The linen closet disappeared first. Or maybe it was just the first thing that Anjana noticed, the morning her parents moved into the nursing home. The closet was downstairs, in the short hallway between the kitchen and the guest bedroom.…
I got the text message while waiting to pick my son up at school. No, I am not one of those goonish parents who insist on creating a traffic jam outside the school gate just so the precious children don’t…
Nela’s Dad started the thought. “So they’re calling you Twens? I read an article in The Atlantic about how you’re a generation without a future—” “—No, they can’t conceive the future, linguistically, that was the point—” her mother, correcting. “—okay,…
I’m having a time. Love. Dolly Her Christian name being Dolores, her infant tongue could make nothing more explicit than Dodo. Dodo, she called herself, and then later, Dolly, and later still, there were other names. At home she was…
I look up at the godhead. The sand is white around my bare feet, a damp seal. There is no horizon. Where the sea should fall away into the distance, it curves up instead. A towering tidal wave so high…
for Jennifer Walkup apricity, n.: the warmth of the sun in winter Tejal peered out the window at Marseille. The day was gray, a rarity for the normally sunny city. Not the reassuring gray of an old sweater or…
For C. These are the notes I wish I had when I had you. Abandonment If you wish to abandon your child in the woods, even if temporarily and in fair weather, such as on a particular sunny afternoon in…
The highway is paved with the bodies of musicians. Their bones crunch under the weight of our motorcycles, a staccato of shattering, every once awhile a cleft-shaped sigh or a note or two of an ancient number one hit. The…
Extraction Place a body block under the back of the cadaver so that the chest protrudes and the neck and arms fall backwards. You might hear the bird flutter at this stage. Do not be alarmed; this is normal. Make…
“Have you heard about this walking thing?” Mum called, knocking on the door. Brian Sloan looked up from between my legs with alarm. “Shit,” I said. He shot up like a piston, sheets flying as he scrambled for his clothes.…
