The lock-step of soldiers struck the cracked dark cobbles, a bounding rhythm in time to the beats of Liwei’s heart.A line of people slumped by the entrance to his house. The half-light obscured their faces in shadow, yet he knew their figures even in death.Mama. Baba. Uncle. Old Bingwen.“Ge-Ge,” his sister whined beside him. “I […]
The Miss Marple Society had a reputation. Fans of crime fiction and solvers of small town mysteries, they stuck their noses into Nobody’s Business with all the breezy self-confidence of gossipy aunts cleaning your underwear drawer. An editorial in the Monroe County Gazette had called the Society, “a batty old cave for batty old women,” […]
Her hands give me the first hint something’s wrong. As she pulls up to my drive-thru window, her knuckles are white where she grips the steering wheel. She offers a fistful of singles and coins, exact change for the meager order. “Thank you, ma’am,” I say, divvying the money into the till as I keep […]
I snap awake and focus on a sheet of paper taped above my bed. It reads “Get Going, Lily Sandoval.” In ten minutes I’m down the stairs dressed. Move like the person behind you is catching up. I’ve done that since I was eight, when my father and I jogged around the park. At twelve […]
I met him in a parking lot. He was unattended, headlights lifted up to the sky, wheels slowly turning, going nowhere. As I leaned over him to place my hands on his body, his hood ornament snared my cross, and his wheels stopped spinning. It was not raining, but his wipers drew slow half-circles on […]
A long time ago, I knew this guy named Agriellos Angriopoulis. Angry, for short. He lived on the top floor of a crummy old house at the east end of Chestnut Street. The only way to get to his apartment was to climb up the fire escape, into the bathroom window over the tub, but […]
Late one night, Alfonso crept to the manager’s cabin and stole a box of twelve prime cigars. He returned to the bunkhouse and sat on the edge of his stinking pallet, smoking these pungent cigars one after the other. Alfonso was an ancient cannery worker, disdained alike by his fellow canning union men and the […]
I dream about you and the train all the time. This is how it ends: There is the train and there is you and then there is only the train. 1. Sometimes we’re on board the train, together. (This is my favourite dream because I’m next to you.) You have the window seat and you’re […]
My Auntie Cheeks moved in with us when I was around the age memories start to stick. She brought with her no belongings and made no requests except one: “Put me there,” she said, pointing the yellow nail of her forefinger to underneath the kitchen sink. Fortunately for her, the sink was relatively large for […]