Content warning: Physical and verbal abuse of a teenager . Thursday Night or Friday Morning The night air hit me like a slap. I kept my hands in my coat pockets and ducked my chin to my chest. After crossing the grocery store parking lot, I headed up the main street, past the classy little […]
Deep in the Valley of Unwanted Souls, at the dreariest end of a narrow gravel road, the colorless fog parts and a wagon pulled by a lone, clip-clopping mule arrives with the midnight deliveries. The wagon stops between two monstrous structures built of shadows and cloud-reaching stone spires. The Asylum and the Library. Both sanctuaries […]
It’s been thirteen years since I threw that old red flip phone across the beige-carpeted living room of my first apartment in Albuquerque, startling the white rabbit I lived with, who hopped away into the bathroom and hid behind the toilet. The memory erasure worked, for thirteen years. But after watching that viral video on […]
December 30, 2018 Dear Wade, You know Arnie’s Gas, Bait & Tackle? I’ve always wondered why he built it where he did, on that dusty strip by the community college, all the way across town from the lake. The first time I stopped there for gas—a decade ago, just out of college and moving to […]
The taxi pulls away from the curb with a wheeze of exhaust, lifting the edge of my cape and rousing a lone, unraked leaf from its slumber on the yellowing lawn. Down the street, a child laughs, her bicycle weaving down smooth asphalt flanked by identical red brick facades. She is too far away to […]
Chapter 1 Lane explained that we weren’t allowed real names only after she hired me. “You’ll be ‘Foxtrot,’ she declared. She convinced me that my new name fit perfectly. I couldn’t be ‘Bravo’ or ‘Charlie,’ because both of them were still alive, but she couldn’t legally say where or when. ‘Zulu’ seemed insensitive, ‘November’ was […]
They’re coming for me, gaining ground with every stride. If they catch me, they’ll tear me apart just to see what’s inside. The path—if you can call it that—is uneven and dark. I strain my eyes against it out of habit, but there is no light here. I run faster, propelling myself deeper into the […]
