Juan was determined to get it right, but by the looks of things, he wasn’t doing a very good job of that. He was lying in the bed of a woman who wasn’t his wife, trying to figure out how he’d allowed himself to end up in this position again after promising himself that he would give up this lifestyle. The girl he’d just slept with was in the bathroom cleaning up, and Juan took this as a prime opportunity to escape before he was forced to look at her again, which he didn’t want to do, because instead of seeing her face he’d see his wife and his two daughters staring back at him and making him feel lower than a mongrel. Lower than a rat, even.…
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The stars are pretty. I guess. “Sundown” by Gordon Lightfoot is lovely. I suppose. I’m sitting here on top of Dad’s car, looking up at the stars, on the side of a street that passes my old high school on a cold September night. I look up in the skies and wonder if Jair can see me. I wonder if he’s smiling at me, or if he’s concerned that I stole Dad’s car to come out here while having an emotional crisis. Jair Cruz was my brother. Ever since he was eight years old, this cop had come to school to tell us the importance of listening to our parents and not joining gangs. Jair wanted to be a cop. After much training and patience, he graduated from the police academy back in 2016.…
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Kevin has cut his hand, and it’s really bleeding, pooling into the sink as the water cascades onto his fingers from the kitchen faucet. He’s not panicked though, it’s just stinging as he holds it underneath the spout; the rapids rush, masking the sides of his fingers, and he can barely see the wound, just the streaks of red that ruddle the water. It’s rather mesmerizing though, watching the water pass, millions of harmonized droplets falling at once, synchronizing as it pours, and Kevin forgets he’s even wounded, for a moment.
Gazing at the hand soap dispenser that sits on the edge of the sink, Kevin fixates on the buoyant sun sticker affixed to the front of the bottle inscribed with “Antibacterial” in bubble letters; the first three letters darkened with dampness, making “bacterial” most discernible; he notices its corner curled, peeling from moisture until his focus blurs, and for some reason, he can feel the sunlight from the SoftSoap label tingling down his neck.…
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I wake to the rotten-sweet smell of decomposing.
Maybe the smell is just the scent of dread, fear of our first Christmas Eve since our baby girl died last July?
Or did another raccoon die in the crawlspace below our house? Rancid odor, I open my face, wipe my face, eyes crusty, too, and a film of bubbles like peeking at the world through a Champagne flute, the blurry horror memory of giving birth to Jeanette tempered by too many pain pills wearing off.
Wave of grief, I puke in the toilet. Open all the windows and let the fresh air in, banish the smell, the feeling, everything. Flush and flop back into bed, empty.
Of course, my husband has planned to work overtime at the hospital today.…
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They buried me alive because I didn’t pay. I always thought that was very silly. So he didn’t get his money. Why did he have to bury me? It wasn’t like he even needed it. He had so much of it that it’s just hard to grasp why he went and did me in like that. He had three mansions. The one in England was pretty old and it had a name that ended in shire or ford or something like that. It was pretty in red brick and white windows and looked very European and made of chocolate. He also had another one in Miami that was white and all glass and was on an island where only Rolls-Royces and McLarens were parked—real good shit.…
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‘Where is God?’ he cried; ‘I’ll tell you! We have killed him—you and I!’
—Nietzsche, The Gay Science
“Botheration!”
Next to Ralph’s name on the duty roster were the letters DP&D—death: pickup and delivery. It was his least favorite work. “Dearly departed” souls are frequently unhappy when you arrive to pick them up. Regularly, there are timing or destination complaints.
“I’m not ready yet,” one might say.
“Sorry, but you have to come anyway; that’s the rule.” Or, “Hell? It doesn’t exist…does it?”
“Uhh…you’re in for a bit of a shock.”
Ralph walked to the DP&D office as slowly as possible. By the time he arrived, there was a long line of angels waiting. That’s good, he thought. It betters my chance of getting only one pickup.…
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All the girls in Symor village reduced at least once a year.
Some reduced on their faces, others on their arms, and the braver ones on their legs.
They came to school with white scars running down sunken cheeks, bones visible beneath their diaphanous skin that bloomed with purples and yellows and greens. When school started, most of the girls were newly arm-reduced and flaunted colorful leather pouch-bags to hold the smooth stump where the once wrinkly, crusted elbow was now round and flawless as a baby’s skull.
The most popular girl was Jilia. Everyone in Symor agreed that she was jaw-droppingly beautiful—that is, if you had a jaw. When you saw her you couldn’t help but stare and wonder how she was so delightfully small.…
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