I started Travelling when I was five. My father strapped me into a machine, told me to take a deep breath, entered a few lines into his computer, and I was off. My body remained behind while my consciousness travelled to the past. It was both beautiful and terrifying, the past. Strangers flitted back and…Continue Reading “And I Travel”
“He can’t be serious.” Rosa set down her lipstick-stained mojito on a paper coaster on the bar. “They are. Quite serious.” Before Oliver had another chance to question Rosa about her brother (or twin siblings or whatever was going on), Rosa’s eyes lit up as she spotted Theo sidle through the door of the Taurus…Continue Reading “Inspiral”
Before he had a face, he had a dark, fuzzy blur above his shoulders where a face should be. He could not see, smell, or smile, for he lacked the fleshy tools needed to do so. And because he desired to know such joys, to experience the world with all five senses, he ventured into…Continue Reading “The Forest of Faces”
Mother was a moon-faced woman. Her visage was not merely of lunar pallor or rounded, with Aleutian cheekbones; rather her head was a small luminous moon. The moon was said to have appeared suddenly at menarche, and was quite beautiful, especially at night. Hers was an unusual existence, of course, and most solitary. My father…Continue Reading “Moon Mother”
She snapped shut her mind with a CLACK. Opening up was always exhausting. Finding the right tools, knowing which wires to find – all such a tedious situation. She had to mend some circuits that had shorted, frayed and buzzing. She sighed and rubbed the hinge of her mind. — Opening the mind, once again…Continue Reading “Seeking One Brain”
I knew the black hole by the stream was you. So melodramatic and obvious! Plus, who else would have known to be there? I found you exactly three weeks after you died. I’d had an argument with mom and ran out of the house in tears, trailing the sorts of words you’d always scolded me…Continue Reading “All That’s Left Behind”
We’d been taking afternoon walks for a couple weeks when we found it. Dr. Summers said the fresh air might clear our heads, and I guess sometimes it did. But I think he couldn’t let my wife and I leave without a solution after countless consultations left us with nothing but a trash can cluttered…Continue Reading “The Soulbuzzard”
Birth, work, reproduction, death. Generation after generation. An endless circle of repetition. Or is it a downward spiral? There was nothing unusual at the beginning, except for the fact that the platform was empty, as Eddie stood still, pondering, waiting for the train to come, listening to his favorite song on the repeat, through the…Continue Reading “Life as the Art of Repetition”
“Okay, I got one, I got one. Everyone ready?” Sharon said, trying to shush the rest of the party as she pulled the next card from the bowl. “I’m ready,” said Ivy. “Bring it on!” Vance laughed. “Yeah, baby!” said Serrated. The mumbling died down. Sharon flipped the plastic hourglass, starting the countdown, then began…Continue Reading “Game Night at Sharon’s”
The narrator of Nabokov’s ‘Look at the Harlequins’ says: I now confess that I was bothered that night by a dream feeling that my life was the non-identical twin, a parody, an inferior variant of another man’s life, somewhere on this or another earth . . . that other writer who was and would always…Continue Reading “Doppelganger”