They live in crowded old apartment buildings, leaning up against the walls at night to listen to the sounds the pipes make, the transit of air and water from here to there. Sometimes they will sing strange songs, harmonizing with the pipes and the sirens and the city sounds from beyond their apartment walls. They […]
You are not the son your parents hoped for. Your father is a minister. Your mother is a would-be Olympic skater, a famous local beauty who blew out her knee at the age of 17. They wanted a son to be proud of, a confident son with friends and followers, a clever son who could […]
The boy, who would rather be called a man, was dying. Fire ate at the old forest, but the Liar couldn’t feel the heat. He felt only the boy’s fear, his pain, his regret. The way his bloody fingers slipped over the buttons as he tried to radio for help. The machine was dead, but […]
They were beating on the door. Huey could hear it rattling, see it shaking in the frame. They were going to take him away and lock him up like he was crazy. And this was only fair, Huey reflected, edging a little further out onto the ledge. The cars below looked like droplets of blood […]
A honeybee fluttered its wings for the last time. It was the last honeybee, a sickly man-made clone descended from a tragically short line of sickly man-made clones. Its stunted wings were translucent and crisscrossed with veins. The blackish yellow fur on its thorax reminded me of the ducklings I saw at the zoo when […]
The cell I’m in is pretty loud because it shares thin walls with the other ones full of shit-talking and drunk dudes, but all I keep hearing is the fake camera-click sound that my phone makes when you snap a picture. It echoes in my head. I keep my eyes open because if I close […]
Attempt 1: Talk to her. “Hi,” I say in the break room at Innovations Worldwide, though this is debatable. I might have only cleared my throat. Regardless, I am counting this as the first word I have uttered to Jennifer. She looks up from her tablet. Her green eyes sparkle in the fluorescent light. She’s […]
It was ten fifty in the morning and he was squinting through one eye as he diced vegetables. The other eye was swollen shut. Jorge had just a vague recollection of the fifth–sixth?–bar last night after work, and someone talking smack. The fat ass kept on calling him “Chef” as they played a game of […]
I found the painting in the basement in a Japanese tansu. Noriko had moved in a lot of antique furniture when we got married, primarily from the late Edo period, and I had lost track of most of it. The painting itself was buried underneath a stack of clothing and wrapped in old brown paper. […]
They tell him he’ll be happy when he gets there. It was wrong, what was done to you, they say. We’re making it right. You’re going home. The kind ones, who call him Mark, are pleased. They have a party, with foods from his planet. He chews the edge of a gray leaf so bitter […]