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The doll was dead. There was nothing for it. Bear had seen bad cases before: legs ripped off, heads torn from necks, hair rudely shorn. Dolls mutilated by ink, fire, even—once—the lawn mower. Not every child loved their toys gently. That was life. This was murder. He wondered if the little girl knew yet. It […]
When time was reborn, Sol asked, “Where am I?” “You’re in the idea,” said Sol. Now that time existed again, Sol could take a moment before replying. “Which idea?” “Yours.” Sol tried to swallow, except they were no longer equipped with any sort of apparatus for swallowing. And the idea of swallowing, divorced from actual […]
Toby steals a look up-trail, decides they’re probably never getting to the top of this mountain. Not because it’s that long a hike—four hours if they didn’t stop?—but because Cin, evidently, is some kind of nature nut. Not that he doesn’t like camping and fishing and all of it himself. He’s out every weekend he […]
It wasn’t the first time I’d found the stranger in the red coat somewhere no one was supposed to be, but it was certainly the first time I’d found the stranger somewhere it should’ve been physically impossible to enter. The attic had been locked for over a year. When I found the key and opened […]
The town had become a city, but a gentle one, and there were places to hide if you knew where to find them. Leah had lived in San Francisco, and in New Orleans. Those were not gentle places and she had not done gentle things. Going home was not the right way to disappear, but […]
I live in my car. It’s both worse and better than you’d expect. It’s an old Subaru hatchback so I can put the back seat down and sleep. I have all my stuff in the back but I have a space where I can lay. The place where I park is, like, the unofficial place […]
“T, wake up.” Anna? Terumi reaches across the empty bed seeking Anna’s warm presence. The voice again, unmistakably clear. “I’m sorry I’m missing our anniversary. It is our anniversary, right?” Baxter the terrier, nestled against her legs, jerks to alertness. The old basset hound Ringo pushes the bedroom door open with his nose. Both dogs […]
(Content Note: Attempted Child Death, Abuse, Self-mutilation) When the doctors tugged me from Ma I gripped on so tight with all my hundred hands that I left little handprints all over the umbilical cord. I grasped before I gasped. And then I was crying because they had to peel my fingers away, one by […]
1. The Sapphire Sword, its luster dimmed. In another world, you held the Sword aloft and it blazed blue in your hand. It made you feel a hero, even on the days you hacked and stabbed and felt anything but. Yet now you have saved that world, you have returned through the portal, you have […]
That fall, the Parrington Museum’s Henry T. Meadows Scholar was a man named Claudius Winterson, of whom my colleagues had nothing good to say. Dutifully, I attended his public lecture, where I sat well to the back and asked no questions, although several occurred to me. I had not intended—duty or no duty—to go to […]
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