GERMINATION The first bud sprouts from Charlie’s left thumb. You think you’re dreaming. Another nightmare, but so much more fantastical than the ones you usually have. Charlie crashing his plane in the jungle. Charlie’s parachute failing. Charlie screaming as napalm melts flesh off bone. Charlie, reporting for duty one leg short, clumsily hefting a gun […]
When Crenshaw shoots Anneke, he’s within arm’s reach of me. I watch my hand grab him by the back of the neck. My body follows through, and I keep moving. He loses his balance. I feel the base of his skull stretching the web between my thumb and pointer for a second of resistance, and […]
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror. —Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies December 16, 1932 The sun was as hot as the Fourth of July, though it was almost Christmas. I ran a finger over the note in my pocket: I like what you wrote about that creep who killed the kids. Show […]
PROLOGUE ### Event 110107 from the Chronicles of Ideal Histories Translated by Senior Historian Gordon Moyes Classified Information ### This is how it happens. Tyson March kisses his wife, leaves his home, and treks to the Tunnels. It’s early morning, the skydome has just ticked over to dawn mode. Street lights still illuminate the faces […]
“Still got a boyfriend?” “You know you can’t ask me that.” Rochelle kept it light, her sing-song Mississippi accent adorable. She tightened the suture on Farmer’s fourth stab wound. One more to go. “I told you, though, you’d be first to know if I dump him.” A major rule – no flirting with the inmates […]
Gene believed the mitochondria were feminist until someone asked him why. That’s how things started going downhill. My husband, Gene Saperstein, fifty-eight years old and retired from the IRS just this past spring, standing there holding a glass of boxed pinot grigio in Lucy Halperin’s living room, surrounded by women with statement earrings. You should know […]
“You know what I heard, Philippa?” Kenzi said. “What?” I said, watching the lifeguards clean the pool beyond the fence. For the last time that summer, we were waiting to get into the city pool and, as usual, had come too early. “Mitchell was watching you the whole time we were here yesterday.” I gripped […]
Lydia had the loveliest blue-black hair, and the fluorescent lights of the Halloween Factory danced among her waves. Today, she wore it down, casually tossing it as she perused the racks of costumes. I followed behind her, playing my part of loyal friend: the quiet girl she’d adopted at the college coffee shop two weeks […]
A carriage, exposed and burning at the foot of a sheer silver peak. Sunlight, intense sunlight. Smoke. Stillness. Blood. No movement. Then: a solitary figure moving away, stumbling from shadow into light. A change claiming him, deep and irreversible, making him something other. But go back. Trace the train’s journey through this unnatural place. See […]
The first thing you might notice when watching Suburban Slaughter is the flashing red thunderbolt on the corner of the screen; the camcorder is almost out of battery, and the characters are almost out of time. It starts with blurred static until a moment of clarity reveals two boys crushed by compression. Their bright shirts […]
The Hand At eleven o’clock, with my family tucked fast asleep, I tip-toed to the door and tied the last knot on my combat boot, knots that reached my knees. Rounding the corner, I collided with Baba. “Where do you think you’re going this late?” he asked, rolling the checkered foutah tighter around his waist. […]
(Circa 1953) It’s going on full dark when the car turns off the highway into the motel auto court. A ’48 Studebaker Commander careening through one last pothole, running roughshod since Fresno, on fumes since Old Town Calabasas. But it made it. They made it. Just past the red “VACANCY” sign, the car slows then […]