You stay in bed for sixteen hours. When you wake up it is night, and you notice a strange sensation in your upper lip. Prickle prickle push. You examine the skin of your upper lip in a mirror and discover the bristle-like beginnings of three white hairs on each side of your philtrum. The hairs are unusually stiff and sleek. You continue over the next few days to watch the hairs grow progressively longer at night, then recede entirely in the daytime, and to notice other changes. Your incisors become pointy. The pupils in your eyes change shape. By the 5th day your bones are dislocating themselves, popping out of sockets from shrinking suddenly, head hair receding into your scalp and everywhere else hair sprouting like grass.…
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I saw him resting under a tree, my tree. Or at least everyone called it my tree since the incident. But since it was being called my tree, however spitefully, I would claim it as such. So I’d say my bit and I’d kick him out from under my tree. Then, I’d watch him lumber off and I’d take a nice nap. It was a good day for a nap too, balmy and quiet. Much like the day that ruined my life. Just thinking of it made me bristle with anger. But I called upon that to fuel my speech and I scampered on over to him.
“I need to talk to you.” He slowly craned his neck to look up at me. He blinked his beady little eyes at me, and slowly, ever so slowly, opened his mouth.…
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1
Dearest Bob,
I’m having a lovely time at Clockworld. At noon yesterday, three hundred grandfather clocks chimed at once. I had to cover my ears, it was so loud. They have clock-themed books, analog and digital clocks, and an entire room dedicated to Mickey Mouse watches. They even have pocket watches like the one your grandfather used to carry. I considered buying you one, but decided against it.
I know you forbade me to bring another clock home, but I did. I did it for me.
Love,
Margaret …
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“How long will I live?”
The doctor’s office is painted sickly green, and the fluorescents above make it only look sicker. The doctor himself has a tie with cartoons on it, lurid yellow and bright red, that draws Theo’s eyes even after he’s asked the question that has weighed on his mind for so long.
“Well.” The doctor looks up into his brain for the answer, finding only the ammunition for a dozen or so questions. “Do you smoke? Do you drink? Are you sexually active? Do you exercise? How many hours a week? Do you sleep well? Do you like yourself? Do you drive a nice car? Who are you dating? Do they have dyed hair? How much red meat do you eat every week?”…
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My neighbor is a spider farmer. Spiders settle on the plants by his living room window. “I’m harvesting their silk,” he explains. “It’s as strong as steel.”
“What will you build?”
“A shield over my heart. A patch over the hole in the sky.” His wife had been high up in the Towers. He points at the bare skyline out the window. “I’ll drape a web over the city that will blind the sky with its own sunlight, so the next plane will splinter against the wall of webs.” He scratches his head. “Or a parachute to jump from the next burning building. Do you know that many spiders can make parachutes?”
I don’t know this. I watch a spider parachute from his ceiling. If I squint closely, it looks like a tiny lady falling from the sky.…
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Barricading himself and a hostage in the Super 8 was not the best decision Tommy had ever made, but he couldn’t face the cops who waited in the pouring rain. He couldn’t face anything outside, couldn’t even face the mirror. He had screwed it all up; he had spun and dodged and dickered with responsibilities all his life, his father’s shadow hooping his hopes and dreams. He was so afraid of being like the old man he didn’t have a chance of becoming anybody else. “Baby, don’t peek through the blinds,” he said. “I can’t let you out. I need you. You’re all I’ve got.”
“What are you going to do?” Michelle wanted to know, and her voice blended with the thunder and lightning. At first, she had shaken all over and cried when he wouldn’t let her leave.…
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Her particular kind of witchcraft only worked when she lived on the run. It was a hiding magic. She pulled veils over the house and rooms she entered, leaving Uber drivers and pizza delivery boys stranded on the street.
“Oh sorry, I think I missed your house,” friends would say, pulling up to her front door.
She charmed the mail slot to delete her letters. A spell twisted the creaks in the stairs into traps. She sat under a large, one-way window, watching the dogs outside. She drank warm tea and broth and swept soft snow off the steps, sprinkling it with salt. At night, familiars traced the yard.…
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