(1) November: the month when Bombay breeze turns cool and longing has narcotic ripples. From the sliding window of my fourth floor apartment, I see a big grey cloud hanging in the evening sky. I hear traffic gurgling sporadically on the road below. The crime begins a conversation with me. A dead man with a […]
Fiction
Cameron MacKenzie: I Don’t Know What Else I Can Do For You
The kid was small, not quite 100 pounds. Closer to 90. They didn’t know his name and they didn’t know his grade but they knew he’d been about 20 minutes late to practice. Coach said they should run him, and he gave them the superball. Coach watched practice every day from up against the far […]
Jennifer Lee: Veil of Birds
The taxicab that picks me up from the hotel is a Mercedes, its air conditioning turned up full blast. The heat never bothered me growing up, but I’m more American now. The weather reminds me of the summer of 1987 when Philip and I brought the children to visit. God, we nearly died in the heat. […]
Charlie Sterchi: Dr. Horn Gets on the Good Foot
Dr. Gerald Horn, at 72, having already lived through three fucking generations of hipsters, and having seen each of them accomplish nothing but to be subsumed by the desire narrative of the Big Whatzit (his words), had had just about e-fucking-nough of it (again, his words). So, he closed shop at the university, where he […]
Kelsey Jayne Marshall: Loup-Garou
It was Archie who first suggested a game after deeming a bottle of whisky unsuitable for anyone else but himself. Pascale was picking nail polish off Robin’s thumbnail and Robin was drinking out of a green glass bottle with the label ripped off. Edgar, lounging on the couch, agreed. A deck of cards was excavated […]
David Ebenbach: The Quiet House
I don’t think this one’s going to last. She’s too skinny, already. Pretty much all bone. Sometimes that means they’ve already been, like, carved down to the hardest parts and so they can take a lot, but this one—what it looks like is she needs whatever she already lost, and that she can’t live on […]