The printing nozzles skittered back and forth with eerie grace, laying strands of snow-white tendon over black carbon-fiber bone.
Read MoreSt. Theophilus the PenitentShe watched him basking in the dawn by the river, the butterfly man. She gave chase, with net and long legs, and he was eagerly captivated. She held her breath and him close, and he stayed still in her hands.
Read MoreButterfly ManTucked in the curtains of her balcony, the girl watches the parade march below, but she cannot feel the scorch of it. The crowds shout with gleaming teeth and poison tongues, the voices of madmen and soothsayers, creatures with glass hearts and dreamers selling their nightmares in bittersweet trades. Demand is high. Supply, too, is high.
Read MoreAs Long as You Can Stand ItBishop frowned and grabbed me around the waist, fingers tightening around my abdomen. He licked my cheek. I knew I should have felt the wetness, but there was only the pressure of his tongue against my skin, snaking over my ear and into my hair.
Read MoreThe BellsBrit lowered her wooden sword and sighed. She loved her students. But the girls kept hesitating, getting hung up on the moves, lagging behind. The three boys in the class of nine had stayed with her through the form, but when they thought she wasn’t looking they whaled at the ground with their weapons like taiko drummers. Could they be any more clichéd?
Read MoreQueen of DirtIt’s been a whole month since anyone’s seen Vera, and the circumstances of us finally seeing her this weekend are going to be ultra grody-odd, so I deliberate forever doing my Face. In the end I decide to go subtle: an airbrushed conglom of three of my most flattering private snaps, plus Holly Rexroat-Carrow’s lips and Sofia Lawless’s cheekbones from that Vogue shoot she did on the Moon. Nothing too recent, nothing that’ll make Vera feel like she is way, way unsynched and missing out on all kinds of hot shit. Which she has been, obviously.
Read MoreMaskedTo a tiny part of you, this setting is familiar. These hard chairs built a little too small, with their desk flaps scarred by years upon years of pocketknife graffiti, rows on rows slanting down between aisles of threadbare carpet to the stage with its smooth-worn planks and its decades-old curtain and its faded elementary school logo marring the cinder block at the front of the stage platform.
Read MoreThe QuiltmakerViola watched the unconscious man trapped inside the transparent cube. He would wake soon. She counted down the seconds until his eyelids fluttered. The sedative’s dosage had been precisely timed. Her engineering background gave her the skills to systematically plan every detail.
Read MoreThe Invisible BoxHe presses pause and life stops. The trucker in the red and black flannel shirt at the counter is stuck in mid chew of a meatloaf that was never meant to linger. The young woman in the blue jeans and white blouse holds an angry fist over a jukebox infamous for taking payment while withholding songs.
Read MoreSoliloquy in a Cheap Diner Off Route 66