of friends discovered each other at Edison Junior High. The school was a little unusual because it serviced two bordering neighborhoods, the middle- to lower-class neighborhood around Newton Corner, mostly Irish and…
Read More →Cristina had no idea—none—of what she could do to a room just by sitting in it. She would fold herself into my father’s old leather armchair, one leg tucked under her, and read. The amber light through the dusty blinds caught the gold in…
Read More →PARTICLEThey assembled it on the roof the way men build sins. Quietly. With confidence that had no permission.A broken steel bowl flipped upside down to catch whatever fell from the sky. Bicycle spokes radiating from it like ribs. Strips of alloy…
Read More →From early that morning, the people of Diritania, a small country, had been waiting anxiously for the Defence Minister’s press conference to begin. Justin Catford had announced in advance that his statement would be of an emergency nature.
Read More →Patrick Swayze dances a chassé across the screen. (I’ve Had) The Time of My Life sounds louder in the theater speakers than the rest of the movie. The audience hoots and hollers. Phoebe taps her feet to the song and focuses on Jennifer…
Read More →Millie smelled the lake before she saw it through the trees. Something damp and almost peaty cut through the resinous smell of pine and spruce — a distant, olfactory memory of algae, earth after rain, and an aquarium. Then she heard it:…
Read More →Su Wannian’s embroidery frame stood by the window. The window faced north and admitted little sunlight throughout the year, but the northern light was even and gentle, just right for fine needlework. She had sat beneath that window for…
Read More →I woke up this morning to the sound of birds rustling through the cherry tree’s branches. Sunlight was slipping through the thin curtains, dancing across my bed in soft, golden patches. I hadn’t even fully opened my eyes when I heard…
Read More →Translated from the Persian by Nasser Pooyesh, with editorial consultation from Mojtaba Ahmadkhan“I fell.”She said it in a way that was at once a report, a complaint, and a request for help. Her nose was covered in blood. It looked as…
Read More →I walked out of the publishing house into what felt like a robotic version of life. The vein on my forehead was still throbbing from what the publisher had said to me. I could not believe he had allowed himself to speak that way. Since…
Read More →The question came at the end, when the lights were already too hot and the microphone had begun to feel like an instrument of confession rather than a broadcast.What is it like to be a dependent woman?
Read More →It sprawled there motionless, outstretched to the maximum length possible. The seagull, five minutes earlier, had been in possession of food, chewed down to almost every morsel. But the scraps of offal torn from its destined meal, for…
Read More →Tic. Tok. The clock monotoned. A weight of dissonance hung over the stale-grey, metal
office. Its stained-white walls drained any enthusiasm for life. A drained, desiring…
A waning sun dipping over the edge of an untouched land, illuminated a soft stretch of
This is a place of wondrous illusion, a vacuum unconscious of its own non-being.That is ridiculous. This existential dread thing is overdone, but there it is. A cliché that writes millions of benzodiazepine prescriptions every year. Bad…
Read More →Dear reader, Before I begin this story, I should mention that the events described here took place roughly a year ago—in 2094, according to the calendar used by those who still count time from a certain event long accepted as humanity’s…
Read More →I am the tongue that falls from the open mouth. I am the devil at the dinner table. Peel back her skin and you will find me. –I didn’t think I’d end up here. Thirty-two. Overworked. Unmarried. A constant disappointment to my…
Read More →Felix Horace remembered the first time he received the offer letter. The Agency had insisted every recruit memorize five categories of anomalous phenomena: supernatural, biological, philosophical, theological, and phantasmagoric entities.…
Read More →The locals used to say that when you float down the north river, the sea spirits would judge your soul. That if you were a good lad, built a solid foundation, a life of marble and jewels, you'd get to the spit that appeared at the mouth of…
Read More →She sat at the corner table in a bar called The Last Honest Place, which was neither honest nor last. It was the kind of establishment where the lighting forgave everything and the drinks were priced for people who needed to forget the…
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