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1. KING Once upon a time there was a king who had a daughter that he loved very much, and when she disappeared, he called you to the throne room and requested your services. “Tell me what happened to her,” he said. It had been three days since the Crown Princess Jieqiong had last been […]
In a minute, nothing we’ve said to each other and nothing we’ve done with each other will ever matter again. I don’t want her to go. We’ve just made love: spontaneous, unexpected, volcanic, in the way that sometimes occurs between people who are usually more cautious, more guarded, more moved by rational calculation than whim.
When Amy begins to flay herself during office hours, you aren’t quite sure what to do. You hate office hours. You used to enjoy them, actually, back before the flayings started. Sure, it’s hard sharing your office with three other postdocs, and sure, you could spend these hours more efficiently without constant interruptions from shy undergraduates with a dozen questions already answered on the syllabus.
When she decided to wander through the woods in search of poppy fields and prowling houses, the stepmothers and grandmothers scoffed.
“You’ll be looking for love potions and beauty serums, then. Shallow. I always knew you were an insecure girl.”
“She wants slimmer thighs.”
“She craves wider hips.”
“She knows the boys don’t look twice at her, that she’ll never marry. Sad.”
You’ve gotten a C-minus, and it isn’t your fault. It is also not your fault that your parents are anal, Pakistani immigrants who came to this country with nothing and think a C-minus in tenth grade spells life-long doom. It doesn’t help that your Auntie (your mother’s cousin three times removed) is staying over and caught you watching inappropriate content on your laptop.
Rat was sure the silent, four-eyed skull of a dead god was staring at him. He followed the crowd off the train toward a rickety stand with the word Orientation painted on the front. But he couldn’t stop looking into the giant god’s eyes. Every dead person Rat had seen had eyes like that. Unseeing. […]
A tithe convoy of the Fivefold Church, in Ander Carmora’s sad experience, left three kinds of wakes. Armored wagons and oxen ripped lasting ruts in gravel roads, scarred them down to the mud. Tithe collectors gleaned their due from all and sundry, and left long swathes of land poorer than they’d found it. And the third wake: the bodies of any bandit crew daft enough to try its luck.
Tilda stands at a crossroads just outside of town. It’s a place where worlds meet, and the perfect place to create a new person. The crescent moon glimmers through the oaks bent thick along the roadside. The cold-burning stars in the sky hold a sort of magic if you know how to swim in their light. Tilda spits in the dirt, turns a tight circle, and recites the incantation she learned as a child.
We put my body double together in June Lee’s basement. Her mom was one of those chill Asian moms who liked having an artsy-fartsy daughter she could brag about at Bible study. She was already pushing the whole portfolio-for-college-apps deal, so she didn’t mind staying out of the basement to avoid contaminating our radiant artist auras humming at the frequency of the Big Bang.
I heard you’re returning to our world again. What do you want here exactly, Orhija? The Earth is dying slowly. It’s losing its sheen and glow. The blackness of the soil that you used to say was as beautiful as mine has changed since you left. It’s redder than black. The air is tense and heavy with smoke. I doubt you can survive it.
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