The Return Trip
West Park was as depressing as I remembered. The weathered park benches were still a sickly kind of brown. The spent remains of cigarettes and…
Snakes with Legs, Babies with Tails
Years of watching shitty movies and ignoring the nightly news had convinced Tom that all criminals were clean cut. Handsome. Suave. The man pointing…
Progress, Part 1
I. It is the Current Year. You live in a three-bedroom apartment with five other thirty-year-old programmers, provided to you by your generous…
True Love, Part 4
IX. Kamishiro was in the kitchen. He could smell eggs and bacon. Would she untie him to eat? Or would she try and feed him? He felt violently sick,…
A Hair’s Breadth, Part 2
IV. Sitting in front of her computer, which she had packed along with other essential items the previous evening, Carla half-heartedly makes a few…
Market Correction
I received an invitation to my 20th high school reunion. How they’d tracked me down I did not know. There is no escaping these people once they set…
Our Lady’s Bees
A brisk cool evening wind snatches the day’s warmth. Gathering it up from the Earth, the wind tosses it to the sky. Trees on the Île de la Cité wave…
The Incel Magician
Looking back, I wouldn’t call myself desperate; I needed a calling, a reason to pass my time on this earth, for virtue was my cause, for virtue I…
The Yard Man
Greg knew that his neighbor Pete was always worried about his house getting robbed, even though they lived in an upper middle class suburb. There had…
The Ring of Gyges, Part 2
VI. “The headband?” Adam said. “That’s not a ring, and besides, I just lost it. I can’t find it anywhere.” “The line between fact and fiction is…
