“Think of Georges Méliès,” the old woman says. “Moon men appearing in puffs of smoke. Only these were like fairy tales, the old kind meant to assure the world that women were empty-headed, foolish, and vain. I’ll give Don Leaming this, he thought up dozens of clever ways to make us die.”
Read MoreThe Amazing Exploding Women of the Early Twentieth Century
Interactive Fiction — We know you have heard there is a fringeness to the food scene in Philadelphia. That you’ve come looking for the gut-kick of adrenaline, a taste of underground, and the possibility of enchantment that’ll make you forget you exist in Trump’s America.
Read MoreLas Girlfriends Guide to Subversive Eating
Everyone else just stood there in their Sunday best looking on with their mouths open, their eyes wide. Some of the ladies hollered. One fainted dead away. Even the menfolk gasped and let loose an Oh Lord here and there.
Read MoreRoots on Ya
They say that the manifestation of one’s magic is determined by the crucial events and influences—internal and external—surrounding one’s special time which happened during puberty. Signs and markers can help point out specifically when one’s special time will manifest; but the Ace of Knives was alone.
Read MoreThe Ace of Knives
The thing about souls is that they don’t wander off. Not unless a body is so broken-down that there are too many cracks to hold even breath inside. The girl isn’t that far gone. She’s still strong, still has grit, and still believes in a future.
Read MoreGray Skies, Red Wings, Blue Lips, Black Hearts
I’ve ferried two hundred and twenty-one souls across the river of death, and I can already tell my two-hundred-and-twenty-second is going to be a real shitkicker. I know by the lightness of the manila folder in my hand, the preemptive pity in the courier’s face as she gives it to me. I read the typewritten card paper-clipped to the front with my stomach tensed, braced for the sucker punch.
Read MoreMr. Death
We fled to the stars before Earth let out its last breath and drifted between galaxies for four hundred years, listening to the heartbeats of our ships. Fiction would have you think that such an enterprise would turn the species feral, but the truth is kinder. Humanity lost its fear of itself, shed its hate like a mouthful of rust. When you have nothing but each other, you learn to love your neighbour. You do that or you die.
Read MoreLove, That Hungry Thing
It hurts that you don’t recognize me, your own familiar that you made from a part of your own soul, but there are more important things for us to deal with right now. I push through the hurt and speak to you, saying, “This is not a story you are reading. This is actually happening, and it’s actually happening to you.”
Read MoreYour Own Undoing
My husband’s voice. I winced. Nick does not often address me when I am in the niddah. It is considered bad form, and he is a stickler for propriety.
Read MoreThe Niddah