It was a cold morning in the old grey city. End of March, with dirty snowbanks on the streets and the sun hiding out somewhere behind the clouds. The three of us took a large black taxi to the hotel… Continue Reading
Jiménez watched the kids recede into the distance. It was the last house on that particular street, and a long, wooded section remained before the main road. He loved these two little rascals: after he finished tossing the contents of… Continue Reading
Behind me, hundreds of papers rustle like the wall is trying to shed its skin. Rain and snow have reduced the pigments on the pages to a neutral gray blob of featureless faces. The names are no more than bleeding… Continue Reading
It was like waking those first nights they brought him home, when she listened for the sound of him breathing in the bassinet. The silence panicked her. Then the relief, the breath that allowed her to stop imagining a tiny… Continue Reading
Lydia chose Thailand because that’s where her four closest friends from Barnard told her she simply must. “The jungle! The spices! The color! The culture!” Their time in Bangkok and its surrounding villages was all they could even talk about after… Continue Reading
Jacob glances sidelong at his son as the little boy comes out into the garage. “Mommy says I should come help you,” he says. The kid’s only six, he’s no help to anyone, and in fact he probably broke this… Continue Reading
Once there was a witch who lived in a small house on a wide prairie and executed her natural apportionment of mischief far from home. After a long day of hellfire and curses, she appreciated the enduring peace of the… Continue Reading
When the child died, we burned the village to the ground and scattered. Some of us went west, to search for truth in the lands of the setting sun. Some went east, to find the great ocean or the grassy… Continue Reading
It’s nearly teatime, thought Harold Smalls. Mrs. Smalls always prepared a lovely meal on Saturdays and Harold felt optimistic. “A stew, perhaps,” he mused. He rubbed his belly and began to pack his garden tools away into the allotment shed.… Continue Reading
“The world is gray.” As epitaphs went, it was the briefest Yi Qin had read. Her fingers brushed over the rough, beautiful calligraphy of the scroll. The letters had been drawn in blood. She could feel the echo of Liu… Continue Reading