Stories

In the year 2376, the East London Infinitum Supercomputer solved human immortality, and, incidentally, chess. In the year 2480, Eddie Swallow unsolved chess by stealing the board from ELIS long enough to cause a runtime error, and would go on to become the first left rook for the North Atlantic Chess Team. The World Chess Consortium was divided on this move for decades, and eventually made the biggest change to chess in thousands of years...

Pocket Change is a classic hole-in-the-wall bar—dim and slightly smelling of men’s piss. The overhead Budweiser lamp throws off odd shadows of red that mingle with the green carpeted table and I’m reminded of a heavily decorated Christmas tree, watching the snow blow outside. The snow is blowing outside. The snow is blowing outside. Manny walks in.

With Ruth’s permission, Franz pulled her dressing room’s curtain aside. She watched through her vanity mirror as he fiddled with his hat. He dressed like he came from money and had introduced himself from behind her curtain like he was raised by Rothschilds and their French governesses. She waited for him to speak, enjoying the feeling of him floundering.  “You were magnificent,” he said, finally finding the words, his eyes darting to Ruth’s backside.

We gaze up at the loft, flummoxed. ‘How the hell d’you lose a ladder?’ mutters Don. ‘Where’d they put it, eh, Jim?’ ‘I don’t know,’ I snap. ‘It’s not as if we can ask them.’ Yeah. Dad’s up in the geriatric unit, telling the same daft stories he used to regale us with when we were kids. Only this time, he means them. That was when I was in the jungle, hunting Pablo Escobar. That was when I was in Berlin, slipping polonium into Erich Honecker’s cocoa.

I met her in my dreams. While roaming the empty streets buzzing with azure neon lights, I came face to face with an underground pool. The water rippled like the ocean, as if something greater disturbed its peacefulness. Without thinking, I jumped in. The ice water devoured me. Or maybe I surrendered—I found no reason to struggle. As I sank to my death, a figure appeared above the surface. A woman.

Clyde trembled as the import of the message became clear, sliding by the mental callus of disappointment and chagrin that had formed over the long years of trying and trying again. All of his countless rejections and few and far-between acceptances had also been via emails. Sorry but no. Close but not quite right. Strong and accomplished, but not for us—pass. And sometimes, very, very now and then: Congratulations, perfect for our autumn issue. . . .

“Tell me what it looks like, Daddy.”  Kimmy’s hand fits inside my own like a photo in a locket, as if both were made for the sole purpose of being intertwined. We’re five hundred feet above ground, the evening air warm and thick, our eyes level with the setting sun as our carriage on the Ferris wheel rises toward its apex, the climb before the inevitable descent. “The treetops are like broccoli crowns,” I say, and Kimmy shrivels her nose and sticks out her tongue.

When, yet again, the Banshee of Porish fails to scream my name—has any woman ever, ever waited so long to be with child?—I tell Josh I want a pet.  “I had a beagle as a kid,” he says.  I want a demon.  Josh spins his wedding ring. “How about a budgie, Morag?” In The Book of Cryptids for Every Fear and Worry, I behold the Chup

Wonderland is the road that cuts through everything—each concession, each bisection of cornfield by perpendicular dirt road. Behind the cornfields and at the far reaches of what one can see off of Wonderland are stretches of dense woods framing the bottom of the sky, and in those dense woods are purple pitcher plants—turtle socks—big enough to eat salamanders. I used to wonder what lay at the end of the long stretch of powerlines along Wonderland.

There is a seam in my face. I don’t know where it came from. I wasn’t born with it, and I don’t remember any injuries that would cause a seam-like scar. I was scratched by a cat once? But that was on my cheek beneath the eye, and this is where the bridge of my nose joins with the rest of my face. Also, the cat scratch wasn’t bad enough to leave a lasting mark. There is a seam in my face.

He ignored it at first. Something hard beneath the surface, pressing against the skin left of his stomach as if trying to get out. Need to lose some weight, Darryl thought, dismissing any cause for concern. He knew there had been no family history of cancer—none of the tumors, lumps, or growths passed down in other families like eye color or buck teeth—not even among his extended family of aunties and uncles, bastard sons and daughters, half-siblings and cousins many times re

After every execution, the governor of Oklahoma wants to get laid. Technically, he always wants to get laid, but death penalty nights make it seem especially imperative.

The first thing Kylie did was go through the woman’s fridge. Frosty green grapes rolled inside a plastic bag. And plums like frigid nipples sat upright on a porcelain plate. An assortment of Tupperware containers held various premade pastas. She imagined those noodles, soft and boiled on an adulterous tongue. Or perhaps al dente, coated in the sauce she saw sitting on the bottom shelf, sprinkled with fresh cheese and chased with an expensive glass of wine.

I needed a break from the conveyor belt of school, boyfriend, career. That clapping song we sang as little girls: next comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby. . . . So I left the lower forty-eight for a job waiting tables at a remote truck stop in Alaska. I placed my relationship on hold. A big Hold up! on everything. I didn’t know who I’d be when I got back.

Analise didn’t mind the taste of dirt so much, but the tread of Becky’s shoe was pulling her hair, and it felt like the pressure might cave in the back of her head. A crowd of kids surrounded them, chanting and jeering at her, but she was adept at tuning them out. As far as she was concerned, it was just her and Becky, alone in this thing.

The driver’s seat bucked backward, out from under me, and my face spread briefly, like a blot, over the inside of the windshield, and my eyes migrated earward, and I was birthed raggedly through the glass, like clay through teeth, and I fluttered languidly over the asphalt, and struck a neighbor’s yard, in a rain of screws.

The bump had stopped hurting by the time Natalia got to the waiting room. Wasn’t that the classic scenario? Tooth stopped hurting by the time one got to the dentist? Long, scraggly hair looked great the day of the haircut? She hoped it was still there, fought the urge to go check the bump in the bathroom. For days it had been bothering her, though she had to admit she’d only noticed it during masturbation—not due to pain.

A courier, a little man, a tiny man in a vest and harness bag, knocks, recoils at the opened door, and hands the note to you. Your mentor from the pier has died.

The rain keeps beating on the window, and the baby is crying, and she holds him, feeds him, rocks him, looks at her phone, hums a lullaby, feeds him, rocks him again, and her cheeks are wet, and now she realizes it's dark and she hasn't turned on the lights, and she doesn't know how many hours have gone by. She can't go on like this. She goes outside.

The execution of Thomas Mitchell was scheduled to begin at 11:00 AM on December 7th and was formally called to commence at 11:01. Twenty-seven journalists, twelve photographers, and two relatives were in attendance, as well as several guards, the presiding district attorney, the Riverside Penitentiary physician, and a local sommelier.