Teri Lewis was obsessing about her sister’s bad marriage and the president’s latest compromise, so she barely listened to Flo’s improvised song about pandas and dandelions, coming from the stroller in front of her.
Read MoreVictimless CrimesThey left Abal in a hurry, after Ozma’s mother killed the constable. It was a shame, too, because business had been good. Ozma’s mother had invitations almost every night to one party or another in the finest homes of Abal.
Read MoreThe Constable of AbalMy wife lolls in front of the TV, spread out on the sofa, eyes glazed and mouth open, illuminated by flickering light. Her empty–eyed stare is so vacuous that it looks like she could have died there, stuffing her brain with the shopping channel.
Read MoreAbomination Rises on Filthy WingsI had no tools suitable to the task—only my pocketknife and the shovel—and it was a long, grisly, abhorrent job, but I had to do it, and I did.
Read MoreTo Die for MoonlightWalter McMullin puttered through the afternoon sky east of Oneida in his tiny dirigible. According to his calculations, he was somewhere toward the north end of Texas, nearing the Mexican territory west of the Republic; and any minute now he’d be soaring over the Goodnight–Loving trail.
Read MoreReluctanceMorning climbs in through the window as shadow recedes from Tang Xiaoyi’s body like a green tide imbued with the fragrance of trees. Where the tidewater used to be, now there is just Xiaoyi’s slender body, naked under the thin sunlight.
Read MoreCall GirlWhen I come on board the ship I pay little heed to her splendour; nor to the gaily–strewn lines of coloured electric lights, nor to the polished brass of the crew’s jacket uniforms, nor to the crowds at the dock in Southampton, waving handkerchiefs and pushing and shoving for a better look; nor to my fellow passengers.
Read MoreTitanic!I always remember snow speckling the orange cone of streetlight that held my first kiss. It wasn’t snowing that night. This was before time fractured, left me slipping through its cracks like a bead of water.
Read MoreKarina Who Kissed Spacetime
Most of what was left came to him second hand; imprints of stories he had told a thousand times about memories he used to have, memorized monologues about a life for which he had no context. Copies of copies. But he still had a few pure memories. These, the last original prints, played over and over again. The cold Professor Eisley and what he turned into. Maybe what he’d been from the beginning.
Read MoreCome to My Arms, My Beamish Boy