“For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.”—Virginia Woolf You think you know the story. A man made a monster, and that monster demanded a mate. Mad scientist meets fallen angel. That story. You might remember the lonely girl, a composite stitched from skins sliced from the many—her perfect face, rounded hips, hollow ankles, full […]
Jimmy all alone in the October cold. Jimmy out late, walking too-wide streets, looking through windows, watching men and aching for them. Smoking cigarettes to smell like them. Jimmy stuck inside a skinny kid body, a half ton of hunger crammed into a hundred and twenty pounds. Jimmy dreams of becoming Jim. Jimmy hates Jimmy. […]
The car is an old beater that Lee inherited from his father. It rattles and shakes as he navigates the pitted back country roads. Kansas’s “Carry On Wayward Son” blasts from the radio. Classic rock. Another thing Lee inherited from his father. He wonders how he got to this banal place in his life. The […]
Since Lisa’s breakout role in Addicted Nerve, her agent emailed her with an increasing number of auditions, though she chose not to put herself forward for any of them. Instead she suffocated in long hours of idleness, chugging energy drinks and online shopping as the money in her bank account dwindled. Her days bled into […]
On Monday Grant experienced another episode of vertigo. This one lasted much longer than the rest. The whole world was spinning, a top that increasingly wobbled as the whirling went on for several minutes. This time closing his eyes didn’t help. He struggled to get into his reading chair without falling over. As it had […]
That new moon night, Elena ran toward the door of the house and grabbed her grandmother Carmen’s hand. Her fingers sank into a soft layer of loose skin. She could feel the old woman’s tendons and bones shifting with an almost rigid quality. She did not let go even though the woman gave a small […]
For joy I could embrace the earth. I shall delight to be buried in it. —Henry David Thoreau “I wish to discuss matters of the heart,” Calvin Greene said. Ellery Channing winced. So this was what it was all about. This after Greene had produced his copy of Channing’s Thoreau: The Poet-Naturalist, lauded Channing’s decision […]
That was a long summer—you know the sort: a heatwave we thought would never end, days we thought would never end. After the brouhaha died down, I swore myself to silence. I was eleven years old. It was a few months after my grandmother had died, and later I would understand it as the year […]
Ruth thought she no longer measured her life in weeks or months, but in bin collections and laundry. Her days and nights were punctuated by bouts of washing up and differentiated by what type of vegetable peel was blocking the plughole, in the way they used to be punctuated by dancing and drinking and art […]
Bisma couldn’t bring herself to follow Mama out of the midday sun and into the stranger’s house. Bisma knew she’d have to—in the end she always did as Mama said. Of course she hadn’t asked any questions when Mama ordered her to pick up their cleaning equipment and follow her to the house at the […]
