“I’ll never understand why some people go out of their way to kiss death,” Violet said, the second night I knew her. As she spoke, the presence of the Emerald Coat in the museum behind us crawled down my neck.…
“A hysterical girl is a vampire who sucks the blood of the healthy people about her.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes The first time the fit came over me it was as if I’d plunged into a deep well, and…
To evoke the first place I lived, I try to remember the first adult words I understood, the scrambled way toys and furniture were as important as people, the terrors that came with the dark. Those things stay with you…
This was to be the celebration of a lifetime. That’s what we were told anyway. Even the hynies had come out to watch. They huddled on the corner in their ugly robes, hoods up, though they weren’t supposed to gather…
They had not lived in this place for long, but it felt longer than they had lived there. They had lived in other places like this place, and they had moved on. They often moved on, but they never seemed…
Alpha Centauri Bc / gases falling In the atmospheric remnants of gases falling, the iiiiy braid space into garments. First seen by the ESPRESSO instrument in 2017 and described by Dr. Suvi Isometsä of Finland and Dr. Scribonia Pulchra of…
The police arrived at the diner, bearing news of my husband’s death. I brewed coffee behind the counter while my husband checked his vitals. It turned out he was very much alive. He tried to explain this to the officers,…
Here she is, on the porch, all straw-hair and slumpy joints and a crack that passes through her lip like she is dirt that has never known rain. In her arms is a baby: genderless, red, not making any sort…
Being a Rather Brief Introduction Things come to us in broken pieces, old records, torn fragile parchments, the task of the historian is beset with difficulties, half-lies and myth, unreliable narrators, invented memories. One of our most persistent stories begins,…
I. Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre The bear stumbles around the clearing, growling and trying to shake off the man clinging to his back. It had all started out as a prank. But he had fallen into the pen, enraged…
