Light and life and rain and white noise and we are thrumming with the city’s breath and soaring through its veins, its streets, alive, so alive with the intoxicating knowledge that we are this savage city and the city is us and we are on the hunt, raw and starved, watching, watching watching watching— There. …
“Listen,” she says, and takes Hank’s hand—takes it because intimacy might soften the blow. “What do you think about meeting just the two of us next time?” On the end of his tether, Horatio stirs. She had thought to catch him sleeping. It is four in the afternoon, the perilous periphery of Sunday roast and …
It’s only a moment’s difference between ripe and rot. That’s what my Amma would always say. “Fruits will blush with a succulent sweetness just before they turn over and die.” At that time I thought it was, like everything else, a lesson on marriage. As a child, I’d run from tree to tree in …
The Girl Who Haunted Death, by Nikita Deshpande Keep Reading »
21 October 2021 Vāsaya-viruta, said my Bengali grandmother: the cries of crows, who come to us as messengers from the dead. Gheibheadh tu na feannagan-firich, said the Gael one: You would seek the forest crows. On the latter, Dwelly elaborates: proverb; said to persons who boast of doing impracticable things. I suppose that writing this letter …
Give This Letter to the Crows, by Iona Datt Sharma Keep Reading »
Debris littered the shore, stretching its way to the beach house, which sat windowless. It was almost as though it welcomed any—all—within its water-stained walls after the waves upon waves upon waves struck its structure, hoping it would fall, but it didn’t. The Hulnitol beach house loved gatherings—the grander the better. It fed on human …
Every summoning is a deal with the bone baron. I see him dance toward us across the floes of ice. No one else on the ship can see him; I’m the only necromancer. His features are hazy. Across his gray skin, shadows dance independent of any light source. Not that there is not much light …
To Build Eternity, With Bones, by Gunnar De Winter Keep Reading »
Nobody talks about what happened in Hasan’s city, so he looks for clues. His memories are jumbled up and broken. Boots thudding. Shards of glass. Shoulders and fists slamming on the thin wooden door of his flat. He remembers one night some men forced their way in. The latch is still broken. But Hasan’s father …
In her forty-two years on God’s wide Earth, Gerda has read no books other than The Bible and Luther’s Small Catechism, but once, after Sunday service, she heard the sexton say that there are places where the dead traverse a river after death, paying a boatsman to ferry them across the water. Gerda knows such …
Light and night are falling from me,Death and day are opening on me… Who do you think you are, an artist? Here’s a story. When you were nothing more than an underfed slip of a girl, you carried home butter wrapped in newspaper. Unfolding it, you discovered—O serendipity!—reprinted poems of Tennyson. And thus, romantic appetite …
On the ferry to the island, I saw a man dressed as a jester. His image flashed into view in my side mirror as I sat there half-dozing behind the steering wheel. It was midday as we chugged along across the sound, and the sun glared off the smattering of pickups and SUVs and vans …