The Ruminant

Christie was full of baloney. She was bent over the plastic carton, rolling up slices, dipping them in honey mustard, and popping them in her mouth as though they were escargot—drippy, slimy, little snails. She’d finished half the package already, which was not...

Still Life

       “Let’s not marinade in delusion and call it bravery for my sake, please,” I say, picking at the newly formed scab on my knee. The ones that leave a crater behind. “He’s dead and no amount of tapping my fucking temple or breathing is gonna help.”   ...

Constant Stalker

The bus is late. The afternoon sun is merciless. “Bad accident,” one of the dozen of us waiting announces without looking up from studying the screen of his cell phone. “Bus had to be rerouted.” “How long?” a woman asks, futilely fanning herself with an envelope from...

Where is Her Wallet

Deborah lost her wallet. Most of us have at one time or another. It’s one of the awful feelings, that moment when you know you don’t know. Or the last time you knew… anything. It swallows you, that feeling. Utter loss. Utter failure. All the work it will take to...

Acid Reflux

I was thirteen when I did it for the first time. Thirteen had always been my lucky number. Other kids shied away from it, claiming that it would bring misfortune. I wasn’t one of them. My school ID number contained 13 somewhere in the long string of numbers. I was...

We Are Alone in Nuclear Winter

I meet Rain at the end of the tunnel. It used to be one of the tunnels you had to drive through to get to the other side of the mountain. No one travels this path anymore thanks to a new bullet train system built to go through a shorter, less infrastructurally taxing...