Unaware my feet still were coated in sand, I crawled under his bed sheets.
“I’m so sorry,” I squealed, brushing the granules onto the floor, collecting into ...
The first black metal album is considered to be Bathory’s ‘Under the Sign of the Black Mark’. Here, we see the emblems that come to be staples of the genre, thr...
“Eight of swords.” I can’t tell if the dealer recognizes the unlikelihood of the pull. It keeps happening. Over, and over, and over. Eight of swords, eight of s...
My cousin dragged me to Detroit to meet his fiancé and for some reason—ill or well-intentioned, I’m not sure, though sureness is what I’m seeking—they paid for ...
There was something of a suicide cluster at the high school. It started with William Talbot, a thin red-haired junior who was sort of an outcast type kid. Liste...
When people asked (or even if they didn’t), Ethan described The Check Mates’ sound as “cerebral dance music”. He didn’t know any bands that made better use of e...
We’d always get together before going under ice, and though most of us had done it a dozen times or more, hypersleep still made plenty of us anxious. To relax o...
(an informal report delivered to the New York Folklore Society at Binghamton University, 13/9/2015)
The date was August 9th, 1998. A call comes into the emerg...
The first story my boyfriend told me was of his ego death at the age of seventeen along the Pacific Coast Highway. It was 2015 when his ego died, and his parent...
You get used to it after a while, thinking in the ones and zeros. The black and white of a corporate life, shuttled from room to room with the white, fluorescen...
Dr. What’s-Her-Face is so pushy, always on my case to write it down. The thing. What happened when I was fourteen. At drama camp. Wow, six years ago. My shrink ...
I was six the first time I saw The Neverending Story and experienced the totemic tearjerker scene. My dog was two. His name was Murphy. He was a happy, loyal an...
Russell has been trying to find a job for months. The problem isn’t that he can’t get interviews. Russell worked as a project manager for a few years before get...
My mother took a week off work to make the journey to Port Nix, her mother’s hometown, even though it was only a day-and-a-half away by car.
“I haven’t decid...
I ordered the Chinese combo option the night the revolution was televised. I would have given it an Up High, because it was free, but I’m gonna give it a Mid be...
Another woman, older, possibly sixty, dressed in a black and white sweater suit that matched her curly, salt and pepper hair, entered the office.
“Ah! And t...
On an evening in late spring, she sat down at her desk and wrote, “Never again will he ask me, ‘What do you want?’” She paused, frowned, passed her fingers over...
In hindsight he knew he should have wrecked her engagement. She gave him every cue imaginable: inviting him over while her fiancé was at work, riding on the ba...
Dori’s house smelled like pizza bagels in the morning, just like it always had in the afternoon, but the upholstered sectional shimmered differently when blanke...
The Designer of Experiences reflects on the various experiences they have designed. Each a unique narrative spun out across the screen, each a series of escalat...
In the middle of the night, she dreamt fervently of pea soup. Lush and electric green. The soup swirled around in a shallow serving bowl and left an impression ...
I’m wiping a tear of laughter from my eye as I’m sitting in the corner booth of an Outback Steakhouse in Rosemont, Illinois. Across the table from me is our wai...
The room was painted a crimson red, darkening in the corners where it got more damp. It is sunny outside but cloudy through the windows. In the middle was a wid...
We’d gone to the waterpark for the day, the one a ways east of town there, with the RV park and the fancy new bandstand and all that. The one where a good quart...
You live for those moments when you share a space with someone famous. Your pleasure swells with their fame and wanes with your physical distance; it deepens in...
Junis Lund had been up on the cross in the middle of town for three days when the crows started pecking at him. He was so certain of his revelation an...
Welcome, my exhausted little American, welcome to the future! I understand you’d like to recline on our sunny beaches and trail your worn feet in our toasty-hot...
There is a specific kind of brainrot someone who has been watching TV since the crib accumulates. I narrate everything in my head, from my breakup to my car acc...
There is no princess waiting to be saved. There are no rings, rupees, or coins to collect along the way. There is no prize money. No cheerful celebration. No fu...