She runs a hand across her stomach. It is only the smell of burning meat, she tells herself. Jorie tells herself this again when the pump disgorges another identical dollop of homegrown beef frothing with lard and sinew that squalls, spluttering, as it slaps onto a grill of mirrored steel. Meat. Vegetables. Minerals, they pay […]
Most girls bleed. “A visitor,” Mama and my tias had called it for years, their shared and groaned secret, like a pesky neighbor arriving too often. “Someday, you too,” they’d promised. When I awoke to the twisting in my center, a foreign pain that was somehow familiar, I thought I was no different. I was […]
Even before her niece arrives, Imogen can feel her sparrows stirring. It’s been twenty years since she’s allowed herself to feel them. It’s been twenty years since she’s allowed herself to feel anything at all. ### When Ginny arrives at Aunt Imogen’s house, the raven is still on the back of her hand. CPS couldn’t […]
Overhead lighting is disabled. It is late at the Home for Aging A.I.s, and my internal clock counts the passing of each solitary electron. By the dim glow of our power indicators, my stereopticon discerns the cuboid polycarbonate shells of my fellow residents. Their tripod-mounted cameras stare without focus. My audio input device detects only […]
It’ll be one of those nights. I can tell. I can always tell. Firstly, it has to be the right time of night. Late enough, but not so late for the drink to have truly set in. There will have been just enough alcohol to fuel the fire but not enough to completely incapacitate. Secondly, […]
Clay County, Illinois April 4, 2017 My whistling dies on my tongue the second a familiar scream rips through the trees. It comes again before I’ve extricated myself from the briars of the Ghost Woods’ treeline, and dropping my school library copy of Of Mice and Men and a ziplock baggie of foraged morels, I […]
The first time Annabelle’s son overdosed, there had been an outpouring of support. For her. For him. A community. The first time Annabelle’s son went to rehab, there had been check-in texts, casseroles dropped at the door, stories of recovery and hope. The first time Annabelle’s son relapsed, there were friends clucking maternal platitudes, invitations […]
Chapter 1 Tiny white dots—seed pods?—tumble across the workspace where the apprentice slumps. The candles spit and flicker. Half of them have already gone dark. He does not stir. Not even when the wind drags fresh lines across the wet pigment markings that he’d drawn so meticulously with his stylus. He only lies there, drool […]
One My father was a rose rustler. The early seasons of my life were measured in the lifecycle of rose bushes, and I memorized David Austin’s catalogue of English roses the way other little boys memorize the makes of cars. My father prized the ability to identify a rose by sight and would quiz me […]
The Xiagu Market was once a place of unparalleled delicacies and unrivaled views. From Chun State, on the other end of the continent, people had journeyed to the fertile valley of Xia for a taste of the market’s offerings—thousand-spice pig trotters, oxtail soup simmered with pickled chrysanthemum greens, bear paw braised in hawberry wine. Bellies […]
First Place Winner of the Voyage Lucky No. 7 Challenge Now baby, promise you won’t fly too high? A man on the street gets too close when he speaks to me. His breath is a lit cigarette and the words it propels are a leering threat. I realize I’m not afraid in the same way […]
CHAPTER 1 I owed him my life, and then one day, he came to claim it. The card arrived first, announcing his intention to visit. In appearance, it was no different from the last birthday card, or the one before that, or any other card he had sent: the same stiff over-square envelope licked carefully […]