I’m floating and untethered, adrift in a place I can only describe in loose terms. I perceive the world in colours now. Pale blues and greens and flecks of deep crimson. The reddish freckles in my vision are calibration markers.… Continue Reading
It started on the third Tuesday after the funeral. I was slicing apples for my school lunch, and the dog, Ravi, sat by the door, watching. He always watched me, but that day, he did it differently. Not like a… Continue Reading
I hadn’t been with anyone in three years. Maybe it was the smell. That persistent, sour rot in my breath that no doctor could fix. I tried mouthwash, gum, toothpaste with activated charcoal. Nothing worked. Only garlic helped. So I… Continue Reading
Fredrick didn’t ask for this. He didn’t ask for any of this. But when he stumbled upon the strangely empty room, tucked away in a corner of the house he didn’t know he’d been living in for years, he knew… Continue Reading
Near the floor,on the lowest shelf,the book waited. It called to mewith the whisper of a songthat raised my skin.I remembered only its rhythm:slow,insistent. When I showed it to my motherone afternoon at the library,she tore it from my hands.She… Continue Reading
Between my mother’s third and fourth husbands, she decided to go vegetarian. There must have been a boyfriend in between or something. Someone I have forgotten, that practiced yoga and charged crystals and stocked up on the green tea that… Continue Reading
Minute FourFrank is omnipotent. The city is silent as a mausoleum. Millions shrunken to ashes by the first brutalising impacts, portent of billions more. Explosions tear people up like cartoon characters. Frank rages but the eardrums which might hear are… Continue Reading
Once there was a woman with two legs. It sounds as though she was normal as normal could be, except one of the legs could sing and the other one couldn’t. The knee had a mouth, but no eyes. As… Continue Reading
They creep into Smoke Tree Trailer Village on a moonless night. Normally, our desert community remains undisturbed, except when Palace brings food for Jenika. When the unfamiliar RV rattles into our lot, I come out of reverie to Jenika’s whispers:… Continue Reading
The first time I felt Amy standing behind me after she died, I was making her signature hot chocolate — the kind that requires three separate acts of faith: dark chocolate melted slow as sunrise, milk chocolate stirred until it… Continue Reading