In the tank, you watch the whale circle behind you. You tilt your head around trying to follow him in the water. Yellow streams of sunlight cascade over the black and white torpedo that is coming at you. Today, Dawn Brancheau will drown during a clear, sunny afternoon toward the end of the “Believe” orca …
Fish can drown. Well, they suffocate in water in which there is little or no oxygen dissolved but, technically, water suffocates humans as well. The gills of fish can even process oxygen from the air but the delicate structures dry and are destroyed and then the animal dies. We can’t take a single breath under …
We met Officer Hughes the first day Henry had a “Bad Sleep,” that’s what we call it, because it sounds a lot less menacing than “night terrors.” Henry was about two hours into his nap. I was working out back in the studio when he screamed so loudly that Tabitha Peyton, two doors over, called …
The thirty-aught-six dangled loose as a length of rope from the boy’s arm while he high-stepped through the weed-choked yard. He gripped the rifle by its forestock, and as he went it tilted like a lever, ground and sky alike passing between its sights. Occasionally the aim of its barrel crossed paths with his face. …
My thighs touch too close for comfort. Hip bones buried in my sides, old handlebars or the bronze gates to a hungry woman. Pull, she says, come closer. I do not bleed, anymore I maneuver this daunting vessel and I am starved. Please, come closer. I want to disappear with the reptiles My large …
The wheels on the bike squeaked rhythmically as she headed home, passing yellow buses stopped at the streetlight in front of the middle school. Occasionally friends in window seats called out from the buses, or classmates who recognized her and just wanted to be loud. She waved back, feeling like Miss Teen USA. She was …
It’s true I made you up as I went along. All the more reason, I say, that I should be able to make you go away when I want. But you have proved to have a solidity not normally associated with the imaginary realm. I know that when we first met you were just an …
Her child was a savage child, and when he was grown, they had to migrate with the seasons to keep his savagery in check, the birds passing south in the sky as they went north. The cold, it seemed, could dull his instincts, mitigate the bloodlust, but too much and his core temperature dropped. He’d …
Macie’s knuckles felt cool on her eyelids, her hands silky from an evening of lavender lotion massages and drippy polka-dot manicures. She let them rest there—gently, barely touching—before digging them into the soft meat of her reddening eyes, then dragging them down her cheeks, through her tears. Leaving marks. Tonight wasn’t supposed to go like …
Dear University Office of Risk Management (IV) Thank you for sharing your reservations about my recent letters. I was not going to say anything, but I think you should know that these missives were penned by my undergraduate research assistant, N***. This circumstance should contextualize any irregularity in form or content. I do not wish …