Fiction

  My grandmother, Daddi, kept calling her dead husband to bed. On the night of the funeral, Daddi looked for him in the folds of her velvet blanket, the hollows of her cheeks, and the flickering flames in the gas … Read More

  The story was dangerous ground, I knew that instantly, and the little voice daring me to tell it a certain way should have stopped me before I started. C’mon, it said. Imagine her expression. I was cautious enough to … Read More

  Prince George’s County, Maryland 1986   Goatman lives in the woods: the woods behind your house, but also in the woods along Osbourne Road, and also in the woods out past the guard rail at the end of Greenhaven, … Read More

  Nearing the end of my father’s sabbatical year in Florence, my mother convinced him to rent a house in the mountains. She slipped the Holiday Homes brochure on top of his computer: “This one has a Ping-Pong table and … Read More

  It is believed that Mr. Leon Levitt of Peridot, Arizona, began to emit sometime around his forty-third birthday—“emit” being the retroactive clinical term ascribed by those of the science community studying SDR phenomena where they occur. Given the location … Read More

    The trees seemed to hunch closer as darkness fell. Something—a mouse, or maybe a squirrel—emitted a high-pitched shriek, and Marta startled. An owl, she thought. The notion of being seen by something invisible, a creature swooping noiselessly onto … Read More

Mikayla convinced Andy to close the set with “Moon Song (Wouldya Look at That, Dolores),” and it is landing like shit. This is a Tranq Sea bar, packed with tourists who have been off-planet two weeks at most. They don’t … Read More

    I. In his entire life, Brother Giorgio has never once thought about rocks falling from the sky. In fact, no one in Milan knows that a stone, like the plum-sized one presently several miles above the city, can … Read More

    The emergency evacuation alert is followed by a serene twenty seconds in which I decide to remove the eggs from their ice bath. It’s the simplest action available to me, and I know I can do it well. … Read More

She writes at night when sleeping is no longer an option. Words explode in her head like artillery fire in a war miles away, incursions, movements in the darkness, the promise, still invisible, of collateral damage. She tries to stay … Read More

  Today his world was not serene, because just before lunch, Menser lost his cuff key. A pleasing day would be O’Brien working on Max with enough Bubble time to end each shift, driving straight to the gym while sipping … Read More

  Maidencane isn’t half as elegant as it sounds. Not even close. When I came across the plant’s name in a copy of Gulf Coast Flora I had checked out from the library—the first to do so since 1976—I had … Read More