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So I guess if I’m gonna tell you about the ghost, first I have to tell you why I had to go all the way to Mama Tee’s house in the first place. Basically, this one day last summer me and my boys were just chillin in the parking lot of the rec center. We […]
They come on trains; they come on buses; they come on planes to our municipal airport. A handful even arrive on foot, having walked the whole distance to our City with what scant possessions they could carry on their backs—only a few, to be sure. But more than have ever walked away.
I am running out of Words. I stumble down the temple steps, clutching my wounded side. I had been too slow to use my fourth Word and the prison guard’s spear had drawn blood before he choked to death under the weight of my suffocation spell.
Reduce, We’ll start with the easy one. We’re good at reducing! We’ve cut back so much already. Air quality. Polar ice caps. The winters where no one’s grandma freezes to death. What if we try reducing working hours? Preventable illness?
You revere your patron saints. Your Marys. Your Joans. Your Catherines. You should fear them. If one ever heeds your prayer, and she arrives stripped of skin, of fingernails, of every organ and every last fuck to give, her halo a boiling crown of furious yellow flames.
As children, we circled the crow chick that fell from its nest. Its wings were splayed heavenward like a saint’s, its brains streaked like veins of quartz across asphalt. Its neck arched back at a fossil-like, impossible angle. That was when I learned how fragile birds’ bones are.
An excerpt from the unfinished memoirs of Sullivan Kingsley. Text was dictated to and recorded by a Kvasir Scrivener™. Any poetic editorializing can be assumed in accordance with the spirit of Mr. Kingsley’s intentions, as interpreted by a conjured instance of the severed hand of Kvasir, Norse god of poetry, peacemaking, and beverage production.
Dallas gazed out the viewing window of her ship, beheld her planet, and despaired. She’d anticipated something more. Better. She’d studied the worst-case scenarios. She’d read about the lost causes. But she’d never really believed one would be her first. Why had the program given her a shell? Dallas shivered, recovering from her travel hibernation.
When a human head hits a road at the right speed and the wrong angle, the asphalt will take off an ear like a belt sander. Dogs and bears and chimpanzees rip ears off during attacks. People rip off ears during attacks; in domestic disputes, drunken brawls, and reason-defying misadventures, people relieve each other of their ears like they’re tearing off stubborn pieces of bloomin’ onion.
I’m not telling you this to convince you of my innocence. The verdict has already been reached, the seal of my fate has been affixed. In about twenty-three minutes, I will be forcibly escorted to a certain maximum-security prison, where I will begin my life sentence without parole. Against my will. But in these final moments, an irresistible impulse compels me to present my perspective.
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