The first thing you might notice when watching Suburban Slaughter is the flashing red thunderbolt on the corner of the screen; the camcorder is almost out of battery, and the characters are almost out of time. It starts with blurred static until a moment of clarity reveals two boys crushed by compression. Their bright shirts […]
The Hand At eleven o’clock, with my family tucked fast asleep, I tip-toed to the door and tied the last knot on my combat boot, knots that reached my knees. Rounding the corner, I collided with Baba. “Where do you think you’re going this late?” he asked, rolling the checkered foutah tighter around his waist. […]
(Circa 1953) It’s going on full dark when the car turns off the highway into the motel auto court. A ’48 Studebaker Commander careening through one last pothole, running roughshod since Fresno, on fumes since Old Town Calabasas. But it made it. They made it. Just past the red “VACANCY” sign, the car slows then […]
The statue looked uncannily like her mother. Its nose curved up, stout at the base and plump near the nostrils. Long straight hair fell below its waist; flowy, as if caught in the same wind that brushed against Roadside’s ears. If she squinted, a part of her was so sure that the statue would start […]
Don’t open your eyes. Don’t let them see where you’re going or what you’re about to do. In the darkness, let them think you’re still asleep in your apartment. Don’t wonder if anyone’s watching as Cygna guides you, hand in hand, down the long staircase into the bowels of the city. The metro is full […]
Yeh Yeh loses the use of his legs when I turn twelve. Two years later, he loses the use of his eyes. Overnight, my grandfather has become as helpless as a newborn baby. This is the first time someone I’ve known all my life ages in real time. Immortality really is just the stuff of […]
We were instructed to point the brush with our lips ––Grace Fryer, a dial-painter for The Radium Luminous Materials Corporation, 1930 1.Glow Twirling the paintbrush in our mouths to sharpen the point glow-in-the-dark watches airplane dials clocks in the company darkroom our glow-in-the-dark cheeks necks hands our radium tongues constellations of luminous dust drifting as […]
