The Tijuana Bible sat in Brewster’s dry hands. He did his best to ignore the smell of it, the soft, limp pages, and the others who had held it before. The yellow and black cover gripped him as hard as he gripped the book itself. A crudely etched Snow White was bent over a wooden […]
He lies on the rough wool carpet and tries to remember where he is. The world spins around him, veiled in flashes of lightning. His skin crackles with electricity, but he is not afraid. Its touch comforts him. He closes his eyes. For a moment he is back in the workroom at Edison Machine Works. […]
I was having very unliterary sex. I usually did, but this was stand-out in the total lack of cliché. I wasn’t already sure I was going to regret it. I wasn’t melancholy and disconnected through the act. I wasn’t thinking of my father or the horse I hadn’t had as a child. And I wasn’t […]
I blinked awake in dimness, and my first inkling of my new situation was when I tried to rub the granules of sleep from my eyes. My hand stopped short, jerked by a silver chain attached to a metal cuff on my wrist. The other end of the chain disappeared into the waistband of my— […]
Experiment Log #1 Private subvocal record: Okay, here goes nothing. She’s in position, the tech checks are all greenlit, and I’m ready to jump in if necessary. Participating in the experiment: Anna Yuen Martinez, whose thesis this is all for, and myself, Jamile Johnson, and, well, possibly half the male population of the planet. […]
Life sucks, nowadays, and so do I. The most I can say for myself is that I haven’t sat on my glasses yet. Hair like the starburst of an exploding rocket frames the tiger-girl’s face, only an upside-down check-mark of a nose arresting the enormous eyes that burn into my own. A rogue canine tooth […]
Raissa locked the Special Collections room, clocked out of the Central Branch Library, and walked, humming along with her bug, to the 10th Avenue bus stop before she noticed her hands. Two teenaged boys clued her in, pointing at her, mimicking a mime trapped in an invisible box, and fell over each other in laughter […]
Before Jeffrey Skinner saw Melinda Jacobs’ four texts, he saw the two girls. It was a hot August night, late, on the subway going north toward Willowdale and where he kept an apartment… long past the rush hour, and mid-week, so far from crowded. In that car: just Jeffrey—an old man in grubby cargo shorts […]
Max opened his bedroom door, and there they were, his wish girls, sitting primly on the bed with their legs crossed, looking up at him through lowered lashes. Allison (the blonde) and Stephanie (the brunette), wearing the modified cheerleader outfits that made him cringe with inward embarrassment now whenever he saw them. The wish girls […]
“Out, you dirty thief! Get away from me!” From the very top of the steps, the Hierophant, red-faced, gives my suitcase a firm push with his pale foot. Halfway down the stairs it takes flight, splits open because the lock on it has never quite worked, and releases my clothes like pigeons loosed from a […]