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 …
I can’t escape my job. Everywhere I go I see ads for the company. On the subway, the sidewalks with our company logo engraved in concrete, the talking billboards which feature the intertwined bodies of flawless men and women in the downtown AdZones. I’m good at what I do. PlayMatez look and feel real: warm …
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 …
Dear University Office of Risk Management (III) You will find with this letter three vials of my blood to help with the university’s new wellness initiative. My aversion to blood made me avoid the mobile-medical-unit that visited campus last week to collect samples from employees. With that acknowledged, I understand that the blood will be …
Dear University Office of Risk Management (II) I wanted you to know about an imminent threat to the campus community presented by changes to our dental plan. Specifically, I am concerned about the elimination of benefits for family members of university employees. More specifically, my wife’s teeth matter a great deal to me. The origin …
Dear University Office of Risk Management Please do not be concerned about the fire alarm that was pulled in the library last Thursday afternoon: I did this to test our evacuation procedures. I was concerned that there had not been a single drill this semester. In the event of a real emergency, everybody should have …
MORPHOLOGY: the Wooly Shagruth resembles a bipedal American bison. In place of hooves, it has rough, conical talons it uses to kill prey and drill into mountainsides where it constructs its nests. Annie is underground with her Secret Lover. They are in their meeting place, a cavern roughly the size of her parents’ living room. …
When I was seven, I built plastic models, scaled military replicas made by Revel, Taiko, and other Japanese or American or German brands with characters, English words, and other languages and alphabets sprinkled on the boxes like confetti. This confetti surrounded painted depictions of the vehicle in action. I could sit, building, for hours. …
There is no word for “freedom” in biology; in family idiom, no concept of the Self. Cruel monsters of my childhood still surface, lurking too close in the genetic pool. How can I stand apart? When will I be my own? In hostile mirrors I reflect my sister’s face and carry out the day’s routine …
No longer are my dreams long halls for monsters: people there these nights are faceless and benign, ready to waltz with me when threads of music knit the raveled sleeve of care. My nightmare enemies have moldered to the dust beneath my bed. In shadowed closets, they hung up their grotesqueries and departed, closing …