The Goldfish’s Memory
The sun, the silence, the sound of the little fountain, the warm water in the pool and the quiet resort all so relaxing. The two women accompanying me, my mother and she, made my long weekend feel safe and peaceful. The three of us looked so much like each other, our...
Owl Tree
Darren had proved himself capable, though he’d only been hired as bar-back two weeks prior. He had a grace and speed about him. He had a knack for quick-cut conversations, and for queuing the music that needed to be played. Jessica trusted him.
When Jessica...
The False Knight Upon the Road
A dozen voices hummed rhythmically in the back of her head as she hopped down the stone steps and walked off the quad. A men’s chorus, a tune she had heard a long time ago, as a child … a memory fragment. Her father’s study, smelling of pipe smoke, as he handled his...
What Happens When Monsters Fall Out of Love
The moon shone full into the window of stuntman Roger Tully’s movie set trailer. Roger steeped out of the small bathroom and directly into a pile of empty beer bottles. They clattered and then rolled across the floor. “Crap.” He smacking his lips together, wishing he had...
Roulette
Ten of the rabbits are going to die, Dr. Burnham told me: and I’m going to kill them.
They stare up at me from small steel cages, wrinkling their noses and hopping in a way that might be nervous, as I prepare a syringe filled with a cancer-causing cocktail.
...No one dares to go where I go
I steal. You would never believe it, to look at me. I am a carbon copy stockbroker-belt-stay-at-home-wife. I live in a house that does not have a number because in our neighborhood the houses have names instead of numbers. I play golf with an enviable handicap and...
War Buddies
A solo sailor is one thing. A solo flyer is one thing. People get used to the idea that a girl in her mid-teens can face air or water or wind on her own. They don’t trust her to face people. Not without being overborne in some way or other. A girl needs a protector on...
The Branch
“The earworms are the worst part,” she was saying.
Ivan looked up from his beer. She was staring at him with a nervous half-smile, her eyes wide black holes in the dim of the bar. Her fingers interlocked around a glass of cranberry juice that she still hadn’t...
The Paintings of the Suicide Machine
The suicide machine was created as a mobile unit, an in-home service available with just a phone call or an online order. It rolled on treads, and features many attachments that get the job done. Pincers, hoses, retractable lengths of rope, needles, and bludgeons come...
Rue Benoit Bunico Night
Every night, around four in the morning, on the rue Benoit Bunico in Nice, there is a shouting match between a man and a woman and though they are not always the same man and woman the shouting match always ends with a gunshot. The man is the one clapping and laughing...
