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...
I’m with my drinking buddies and all I have to do is lean over once and whisper at them, psst, and then I just start on it.
It was from a morning where I wok...
She was always unapologetically pissing his money away. Right now, in her capacity as an executive assistant in an integrated health clinic, she was spending ev...
The trumpet sounds through intercom speakers in the form of a man’s voice—“2 minutes”—echoing off these blackened underground walls. In “2 minutes” I will learn...
A mother walking towards a lake with a baby is inherently terrifying. It gets more terrifying if it’s her own baby, but anyone’s baby will do. Water, in general...
His brother Alex died, they buried him, a few days passed, and then George booked the tickets to Disney World in Orlando, Florida. George got tickets for himsel...
They left their homes with only the essentials: a single suitcase to set out with. All other valuables that proved difficult to move or unnecessary for survival...
I buy two different labradorite rings from a woman who tells me she only reads books that are beautiful and full of grace. She’ll read just a few pages every ni...
The mother was fine. Her skin silky smooth, hair freshly coiffed, no postpartum depression, no sleep deprivation, she just basked in the glory of her newborn so...
When you go through a black hole, your body turns to spaghetti. It can’t withstand the extreme gravitational pressure, so it gets stretched long and thin—a thre...
Winter had finally closed in, and Simon’s weather app had predicted the first snow of the season to begin sometime around 5 p.m. Last spring, the doctor had ope...
Henry liked to spell multi-syllabic words, like dilapidated, one of the new words from a sixth grade Halloween vocabulary assignment. For extra credit, the teac...
I remember what I was wearing on the day of my Great Realization: a pair of Carhartt overalls and a baseball cap. On the cap, the shameless logo of my employer:...
Nora was at the end of an especially well-deserved cigarette, puffing away from a favorite perch in the outside window alcove of the pet store when a pedestrian...
Okay, so, like, get this. This one time forever ago, back when they still had video stores like in the movies, back when “R” movies still showed lots of boobies...
I settle into my chair, a kid’s school desk, in the Baptist church classroom. I barely fit. Around me, others take their seats as well. I know most of these peo...
It was 9am when Officer Onion strolled up Union Street in his new sweat-wicking shorts. They showed off his big, pasty calves. By the way he moved across the we...
Giant burgers, dripping with cheese, grease running down my arm. Deep-fried fish and chips, soaked with malt vinegar, the ideal delivery mechanism for creamy ta...
“CALL NOW IF YOU WANT ME BACK. I HAVE FIVE MINUTES BEFORE MY DJ GIG STARTS. IF YOU DON’T CALL BACK IN FIVE YOUR CHANCE IS OVER.”
It’s the text message Ambiga...
Prologue
In the fraught tides of space the door hinges of one particular door rotate endlessly without cause. In one smooth, continuous motion they b...
My father doesn’t put out the Christmas village anymore. Too many boxes, he says. Too much styrofoam, too many bits of artificial snow falling across the hardwo...
During a Christmas Eve dream, retired professional glass blower Roy Splutternut was making love to a still living version of his late mother’s late best friend ...
Jonah was idly scrolling through Facebook to pass the elongated pandemic time when he recoiled in horror from the Buzzfeed headline accompanied by a photo of hi...