The kid across the courtyard was driving me mad. He kept playing the same annoying ragtime song over and over every day since quarantine began. I’d tried ignoring it, but it didn’t work — I couldn’t even hear myself think… Continue Reading
“Wow, it really is you,” the little girl’s expression was almost comical, “you look just like you do in the movies!” Princess Nella chuckled. “Yes, fair maiden. It is I, the real Princess Nella, and I just adore your gown!”… Continue Reading
How could anyone sleep through that? He sounded like an asthmatic chainsaw. The sound wasn’t the worst of it, though. It was those gaps, when the sound ceased, where she hoped that maybe, just maybe he’d stopped — snoring, breathing.… 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
I step into the comfort of the ancient woods. I push deeper into their tangled darkness. I need to be lost, to be far away from the world, my home, my family. Somewhere I cannot be found, somewhere I can… Continue Reading
The front door creaks open as Cole leads Mother into PetMonster Market. An oppressive humidity smacks them in the face followed quickly by the scent of cedar chips, piss, and rotting fish. Now that Cole is thirteen, Mother has finally… Continue Reading
In the morning, the flowers are dead again. The bright red of the roses has turned to a dark maroon. Their necks have been snapped, the heads hang over the sides of my mother’s antique vase. Ron doesn’t like to… Continue Reading
A million walking corpses migrated on foot to that arid, dusty hellhole, forced from their huts and rural hovels by persistent drought and growing famine. They were ragged, unwashed. To my newly-arrived colleagues, the stench was overwhelming. But then personal… Continue Reading
The flasks and beakers looked boring now, even though they had fixed most of mankind’s problems. The glassware and cheap centrifuges looked as unremarkable as they did on the day they arrived by mail. Spencer paced in vague celebration among… Continue Reading
We are told: these are not children. So we treat them accordingly. We don’t wave to them, or smile or ask them to join in with our games. Of course they don’t ask us to join in with their games… Continue Reading